Brooklyn & New York City, which British forces occupied, became one of the most active hubs, with a small fleet of ships and several thousand prisoners. Most of the existing survivor accounts come from men who were held aboard those ships, like the frigate HMS Jersey, the most notorious of them all.

Once aboard the prison ships, the recruiting efforts continued. Some prisoners were offered cash, others told that their families would starve in the streets. The horrors of the prison ships also served as a recruiting tool, making any alternative seem much more attractive by comparison.

Travel on the California Trail followed a tight schedule. Emigrants needed to head west late enough in the spring for there to be grass available for their pack animals, but also early enough so they could cross the treacherous western mountain passes before winter. The sweet spot for a departure was usually sometime in mid to late-April, yet for unknown reasons, the core of what became the Donner Party didn\'t leave their jumping-off point at Independence, Missouri until May 13. They were the last major pioneer train of 1846, and their late start left them with very little margin for error. Emigrants where fearful that winter could find them in the snowy mountains of California.

Despite the Hastings Cutoff debacle, most of the Donner Party still managed to reach the slopes of the Sierra Nevada by early 1846. Only a scant hundred miles remained in their trek, but before the pioneers had a chance to drive their wagons through the mountains, an early blizzard blanketed the Sierras in several feet of snow. Mountain passes that were navigable just a day earlier soon transformed into icy roadblocks, forcing the Donner Party to retreat to nearby Truckee Lake and wait out the winter in ramshackle tents and cabins. The group’s supplies had already been lost on the trail, and it wasn’t long before the first settlers began to perish from starvation.