While she was moored at the Boston Navy Yard word reached the United States that for the second consecutive year blight had ruined the potato crop of Ireland, depriving the people of that country of their chief means of subsistence. A joint resolution of Congress approved 3 March 1847 authorized the Secretary of the Navy to place "Jamestown" and at the disposal of Captains Robert Bennet Forbes and George Coleman De Kay to carry food to the starving poor of Ireland. "Jamestown" sailed from Boston on 28 March and arrived at Cork, Ireland on 12 April. After unloading her life-saving cargo, the sloop returned to Boston on 17 May.