Cape Race

by Robert C. Parsons

  Once again the nine men, who were getting tired after the efforts of self-rescue and the climb up the cliff, set out inland. They walked across a marsh and reached a patch of woods just as darkness closed in. They decided to stay there for the night; perhaps by morning the fog would lift. As it turned out, as Collins remembered, shipmate Larry Sheehan, a resident of Cappahayden, knew the lay of the land:

  In the fog and darkness we saw a stump. First it looked like a large tree cut off near the ground. Then Sheehan recognized it as part of the old telegraph pole line that ran into Cappahayden. Then he knew where we were located. We followed the old pole line right into Cappahayden, reaching there about 11 or 12 in the night.

  We found a place to stay in a club or motel which had several rooms. The next morning several men of Cappahayden took the captain and mate Murphy to the wreck site. Marvita was under water by that time. The rest of us took a taxi to St. John’s.

  Collins recalled his six years on Marvita: first, the smuggling patrol, and then, in 1949 after Confederation, when it carried the first RCMP officers to the south coast of Newfoundland to places like Burgeo, Harbour Breton, Grand Bank, and Burin. In the weeks prior to the vote for Confederation, the vessel delivered the ballot boxes along the Labrador coast to the northern communities and to the “floater” fishermen of Conception Bay stationed on the Labrador coast.

  After the loss of Marvita, Collins, a member of the Newfoundland Regiment in World War II, joined the Fisheries Patrol boat Eastern Explorer. He later worked at Bennett Brewery in St. John’s until he retired. Today he enjoys reminiscing of his experiences on the sea.

  48

  Off Cape Race,

  Jennie Barno Disappears

  August 1950

  By the 1960s, many Newfoundland coastal towns were connected by road and highway, and their people no longer had to depend solely on sea transportation to bring necessary supplies to the outlying centres. The Trans-Canada Highway from Port aux Basques to St. John’s was finally completed in 1965, and the slogan “We’ll finish the drive in 65” became a reality.

  Although an improved road system connected many formerly remote communities, coastal trading ships still plied the sea lanes to Newfoundland’s offshore islands as they had for years. Once the vital link had been established between towns, the wooden schooner had virtually disappeared, and modern steel-hulled vessels replaced them and carried goods into the more inaccessible places.

  The steel vessel Jennie Barno, owned by E. F. Barnes and Company, was 50 feet long and equipped with modern navigational equipment: ship-to-shore radio and radar. It left Trepassey on August 14, 1960, headed for St. Lawrence and the French island of St. Pierre to pick up freight. Other sources claim the vessel was bound for St. John’s; however, it is known that Jennie Barno was crewed by two seamen, plus a boy who was probably aboard on a cruise or vacation: Captain Richard Penney, his 12-year-old son Richard (Jr.), and Frank Marks. Captain Penney and his wife were former residents of Bell Island.

  Two days later, Jennie Barno had not reported. The first evidence that the vessel and those aboard had met an untimely end came when the body of Frank Marks was found off Cape Race. Then a trawler located the body of the captain’s son. Apart from an empty oil barrel and a dory with oars and a bucket inside drifting off Cape Race, there was little other debris. Of the steel freighter itself, there was no sign.

  Search and rescue units, the RCAF, the United States Coast Guard, and the naval base at Argentia coordinated a massive hunt that covered over 10,000 square miles off southeastern Newfoundland. Several ships, including the RCMP craft Irving, made a surface search.

  The vessel’s all-steel construction would leave little or no floating debris. The two victims gave some clue to Jennie Barno’s fate. Marks’ body had a life preserver on it, as did the boy’s, whose preserver was properly fitted and tied.

  Authorities and relatives could only speculate. The vessel must have been rammed by another ship or had struck a submerged rock. Two people wore life preservers, thus there might not have been time to send an SOS, but the crew could have prepared to board Jennie Barno‘s dory, which had been located some time after the coaster was reported missing. Possibly Jennie Barno sank before they could get into the dory.

  Despite the extensive air and sea search, and a request to fishermen in the Cape Race, Trepassey, and St. Shotts area to report or recover any objects found along the shore, there was very little debris found. The exact cause of Jennie Barno’s disappearance was never determined.

  Epilogue

  Cape Race: Up Close and Personal

  August 2010

  Friday the 13th of August 2010 at Cape Race held no misgivings or portends for me. The air was soft and sweet on as fine a day as ever split a Newfoundland rock. Nary a breath of wind, no fog, and the vistas were like something from the end of the earth. And it was the end of the earth. At Cape Race you could go no farther.

  En route to the cape, whales sent white plumes in the air off Cripple Cove; they cavorted and chased caplin at The Drook; a pair of mated marsh hawks dipped low to the ground looking for prey at Bob’s Cove; and there were songbirds on every other corner from The Rookery to Long Beach – a birdwatcher’s boon.

  In places, the road to Cape Race was rutted like an abandoned potato garden, but only in scattered swatches. Otherwise, my Pontiac Montana swerved along for about 40 minutes as my wife, Sadie, and I soaked in the sunshine and scenery from Portugal Cove South to the great cape. I knew that at sea, Cape Race was the first sign of land North American–bound ships encountered after leaving Europe. As they passed the cape in an eastward voyage, ships and sailors waved goodbye to North America. But in the passing, captains and seamen alike were cautious of the strange tidal pulls and the approximately 158 days of fog a year. These two factors had led to many a shipwreck around Cape Race environs.

  On land, that same shroud of fog on the southeastern seaboard led to a curious ecosystem called “blanket bog” (as identified in several doctoral dissertations). At Bristy Cove, for example, bakeapples abounded, and on the barrens were the soon-to-come partridgeberries as the bog streams trickled underground to emerge, glistening, at cliffside.

  We crossed several trout streams on rough but passable bridges. These rivulets were also places of settlement in days gone by, spots to obtain fresh water on a barren coastline. Nearly the whole tip of the southern Avalon abounded in this bog-peat marsh, with never a tree in sight for miles. Caribou abound in this land in summer, although on that magic day we saw none.

  Halfway between the gravel road between Portugal Cove South and Cape Race, we came upon another unique site, the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve. Signage told us we were not far from fossils that are among the oldest in the world. Precambrian fossils there have been designated to be of international significance. The area is well-marked, but only accessible by a guided tour that begins at the Portugal Cove South Interpretation Centre.

  At Cape Race on August 13, nature beckoned with warm, shirt-sleeve temperatures. The great historic lighthouse sits perched on the 100-foot cliffs at the extreme southeastern corner of Newfoundland. Yes, really the cape is at the end of the road, unless you want to walk a hiking trail for 90 minutes to Clam Cove, to the see the site of the ill-fated Anglo Saxon.

  The cape sits on jagged, black-grey rocks that jut out into the Atlantic at nearly every angle. The same rugged rocks caused many a shipwreck to unsuspecting ocean liners. Current rumours say one can still find gold coins wedged in rocks or along the few shingled cobblestone beaches. Looking for gold on those cliffs is not an activity that’s recommended.

  Today one can not walk the winding way to the top of the lighthouse itself, as the structure is closed to the public. Yet the views of the promontory, the vast, mighty ocean, the wildlife, the bog, and the knowledge that many, many souls were lost at the inhospitable cliffs, is inspiring. One can always do more earthly things – talk to the friendly tour guides at the Cape Race Interpretation Cen
tre, study its many artifacts of the world of communication, view the old anchor said to be from a bygone wreck, or speculate on this landform shaped by erosion.

  At the great light tower itself, a squirrel greeted us with stay-away chatter. What, in this low bog and barren, did he eat, I wondered. Then, near the sealed door of the tower were birds’ feathers in a mass. Probably sparrows and crow berries.

  Throughout all the stories of life at Cape Race, the tales of history, the information of communication, and the views of ecology, my mind wandered. It took me back to the era of the sailing ships and great steamers. So many strangers and Newfoundlanders, so many seamen, passengers, and crew from nearly every nationality, experienced this mass of rock; many looked landward from sinking ships, many made it to the base of shoreline cliffs.

  I could almost see them. If it had been dark or foggy, perhaps I would have heard the muffled tramp, tramp of their feet. The German immigrants – the few survivors from Florence who crawled ashore at Cripple Cove – who stumbled past this land en route to a six-day trek to Renews where they found relief. The Norwegian passengers from the doomed Kristianiafjord mingled with the blanket bog and few livyers at Bob’s Cove in 1917. At Portugal Cove South, the passenger liner Hanoverian (which had inventor Alexander Graham Bell and family aboard) grounded to total loss. A few miles off shore from the cape light tower, a little ship, the Maggie Foote, capsized in an August gale with no survivors. Look seaward beyond Maggie Foote and remember that on a clear April night nearly 100 years ago, some of the first signals from the sinking Titanic reached the telegraph operators at the cape. In 1857, six sailors from the Welsford reached a ledge on the base of Cape Race and three survived. In April 1936, an empty dory drifted in at The Drook, mute evidence of the offshore wreck of the Partanna, in which 25 men from my own community of Grand Bank perished.

  Thinking of wreck and ruin, wind and wave, survivors and lost heroes, life and death was surreal on that August day – for me it was like walking through a series of murky milestones, signposts, and wreck markers. Something enchanted and shadowy drifted with the smell of the sea in this panorama of moor and cliff and tower. There was a captivating world of past lives here.

  Then to bring me back to reality were Tyler Coombs and Pearl (Perry) Coombs, friendly guides from the Cape Race Myrick Wireless Interpretation Centre. After a tour of the centre, they took me to the edge of the God-almighty cliffs that dropped down to the churning waters of Eastern Landing Cove. If seas were high at Western Landing Cove, the longboat news canister retrievers used this Eastern Cove. Could it really be called a cove, this dent in a massive cliff? How did they ever get ashore? Usually the longboat men used the Western Cove Landing – it too looked hazardous, even on my civil August day. Could anyone ever land there in a wild winter storm?

  As we walked to the coves, about two minutes from the light tower, Tyler chatted about the history and geography of Cape Race, saying as well that he was the great-grandson of Patrick Coombs. Patrick was the man lowered down over high cliffs to fetch the lifeless bodies and parts of bodies from the passenger liner George Washington, lost in 1877 with all aboard a short distance from Cape Race.

  On that captivating day I reached Cape Race from St. John’s, following the southern shore Highway 10 past Bay Bulls, Renews, Fermeuse, and along the coastline to Portugal Cove South. It takes about two to three hours, depending on stops to admire the spectacular scenery. At Portugal Cove South, knowledgeable staff explain the “to the cape” route and what to look for along the way. One can also reach Cape Race by travelling south from the Trans-Canada Highway at Highway 90. It winds down the Salmonier Line, past historic St. Mary’s, the “Flats” with its picturesque villages of St. Vincent’s, Peter’s River, and St. Stephen’s. Holyrood Pond has an interpretation centre which explains why there is such diverse sea life in the great body of water. Highway 90 is a learning experience and a worthwhile voyage.

  But Cape Race keeps calling me back. I must go again.

  INDEX OF SHIPS