The Doryman

by Maura Hanrahan

  They were quite near the Cape itself, probably the closest Richard had ever been. The loud ferocious squawks of the Northern gannets rang through the dense air. They were huge white birds with wingspans of nearly six feet, and black eyes that made them look like they were wearing bandits’ masks. The boys would get a charge out of them, Richard said to himself, smiling as he thought of his sons. He would tell them stories of how foolish men had fallen to their deaths trying to climb onto the cliffs to get close to the birds. Others were convinced there was buried treasure in Golden Bay and near St. Bride’s and in other places near the Cape. Adventurers came and went, trying in vain to find it. It reminded him of Angela’s stories of the alleged treasure in Oderin. He smiled.

  There were literally thousands of gannets here, perched on Bird Rock, where they came to breed each year. They shared the dismal spot with pretty, ivory-coloured tickle-aces who clung to rocks and guarded their little eggs as best they could. There were turrs here, too, with their great black bodies and tiny wings, giving them an almost prehistoric look, and sometimes little puffins, the clowns of the North Atlantic.

  The birds were like them, the Banks fishermen; they came for the fish. And the fish were plentiful here. They cluttered the coves and filled the shoals that surrounded the Cape. But for the men, it was hard work getting them. It was wet, always wet, one of the wettest places. It was windy, too. Richard figured that when the wind came up here on the Cape, it was wilder than on the Grand Banks. That was his feeling, and it nagged at him whenever he fished here.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  It was the evening of the twenty-fifth and the southeasterlies were manageable. Richard was alone on the Mary Bernice, waiting for the dorymen to return with their loads of fish. The old injury to his hand had been acting up, and young Captain James, who deferred to his experience and obvious seniority most of the time, told him to remain on board. He would take Richard’s place in Dory Number 1 with Billy Reid. The Captain didn’t have to argue, for Richard readily agreed. His finger throbbed. He recalled that there was supposed to be a cure in salt, a substance to which he’d been constantly exposed for the past few days, but that cure eluded him.

  He was pleased, as was the young Captain, that the fishing was going well, that the pounds were filling with good fish in a reasonable time. They wouldn’t be out here too long. Captain Paddy Walsh would be delighted with how his son’s first trip as skipper had gone. Richard could return to his fledgling shore enterprise. Two of Mother Carey’s chicks flew spasmodically by Richard as he stood at the stern of the Mary Bernice. The dark little birds were only seen at night, and most fishermen regarded them as good omens. Richard smiled at them.

  *

  Near midnight, a strong wind came out of the northeast. Richard had a feeling it was not solitary, but the beginning of a squall. He took down the sails as quickly as he could. Before long, though he could not know it, the force of the wind was felt all over the island, where it uprooted trees, flattened buildings, pulled up flakes and stages, and pushed telegraph lines to the ground. At sea, it was very soon clear that the Mary Bernice was in the middle of a gale – an August Gale.

  The seas rose up to the railings of the Mary Bernice and then over them, dousing Richard in his oilskins and Kingfisher boots. Salt water splashed in his face as his eyes scanned the angry seas for any sign of the Captain and the dorymen. Then the midnight sky turned black and the rains began. The rains were merciless. They had to be flooding the dories. If they can keep afloat, Richard thought, if they aren’t capsizing or overturned. He tried to remember if any of the dorymen could swim ... as if it mattered.

  God, how long can they keep afloat in this? How far away are they? They were almost ready to come back to the schooner. They must have been on their way. They had been gone quite awhile already when this started.

  The rains pounded the deck of the Mary Bernice as she wobbled to starboard, then to port, then back again, and again. Richard had thought she was a sturdy vessel, but she felt so light now, bouncing around on a swell that had grown cruel, and waves that towered over her and crashed down upon her. He was soaking wet, his oilskins rendered useless. He started to freeze as the salt water soaked the sweater coat he wore, and then his pants and underwear. How much time had passed? Where the hell were they? It got wetter still. The world was nothing but water. The noise was something fierce.

  He saw something. It was getting closer. Thank God, one of the dories. But it wasn’t a dory; it was too big, far too big. It was another schooner, very close, but being thrown around, too. He narrowed his eyes and recognized her: the Jane and Martha, out of Long Harbour. He could barely see someone who must be Captain James Bruce lashed to the wheel. The Captain was yelling at him, he could tell. He strained to hear the words. Captain Bruce seemed to be signalling him to get to port.

  “My men! I’m waiting for my men!” Richard called back.

  The Captain had assumed that and kept signalling him to head to safety. An older, experienced man, Captain Bruce had concluded that any dories and dorymen out in this were surely lost.

  Then the Jane and Martha disappeared from Richard’s view.

  Panic began to rise from Richard’s stomach, crawling up his chest, and into his throat. The contents of his stomach started to come up. Then he saw a vision of Angela, his unflappable wife, and he paused for a moment and breathed deeply. He would not be sick. He had to figure this thing out. The food he’d eaten stayed where it was.

  Holding tight to the railings, he slowly made his way to the wheel and picked up the twine that was coiled alongside it, tied there lest it blow off. As the rain washed his face and the wind battered his body, he asked himself the question he was afraid to ask. He had to ask it. He was a family man; he wanted to live. Should I go in? Should I try to make port?

  I might be able to. Captain Bruce seems to think I can make it. This is a good little schooner. She’s new, well built. I’m not too far from St. Bride’s. I could made a run for it.

  Then he cast his eyes into the water, taking in its blackness and wildness, trying to will it back to some calm. The men are out there, James and Billy and the rest. They’re counting on me. I have to be here in case they come back. I can’t leave them. How can I just leave them? I am their only chance.

  He gripped the wheel and sobbed into it like a baby.

  He looked into the water again and let out a howl of anguish. They were lost, they had to be. How could they survive a gale like this? But how could he leave them? How could he walk back into Little Bay and look Michael Farrell’s wife in the face? How could he ever speak to Billy Reid’s mother?

  But how could he leave his own wife a widow, a woman alone with young children? I kicked my own son, he cried, that’ll be his only memory of me. He cursed himself and cried for his sin. Then he prayed as he lashed himself to the wheel and began to wait for his men to return.

  They didn’t come. In mockery of his vigil, the winds screamed and the rains flooded the schooner.

  He stopped praying for the dorymen and began praying for himself, that he might live somehow. The rains poured down upon him and the winds blew his boat across unrelenting waves. Then the gale howled like never before and took the foremast and mainsail of the Mary Bernice with her. The rudder bashed against sunkers that rose out of the sea without warning.

  Richard stuck his Kingfisher rubbers into the wheel so he wouldn’t be swept out to sea. No longer was he waiting for the dorymen – now he was waiting for his God. He asked for forgiveness. Then he stopped praying for himself and prayed instead for Angela and his daughters and sons.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Coming only a few years after another memorable August Gale, the August Gale of 1935 was described by the Newfoundland newspapers as “the worst storm ever.”

  It caused destruction all over the island. In Westport, the government wharf was damaged and sta
ges destroyed. Three dories were driven ashore at Burin, and twelve were lost between Corbin and Fox Cove, where four wharves and four stages were also destroyed. In St. Lawrence, five dories filled with gear were swept away. Four trap skiffs and six dories in Lamaline were destroyed, leaving many families there without the means to earn a living. Communities between Ship’s Cove and Point Lance on the other side of Placentia Bay lost the forty dories and six motorboats that were the livelihood of 100 shore fishermen.

  Bay de Verde, a community in Conception Bay North, suffered $1,000 of damages to fishing boats and property. The Commissioner for Public Health and Welfare reported that the motorboats and gear of Edward Babb, Simeon Stone, and Alex Stone of Bryant’s Cove were sunk and lost. In addition, Walter Drover, William Mercer, Joseph Mercer, and John Lundrigan of nearby Upper Island Cove each lost a boat.

  At Northern Bay, in the same region, Henry Johnstone lost his stage; Patrick Howell and Richard Woodfine, their boats and engines. Two other men, Elias Woodfine and Joseph Woodfine, were luckier in that they lost their boats but recovered their engines. It was the same throughout Conception Bay. Six vessels sank at Holyrood. One of the most stricken places was Burnt Point, where thirty-two boats – thirteen motorboats and engines, eight small boats, five skiffs, three dories, and three motorboats – and the gear they contained were dashed to bits by the gale. The men who fished Baccalieu were robbed of a livelihood and handed a hungry winter instead.

  The winds had come from the southeast and blew a hurricane into St. Mary’s Bay farther south, not far from where Richard and the crew of the Mary Bernice fished. They veered to the southward at 4:00 a.m., continuing to blow strong. At Mosquito, St. Mary’s Bay, huge waves tore away sections of the beach, wrecking stores, stages, and flakes, as well as fifty quintals of fish.

  The Laura Jane of Musgrave Harbour on the Northeast Coast lost 300 quintals of fish. All over the island schooners were driven ashore by the winds and the waves. The Norman Wareham, skippered by Captain Blandford, was swept into the aptly named Wreck Cove near Lamaline, where her crew managed to scramble to safety. The crew of the W.R. Power survived when their schooner was driven ashore at Marysown. The Gimball from Harbour Buffett on Long Island in Placentia Bay was wrecked at Riverhead in St. Mary’s Bay, but her crew made it to land safe and sound.

  The crew of the Liberty, a forty-five-ton vessel owned by the Snelgrove family, was lost at Barrow Harbour, Bonavista Bay. She burst one chain, dragged the other, then struck land, and sank in no more than fifteen minutes. Captain Reid of the Valkyrie rescued her crew.

  In Renews, on the island’s Southern Shore, the schooner Bella Blanche was damaged, as were several dories and motorboats. Several motorboats broke from their moorings at Clarenville and were wrecked when they drifted ashore. The government wharf at Bonavista was smashed in. Twelve telegraph lines between Badger and Grand Falls in Central Newfoundland blew down.

  In St. John’s, felt from the roof of O’Brien’s Store on LeMarchant Road blew to the street below. Slates from the buildings on Water Street were strewn all over the street, carried there by the gale. The winds threw a power wire across an alarm wire, causing the fire alarm at the Central Fire Station to ring all night, lending an air of horror to the night. The gale uprooted trees in Bannerman Park, and in Quidi Vidi Village just outside the city; it cast down lightning that split two large trees in front of the Hennebury home. A miracle occurred when Robert Gulliver’s house crashed to the ground while he slept and he was rescued by neighbours and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, entirely unharmed.

  On the edge of the city, a bungalow under construction on the Newtown Road was lifted off its foundation by the storm and deposited eight feet away. The concrete blocks that had supported it were broken to bits.

  The road to Octagon Pond in Conception Bay was criss-crossed with large fallen trees. It was the same with the Salmonier Line. The gale had caused a landslide at Crow Gulch between Curling and Corner Brook, on the island’s west coast. It had reached a velocity of fifty-two miles per hour, according to the meterological station at Memorial College, ruining crops, downing wharves, stages, and flakes, flattening barns and outbuildings, and tearing roofs and chimneys off houses.

  In Coachman’s Cove, on the Northeast Coast, the storm cut a swath of destruction to the tune of $1,000 in fishermen’s property alone. It tossed almost 600 cords of woods into the sea, carrying booms with it. It carried roads and bridges away and blew down a sawmill. It drove the schooner Seabird, loaded with lumber, ashore.

  When the Evening Telegram and the Daily News reported these events on August 26, 1935, along with news of Italy’s impending march into Ethiopia and debate about the fate of the Hapsburgs, readers were given no real clues about the great loss of life the gale had cruelly wrought.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The August Gale of 1935 left dozens of widows and orphans. With the gale of 1927 still fresh in memory, this time more than thirty Banks fishermen died.

  The Walter T, skipped by Captain Boutcher of Kingwell, Placentia Bay was lost, as were her five crew members, four of them the Captain’s brothers. Doryman James Wareham, a member of Captain James Hayden’s crew, was swept overboard and drowned, six miles west of St. Mary’s Quays. Doryman Abram Tibbo of the South Coast village of Pushthrough, fishing on the Geneva Ethel, was robbed of his life.

  A Nova Scotia fisherman, Samuel Frank of Lunenburg, had been on the Beatrice Beck during the gale and was swept overboard in the high winds. The schooner was badly damaged and only able to limp into port when the seas had died down. Two Portuguese fishermen suffered broken legs. Their captain, José Pinto, said that the storm was the worst he had ever seen in his twenty-five years on the Grand Banks.

  The Carrie Evelyn, a forty-ton schooner skippered by Fred Mansfield of Hant’s Harbour, ran aground at Fox Hole, Torbay. No trace of her Trinity Bay crew – Aeriel Green, Elias Soper, and Edgar Soper – was ever found.

  The Administrator of the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, just off the Burin Peninsula, was quick to offer his condolences to the Governor of Newfoundland. “I learn that considerable damage and loss of life was caused on the coast of Newfoundland by the storm,” he wrote. The Governor thanked him and added that he feared the loss of life would turn out to be “heavy.”

  The omens observed by Lillian Walsh proved portentous. The crew of the Annie Anita were all lost, including Captain Paddy Walsh and his two young sons, Jerome and Frankie. Lillian’s loss extended to James, her oldest son, and her nephew, both of whom had been on the Mary Bernice with Richard, as well as another nephew. From the Annie Anita, only the bodies of little Frankie and doryman Thomas Reid were recovered. The schooner had been seen drifting around Cape Pine, and the day after the gale she washed ashore at Hazel Cove near St. Shotts. Thomas and young Frankie were found buried in sand in the cabin, indicating that the storm had stirred up the bottom of the sea. Floating nearby were pieces of board marked Walter T; some of these were picked up at Portugal Cove South.

  The ocean waters, almost cruelly calm now, were full of ghost ships. A schooner, bottom-up, floated silently by Cape Pine. Another, also in total quiet, drifted on her beam ends. A third ghost ship with only one mast was seen off Powells Head.

  Captain John Spurvey of the Eleanor arrived at Aquaforte with dories smashed up from the force of the gale. He said he was within sixty yards of a seventy-ton schooner about forty-five miles south of Ferryland Light. She was drifting eastwards with bare poles, her jib jumbo “in ribbons,” and her foresail gone. The wind and rain wouldn’t allow him to see her name, and she appeared to have no rudder.

  As the days and then weeks passed, their men did not return. But they seemed to send signs. On August 30, wreckage from the James and Mary washed up at Southern Harbour, Placentia Bay. Trawls with the initials WM and GW on them washed ashore. On their way to the fishing grounds one morning, shore fishermen f
rom the Battery in St. John’s picked up a broom and water keg painted yellow.

  A schooner plank bearing the name Reginald Anstey washed up at Baie Verte on the island’s Northeast Coast. A yellow dory counter numbered “7” was recovered at Burnt Islands. Gear from the schooner Eureka was discovered at Herring Neck. Almost every day that fall, wreckage from the ghost schooners littered the beaches in Trepassey.

  Right after the storm, the Newfoundland government sent the SS Argyle to the Virgin Rocks to investigate the wrecks reported there and the SS Malakoff to search around Trepassey and the Southern Shore. The Malakoff sighted only vessels that had floated aground; Captain Gosling’s Lottie Dunford, a schooner owned by Captain Tobin of Trepassey, and another that belonged to one of the Inkpens of Burin. The ghost ships had disappeared. It was as if they had never been there, as if Captain Spurvey and the others had merely dreamed of them in their nightmares.

  Everywhere on the island, people scratched their heads. There had been nothing in the weather forecast to warn them of what was to come. At Friday midnight it read: “Moderate winds, partly cloudy and warm. Probably some showers over eastern portions at first.” Then the report and forecast at noon Saturday, on the twenty-fifth, some hours before the gale began that night, read: “Pressure high and weather fair over Newfoundland except in extreme southeast portions where light rain has fallen. The indications were moderate variable winds with mostly good visibility, fair and warm.”