August Gale

by Walsh, Barbara

  “If it will comfort ye, we will sleep on board tonight; we will not sail until daylight.”

  Lillian nodded and whispered in her husband’s ear. “Look after them, Paddy. Bring my sons home, safe ashore.”

  She watched him go, a shadow in the dark, his figure growing smaller as he disappeared beyond their white picket fence to the footpath that led to the wharf.

  On the southern shores of Marystown, lamps cast shadows on the faces of other fathers, husbands, and sons who bid their own families farewell. In the small, modest homes nestled along the bay, the crew of Mary Bernice and Annie Anita packed their seabags. Spare woolen socks, extra jumpers and pants, sou’wester hats, oilskins, tins of tobacco, boxes of matches, and pictures of their families—daughters, mothers, and their betrothed—pictures they would hang in their bunks or keep in pockets pressed against their hearts.

  In their small drawstring bags, they placed their religious tokens: palm-size crosses, Blessed Virgin medals, tiny bottles of holy water, and bits of burned Ash Wednesday palms. If the waves grew to mountains and the wind roared, they held the crosses and medals, and they prayed; they sprinkled holy water and ashes into the angry sea, beseeching Mary the Mother of God to calm the waters, to guide them home.

  It was never easy for the fishermen to bid their families farewell, but an August journey conjured more than the usual discontent among the dorymen. Still, their tongues did not speak of the gales, their voices did not utter apprehension about the violent storms that struck suddenly, stirring a silent sea into a roiling devil. No, it was no good talking about such worries, but each of them—the fishermen and their wives—felt the fear as if it were a living, breathing being that walked among them.

  Odd misgivings gripped Dominic Walsh as he paced the floor of his family’s kitchen. Paddy’s nephew, Dominic had a berth as a doryman on board Annie Anita. Rattled about his unease, Dominic turned to his mother, who sat before the fire cradling a cup of tea. “Should I go, Ma? Should I leave? I’ve a peculiar feeling about this trip.”

  His mother Margaret understood her boy’s angst. Soon to be married, Dominic did not want to leave his betrothed behind. But she also harbored misgivings about this August journey. She feared the storms that had no mercy for the lives of fathers and sons.

  “Don’t go, Dominic,” she told him. “I have me own worries about this trip.”

  “But how will I be paying for the house I’m building for meself and me bride? I can’t be slackin’ off now.”

  Dominic hoisted his duffle and hugged his mother goodbye. “I’ll see ye in a week or so,” he told her. She watched his thin frame retreat down the hill. “Safe seas to ye, son,” she whispered, pushing back her tears. “Safe seas, please God.”

  Past the hills leading to Little Bay, Bride Hanrahan watched her father pack for his journey. The fifteen-year-old girl relished time with her father when he was ashore. She had hoped her da would treat her and her siblings to some singing, dancing, in the kitchen before his journey, but her father’s mouth organ had remained untouched in its place by the mantel.

  Bride had noticed her father’s sullen spirits over the past few days. She knew he regretted his decision to accompany James Walsh on board Mary Bernice. Sure now, her father was quiet on a good day, but she could barely stand his sorrow on this evening. She hated to see him go with such a heavy heart. Though he had spent much of her childhood away at sea, her da always had time for her when he was home. Bride chased him from morn to night then, shadowing his every move. She followed him into the forest to cut wood and helped him haul the kindling into the horse cart. She would do anything to be near his side; chores never bothered her a bit, as long as her father returned her efforts with a soft smile.

  She blinked back her tears as her father lifted his head to her now.

  “Good-bye, Da,” she told him as he held her close.

  He nodded and tossed his burlap bag over his shoulder. Bride watched as her father stepped out the door and down the small hill to the harbor. She held her eyes steady on his silhouette as he flung his duffle in the dory and seated himself inside the boat. Setting the oars in the tholepins, his thick arms rowed slow, steady strokes, rippling the waters as he pointed the bow toward Marystown and the schooner that waited for him. Bride knew he would not turn to look at her, would not turn to wave for fear of summoning ill luck. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer for her father’s safe return.

  “Love you, Da,” she whispered in the chill night air.

  As Richard Hanrahan pulled on the dory oars in the dark, thousands of miles to the south, a small storm brewed in the warm Caribbean waters. Just northwest of the Turks Islands, the tempest continued to gather strength as it whirled past the Bahamas and headed north.

  CHAPTER 12

  HEADING INTO THE STORM—NEWFOUNDLAND, JUNE 2003

  I reach for my father’s hand as the jagged coast of Newfoundland appears.

  The barren landscape rises up from below: unforgiving patches of boulders, soaring cliffs, and scrub brush. Fishing boats provide the only sign of life, their wakes white feathery trails, stark against the dark ocean.

  Three thousand feet above the sea, my father, sister, and I sit in a small plane that carries us north toward the land where our Irish ancestors immigrated more than a century ago. We have remained quiet during most of our early morning flight, lulled into silence by the rhythmic drone of the propeller that whirs loudly outside our window.

  Two hours into our journey, the province known as “The Rock,” for its rugged, glacier-ravaged terrain, comes into view. The sight of this island, the sight of Newfoundland, the realization that we are actually nearing my grandfather’s homeland—jars me awake. I breathe deeply, trying to contain the rush of emotions this country stirs.

  From his aisle seat, my father leans toward the window. His brown eyes take in the coast of Newfoundland as it grows larger, closer. The knowledge that we are almost there, nearing Ambrose’s birthplace prompts him to sigh, a breath that is long and deep. For much of the flight from Boston, he has exhaled often, as if trying to release the worries that bubble up inside him. He has had many second thoughts since he agreed to accompany my sister Joanie and me to Marystown. A few days before our journey, my younger sister Laura spoke with him on the phone. “So,” she asked, “are you excited about your trip?”

  “How the hell do you think I feel?” he erupted. “I don’t know these people or what they’re going to say about my father.”

  The night before we left, he sipped from his red wine glass as Joanie, my mother, and I sat in the living room of my parents’ home. Our suitcases sprawled out on the floor, Joanie and I tried to repack our clothes, eliminating extra baggage for our early morning journey.

  My father, who hated to be late—especially if it involved a flight, church obligation, social event, or a golf tee time—had already packed his small duffle and watched as his daughters folded and refolded piles of clothes.

  “You know, if you two weren’t going, I’d be changing my mind right now,” he told us.

  I, too, worried that maybe this trip was a bad idea. Though I was excited to learn more about the August Gale and my Great Uncle Paddy, I was not so eager to hear stories about Ambrose, stories that would rekindle my father’s childhood pain and anger. Neither my dad nor I slept well the night before our flight. Both of us fret before long-distance travel, and this particular journey presented more than the usual “will I make the plane, will there be delays?” angst. The following morning, we rose at five a.m. with dark circles beneath our eyes. After quick cups of coffee and a forty-minute ride south to Boston’s Logan Airport, we dragged our suitcases and carry-on bags from the car. My mother hugged and kissed each of us good-bye, and as I drew her close, I noticed her eyes were shiny with tears. I hugged her one more time as she told me, “I wish I was going with you.”

  My mother, Patricia Enis Walsh, loved travel and adventure. At a young age, she acquired her father Daniel’s curio
sity and a yearning to explore. On Sunday mornings, Daniel Enis packed his five kids and wife in the sedan and set off determined to find new vistas. Carrying on her father’s wanderlust, my mother has traveled to Portugal, England, Ireland, and New York City with my sisters and me, trips she savored more than all of us put together. And though she knew this excursion to Newfoundland would be memorable, she decided that it was best experienced without her, a journey to be made by two daughters and their father. At the airport curb, she stuffed her homemade granola bars into my pocketbook and waved good-bye before retreating to the car.

  Hours later in the small Air Canada plane, I stare at the dark blue sea and consider the Titanic, which lies somewhere deep in the dark caverns below. Though it is the one of the most memorable ships to have sunk off Newfoundland’s coast, it is but one of the ten thousand or more vessels that have shipwrecked or disappeared in these waters since the sixteenth century. North of the forty-degree latitude, sailors contend with more than a wild and unpredictable sea. Year-round, icebergs drift south from Greenland and along Newfoundland’s east coast. Monster mountains of ice, they can tear a ship in two. In the summer months, the collision of the warm Gulf Stream and the cold Labrador Current creates curtains of fog, relentless and thick banks that shroud fishermen and boats for days, leaving them lost and at risk of deadly collisions with other vessels. And then there are the rogue waves, freaks of nature that tower seventy, eighty, and sometimes even ninety feet high, carrying a lethal force capable of capsizing and destroying cruise liners, tankers, and three-hundred-foot-high oil platforms.

  Ever present along the island’s six thousand miles of coastline in good weather and bad, there are numerous sunkers, deadly reefs hidden below the ocean’s surface. Thousands of years ago, glaciers stripped Newfoundland’s soil and cast the deposits into the sea, creating the underwater ledges that threaten unwary captains and ships tossed about by storms and violent hurricane winds. I picture Paddy in these fierce and unforgiving waters, a skipper who had shipwrecked in heavy seas, sailed through blinding fog, and remained trapped for weeks in winter ice floes. With nothing more than his compass, charts, and the “glass”—the barometer that foretold foul weather—he sailed these seas for much of his life. I imagine him on his schooner, Annie Anita, on his August journey, a careful eye trained on the sky and the sea, searching for a change in the current, a shift in the wind, a gale that might descend without warning.

  And like many other August gales, the 1935 hurricane roared up the North Atlantic coast with a vengeance. In our research, my father and I have recreated bits and pieces of the gale. We have collected newspaper stories, talked with dozens of relatives, and have read firsthand accounts about the hurricanes that have plagued Newfoundland’s coast for centuries. For much of our flight, my father has dutifully reviewed our material. He has studied notes from my interviews and reread the Marystown census names. He has pulled papers from his leather zippered briefcase, methodically reading each page. From my own files, I have scanned notes from my phone conversations with Marystown residents. I am eager to see their faces, these children who lost fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and brothers to the gale. I am anxious to glean more details from their memories, to hear them talk about the storm that forever changed their lives and their small rural outport.

  I am curious, too, about our relatives, the Brentons, who invited us to use their summer cabin during our stay. A month or so before our trip, my father contacted his cousin, Alan Brenton, to let him know we would be coming. Brenton’s mother, Donalda, was Ambrose’s older sister. My Nana wrote her several letters and developed a long-distance friendship with Donalda through their correspondence. Alan Brenton, like most of his Newfoundland relatives, had been fond of his Uncle Ambrose, and he looked forward to meeting my father. Nine years earlier, Brenton had met my Uncle Bill when he made an unexpected trip to Newfoundland. Wanting to know more about his namesake, William Patrick “Paddy” Walsh, my uncle surprised Brenton with a phone call.

  “I’m William Patrick Walsh, Ambrose’s son,” my uncle told Brenton. “I’m in Newfoundland. I’ll be in Marystown in a few days.”

  Brenton invited my uncle and his family to stay with him, and one evening over dinner and drinks Brenton asked, “Do you think your brother Ron would ever come to Marystown?”

  My uncle shook his head, knowing my father’s feelings about travel and Ambrose. “It may come to the point sometime in my life where I could forgive my father,” my uncle explained, “but I don’t think my brother Ron would ever forgive him.”

  Now, thirteen years later, I sit next to my father on a small plane headed for Newfoundland. I turn to him, eyeing the gray hair that peeks beneath his Navy baseball cap. Dressed in khakis and a blue sweatshirt adorned with large yellow letters that also proclaim naVY, he is a few months shy of celebrating his sixty-eighth birthday. I hope this trip will be an early gift for him; a chance to understand, to know his father better. A chance to consider forgiveness.

  As the pilot pulls back on the throttle, slowing the plane’s engines, the red light over our seats pings, warning us to buckle our seat belts and prepare for landing. I pull my belt tighter and wonder what Brenton and others will say to my father about Ambrose and what my dad will say in return?

  My father glances out the window at the massive island that is now beneath us. He shifts his weight and sighs, knowing we will soon be among Ambrose’s relatives, people who are fond of the man who remains a mystery to me and provokes a longstanding bitterness in my father’s heart. Would my dad turn this plane around if he could? Would he abandon this trip now if Joanie and I were not with him?

  Hoping to offer him reassurance, I reach for my dad’s hand. His eyes meet mine, and I ask: “Did you ever think you’d be coming to Newfoundland?”

  Though he does not have to think about his answer, my father speaks slowly: “Not . . . in . . . a . . . million . . . years.”

  We both fall silent again, and I turn to the window so he will not see my tears. Wiping the drops from my cheeks, I look across the aisle toward the back of the plane, searching for Joanie. She is seated a few rows behind us and is the picture of calm; she harbors no worries about this trip. She is eager to meet our Newfoundland relatives and to connect with our past. Noting my concerned face, she offers a smile. I smile, too, but my heart is far from at ease. I pull my seat belt tighter as the plane’s wheels kick open with a thud, preparing for its arrival in St. John’s, Newfoundland’s capital city. I close my eyes and whisper a silent prayer, bracing for the landing and an uncertain journey to my grandfather’s homeland.

  CHAPTER 13

  MUSTERING COURAGE ON BOARD ANNIE ANITA AND MARY BERNICE—AUGUST 21, 1935

  The sails clapped like thunder in the wind.

  “Hoist the main!” Paddy shouted to his crew.

  Frankie Walsh cast his eyes heavenward following the canvas sail as it soared up the sixty-foot mast. Two of the crew groaned as they tugged on the halyards, securing the sheet. The southeast wind at their backs, the sails held taut against the breeze. Waves slapped the bow, sending sea spray onto the deck as Annie Anita glided through the bay.

  “We’re underway, boys!” Paddy hollered to Frankie and Jerome.

  Jerome ran to his father, eager to stand at the helm; Frankie kept his place. He leaned against the stacked dories mindful of the crew that scurried about him. He did not want to get tangled up in a line or trip up the men. The twelve-year-old boy drew a deep breath to calm the worries that bubbled up inside him. Searching for a distraction, he looked toward the stern where his father stood, his large hands on the wheel, his eyes focused on the schooner’s course. Frankie reckoned his da’s mind was busy now, thinking on where he’d find the fish, where he’d drop the anchor once they hit Cape St. Mary’s. The journey, Frankie knew, would begin slowly at first as the schooner traveled east in the protected inlet that wound its way past Marystown, Little Bay, Beau Bois, and Tides Point before sailing into the vast open sea.
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br />   Wanting one last look at his home, Frankie turned west and glimpsed the whitewashed house on the hill as it faded from view. His mother would have risen early, poured herself a cup of tea and gazed out the window, watching for their parting sails. The thought of her without them, the three eldest boys and their father, saddened him, for he knew her heart would be heavy with worry during the week they were gone.

  Jerome had tried to comfort her before they left: “We’ll be fine, Mum. We’ll be home soon enough.”

  Frankie only offered her a quiet, “So long, Mother,” and a quick hug good-bye. She had not wanted to let them go, delaying their departure, packing and repacking their duffles with extra woolens caps, mittens, and their Sunday suits in case they stopped in a church or somewhere proper along their journey. On top of their clothes, she carefully placed their pocket Bibles. “Read the good book before bed and on Sunday, and don’t forget your prayers.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they had told her.

  No, Frankie would not forget his prayers. He prayed to the Lord over the past week, pleading for courage. The boy tried to embrace the sea like his father and two older brothers, but he was not fond of how the ocean changed so quickly. It could be calm, safe like the bay outside his home. And then it could be dark, with ragged waves that grew taller than a ship’s masts. Last summer’s journey with his da had been miserable. The sea swells and the constant motion of the schooner had brought on the queasiness and trips to the bucket at all hours of the day and night. His father tried to comfort him, “Keep yur eyes focused on the horizon, me boy,” but the advice did little good. Frankie came home red-faced, shamed. The lads at school had been ruthless with their taunts. “Sissy. Seasick sissy. Are ye sure yur Capt’n Paddy’s son? Ye ought to be staying home with yur mama.”

  Frankie heard their voices in his mind now as the wind rose and cold water sprayed his cheeks. Stand tall, Frankie told himself. Yur Capt’n Paddy’s boy. This August journey will be different. This time, I might even have some adventures aboard Annie Anita. Perhaps, I will have some stories to tell the fellas back home about the cod I hauled, the dory I rowed.