Tsunami

by Maura Hanrahan

  Most worrying was the loss of boats and the damage to those that survived the tsunami. A schooner was damaged to the tune of one thousand dollars and its two large banking dories—which four fishermen worked from—swept away. A twenty-two-ton western boat needed repairs that would also cost a thousand dollars.

  Eighteen-year-old Francis Bennett was in severe shock, long after the villagers emerged from the hill. His fifty-eight-year-old mother, Mary Ann, died in the tidal wave, as did his fifty-year-old uncle, Henry Dibbon. The young entrepreneur’s business was also completely destroyed. Francis believed in getting an early start in life; still a teenager, he was already married and a successful trader. Gone were his flakes, stages, trap skiff, banking dory, a thousand feet of lumber, a staysail, 145 yards of ducksail, ten oil casks, Fairbanks weights, and weighing beams and weights—losses worth $1,500.00. Though a young man, Francis was overwhelmed at the thought of starting all over again from nothing, especially in the face of his grief.

  Yet, like many around Burin, Port au Bras was a prosperous village. John Bennett, who owned the damaged western boat, had $280 in the bank. John Dibbon, who was also without shelter and whose brother Henry had died, had two thousand dollars in the bank. George and Elizabeth Bennett, whose house had shifted four feet, breaking their two chimneys, had thirty-five dollars cash on them as well as $1,500 in a savings account. Not everyone was well off, though; fifty-four-year-old Ellen Brenton cried over the twenty gallons of berries she’d picked and the sea had stolen from her.

  The waves weren’t long gone when they began to find the bodies. In Ern Cheeseman’s words, “No human had a chance in such raging roaring seas.” Within two days, the body of eighty-four-yearold Louisa Allen, a native of Oderin, was found tucked under one of the remaining houses. A fisherman in Path End, two miles away, came across the bodies of Jessie Fudge and two of her daughters, Harriet May and little Hannah. That of fifteen-year-old Gertie was still missing. Mary Ann Bennett’s body was discovered under what was left of the government wharf.

  As darkness grew thick on the night of November 18, the people of Port au Bras gradually became sure that there would be no more waves. Finally, with midnight close at hand, they crept down the hill and back to the houses that were still left. Their shoulders were slumped and they walked hesitantly, their eyes not leaving the moonlit sea.

  The brothers, John and Job Fudge, moved slowly with their arms around each other. As they reached the bottom of the hill, near where their family store and house had so recently stood, they saw a hunched figure sitting on the ground. As they got closer, they heard a low moan. Although they had never heard it before, something in the sound sparked a deep recognition and they strode toward the figure.

  “My God, it’s Dad!” John cried, stooping down to look into his father’s haggard face.

  “Dad!” Job cried, falling to his knees and hugging his father.

  Tom burst into tears and let out loud sobs.

  “I saw them in the window!” he cried. “I couldn’t get to them…”

  The boys began crying again.

  “They just went by on that wave,” Tom continued, gulping air between sobs. “I followed the house. But I couldn’t do anything.”

  “Oh Daddy,” Job cried. He crawled into his father’s lap, picturing his mother and sisters desperate for rescue as they were swept out to sea. He knew he would never see them again.

  Tom’s brother and his wife, Mary, had caught up to the little group.

  “Thank God you’re alive!” Mary said. “We thought you were gone, too.”

  “It’s a miracle you weren’t,” her husband said. “Staying on the low ground like that.”

  Mary elbowed him in the ribs. “He had to try to get Jessie and the girls,” she said.

  Tom began to moan again, but this time he pulled his sons close to him. Their relatives and neighbours stood around them in the cool November night.

  “Come home with us, Tom,” Sam Green said.

  “Or with us, Tom,” Bridget Hardstone said.

  “You’re welcome at our place, too, Tom,” Sarah Hynes said.

  “For as long as you like.”

  24

  Magistrate Malcolm Hollett was determined to fully document every single case from Mortier Bay in the north to the villages of the boot around to Fortune Bay on the other side of the peninsula. The town of Fortune had survived the tsunami virtually untouched, but forty-three-year-old widower Edgar Hillier had seen his house ripped off its foundation and thrown onto a high rock; in addition, the home’s porch and an annex had been destroyed. Hillier was in poor health, was going blind, and had three children who depended on him.

  On the other side of the peninsula in Mortier near Marystown, the waves washed John and Bridget Antle’s house off its foundation. It would have to be taken down and rebuilt… Hollett nearly cracked his pen as he spread the words across the page. Then he glanced at a map; Mortier was just the beginning.

  In mid-December Hollett called a meeting of the Rock Harbour-Corbin Committee. He had made several trips down the coast and was fair bursting to talk of what he had seen. Although he was now the agent for the South Coast Disaster Committee, the magistrate wanted to show his closest neighbours that he had not forgotten them.

  As snowdrifts piled up outside Hollett’s Burin house, three men walked up the path. Merchant Frank LeFeuvre came from Bull’s Cove. He was followed by Albert Grant of Corbin and Captain William Foote who came from Stepaside.

  As the men settled into the parlour and were served tea by Hollett’s quiet little maid, the magistrate read his draft report on the district south of Burin.

  The men nodded solemnly and Albert Grant spoke up.

  “Make sure you mention that Joshua Mayo’s house is gone,” he offered. “His and Sophia’s. The first wave ripped the house off its foundation and broke away the porch. It tore great holes in the roof, too. Now there’s a big tribe of them homeless.”

  Hollett picked up his pen and raised his bushy eyebrows.

  “There’s the Mayo children,” Grant continued. “Morgan, Irene, and Daisy, and there’s the four Moulton orphans who live with them, Annie and Tryphena, and the boys, little William and Bert. They lost all their food and Josh’s Hubbard engine is badly damaged, too.”

  “Sounds like a very sad case,” Hollett said grimly.

  “It is,” Grant nodded. “Those orphans have been through enough already and now this. I believe the family is all split up because there are too many of them to be housed together. It must be hard on those poor children.”

  After a minute, Hollett turned his attention to merchant Frank LeFeuvre.

  “How did you make out in the tidal wave, Frank? Have you had a chance to assess everything yet?” he asked.

  “Well, it was the business that was hurt,” LeFeuvre answered. “Not our home, thanks be to God. But LeFeuvre’s Trading Company took a hit—I’d put the damage at about twenty-one hundred dollars. It’s substantial for us.”

  Hollett looked dour. “You’ll need to be back in business for the fishing season,” he said. “The fishermen will need that as much as you do. This brings me to my next topic. There’s been a generous response to our tragedy from all over the country and beyond. We very much need and appreciate all the help we can get. But now Christmas is coming and the New Year will follow. People’s attention will turn from the tidal wave. Besides, human nature being what it is, November 18 will fade from memory soon enough—as good as people are. We have to do something about this.”

  He stopped and did a slow turn about the parlour as the men considered his words.

  “We still need help,” Albert Grant said. “There’s so much to be done yet.”

  Hollett continued. “Yes. So I propose a trip to St. John’s after Christmas to remind the government and the people of the city of our tragedy and the conditions we are still facing. I think that you three gentlemen should accompany me.”

  Grant drew back, his eyes wide. LeF
euvre spoke up, “A capital idea, so to speak. A kind of speaking tour of the city.”

  “It’s certainly needed,” said Captain Foote. “I don’t know if we’re the right men to go, but you’re on the right track.”

  “You might want to bring representatives from farther south, where there’s even worse damage and grief,” Grant said.

  Hollett’s face brightened. “Quite right!” he said. “Thank you for your support, gentlemen. We shall agree in principle to the idea and begin planning, then?”

  He smiled at their nods.

  On January 15, 1930 Magistrate Malcolm Hollett and fisherman Albert Grant sat in the editorial offices of The Daily News on Duckworth Street in St. John’s. Hollett’s heavy-lidded eyes bored into the editors and stenographers as he listed off the devastation that the tidal wave had wrought: thirty-two houses destroyed; twenty-seven others badly damaged; 144 large dories and one hundred small dories wrecked; and twenty-seven trap boats smashed to pieces. The men around the table gasped as Hollett spoke. This was the first time they had heard the numbers in such blunt form.

  “Our people have also lost much of their fishing gear,” Hollett said, speaking slowly. “Gone are forty-seven thousand cotton lines, a hundred and eight herring nets, ninety-four cod nets, thirty caplin seines, and three hundred and fifty six anchors.”

  “That is a great deal of gear,” a burly, grey-haired man mused.

  “It represents the livelihood of many men like Mr. Grant here,” Hollett said. “And some of the wealth of the country, as you can appreciate.”

  “Rope,” Grant said. “We lost over forty thousand fathoms of rope of all sizes.”

  “Yes,” said Hollett. “Keep in mind, gentlemen, that while we are most grateful for everything that has been done for us, the government is only taking care of public property. That is, government wharves will be rebuilt at public expense but family flakes and wharves will not. Our immediate requirements are for timber and sticks for wharves, flakes, and stages. We’ve received three carloads from Highland, on the west coast of the island, landed by steamer, and we were so pleased to get it. But, sadly, we need more. I’ve prepared a list of our needs.”

  He handed a crisp piece of paper to eager hands. It read:

  190,000 sticks for flakes

  20,000 flake beams

  10,000 wharf beams

  13,000 flake longers

  54,000 two inch planks

  “We would be so grateful if your newspaper could publish this list,” he added. “It is difficult to distribute the goods we are receiving because so many places are without a wharf or landing stage—Lamaline, Point au Gaul, Taylor’s Bay. There’s only one private wharf at St. Lawrence. But efforts must be made regardless.”

  Hollett noted the silence of the editors and how they stared at him. He continued.

  “I cannot emphasize how important it is to get the fishermen outfitted for spring. The people of the South Coast are fishermen firstly and lastly and they need to be put in the same position they were in before the disaster.”

  Albert Grant nodded. “Yes, we are fishermen. We want to fish.”

  That day, the men of Taylor’s Bay put the finishing touches on Charles and Selina Hillier’s house, which had sustained fifty dollars worth of damage in the tidal wave, leaving it open on one side and exposed to the winter elements. Through the South Coast Disaster Committee, fifty thousand feet of lumber had been accumulated. A substantial portion of this had been brought to Taylor’s Bay, a priority as per the instructions of the medical staff who had visited on the Meigle.

  After one of Charles’s neighbours hammered in the last nail, he said, “That’s it! She’s done and ready for you to move back into.”

  Charles smiled and rubbed his hands in the January cold. He still had a lot of work to do—he had lost his three small boats, stage, and wharf—but this was a start. He looked across the meadow to see Selina and their children, Thomas, Bertram, Junior, Harold, and Freeman, the baby in her arms—his five fine boys. Before the tidal wave, Selina used to talk about wanting a girl; everyday she would tease him about it. Since November 18, she hadn’t mentioned the idea.

  Behind her was Robert Bonnell, still ashen-faced from the loss of his wife and child to the waves. His three children came after him. The Bonnells would stay with Charles and Selina until the men of the village could build them a new house.

  When the group reached the Hillier house, Selina turned to Robert and said, “This is your home now for as long as you like.”

  Charles put his arm around his friend’s shoulder. Robert nodded and crossed the threshold, his little ones trailing after him. Charles and Selina looked at each other. “Poor Robert. I’m so glad we have each other,” she said, giving her husband’s hand a squeeze. Then she looked into his eyes and smiled shyly.

  “Maybe we’ll have that girl one day,” she said.

  That night in Point au Gaul, David Hipditch lay straight as a board in bed, staring at the plastered ceiling as he usually did until sleep finally overtook him in the wee hours just before dawn. The house— not his own, which was at the bottom of the sea somewhere—was full of people, but there seemed to be some kind of cotton gauze between him and everyone else. All his energy went into keeping it well hidden and showing appreciation for the kindness his in-laws, Nan and her family, were showering on him and Jessie. The faces of his and Jessie’s drowned children never left him: Thomas’ grin; Henry’s dancing eyes; little Elizabeth’s chubby cheeks. He cursed himself for the thousandth time for not being there to save them from the cruel water. He wished he could talk to Jessie but, though she lay at his side every night, her grief bathed her and there was no room for him in it. Since that awful night, she had barely registered his presence. As he did every night, David tried to pray.

  Then he suddenly felt something warm at his shoulder—it was Jessie’s face rubbing against him. He turned and looked into her face. She was staring at him, her great brown eyes meeting his. He reached for her long hair and stroked it slowly. She continued to look at him.

  “Jessie,” he whispered slowly. “I miss them.”

  Then he cried quietly and she wrapped her arms around him and held him.

  “Tell me you love me, Jessie,” he pleaded.

  “Oh, David,” Jessie said. “I love you. I miss my babies, but I love you.”

  “I need you,” David said.

  “I’m sorry,” his wife answered. “I need you, too.”

  David pulled Jessie close and they fell into a deep sleep in each other’s arms.

  AFTERWORD

  The 1929 quake originated about 250 kilometres or 153 miles south of the Burin Peninsula and travelled from the epicentre at the astonishing speed of eighty miles per hour. The waves hit the Burin Peninsula villages at sixty-five miles per hour. Although the most damaging by far, it turned out not to have been the first tsunami in this part of the world. The first recorded earthquake occurred at Bonavista in 1775. On January 11, 1809, the entire Labrador coast was shaken by earth tremors. On November 30, 1836, people felt the earth rumble in Hopedale, Northern Labrador; at the same time, the air temperature rose considerably. Eight years later, the earth shook at Bonavista again, followed by fierce waves that rushed way inshore. Other earthquakes took place in 1857 in Northern Labrador, this time at Hebron, and in 1890 in St. John’s.

  Except for reconstructed conversations, this book relies entirely on the historical record and on contributions from witnesses to the tsunami, some of whom corresponded with or were interviewed by Flanker Press or the author.

  From Part One, young Anna Tarrant of Lawn never forgot the events of November 18, 1929, especially as it was her father’s birthday. Recognizing the danger for what it was, Anna’s father was responsible for getting many people in his community to safety. Anna grew up to marry an American and became Anna Contois. She wrote to us from her home in Barefoot Bay, Florida.

  Mary Kehoe, of Red Head Cove, Conception Bay, who had been sailing t
o New York with her father, survived the voyage and later married an American. She wrote to us as Mary Dasting from Cape Coral, Florida.

  Sam Adams, of Great Burin, who was eleven at the time of the tidal wave and felt the earth move in his garden, wrote to us from London, Ontario.

  Bessie Hennebury, of Lord’s Cove, almost fifteen, was in her father’s fishing room helping to weigh dried fish, when the ground beneath her started to shake, scaring her out the door and up the hill to her home and the illusion of safety. Bessie married Bertram, the son of James Walsh, one of the rescuers of Margaret Rennie, the toddler who was trapped in the floating house with the bodies of her mother, brothers, and sister. Bessie spent her whole life in Lord’s Cove.

  George and Ernest Pike were the enterprising young brothers of Burin Bay Arm determined to catch Mrs. Moulton’s sheep for twenty-five cents—in spite of the earth quaking beneath them. George is still living in Burin Bay Arm, while Ernest left home early during World War II and continued to sail in the foreign trade until he was transferred to the Abegweit in the Prince Edward Island-New Brunswick ferry service. He retired as Captain Ernest Pike and wrote to us from Summerside, PEI.

  Austin Murphy, of Jersey Room, Lawn, was a seven-year-old boy when the waves gutted the villages of the Burin Peninsula in November, 1929. He had been taking a break from a soccer game when the ground first shook. A retired marine engineer, he wrote to us from Toronto.

  Margaret Rennie, of Lord’s Cove, the toddler whose survival was considered miraculous when her mother and siblings died in their swept-away house, stayed with her aunt, Minnie Jackman, in Roundabout near St. Lawrence for awhile. Minnie was her late mother, Sarah’s, sister. Margaret’s brothers, Martin and Albert, stayed with friends. When Margaret was about five she was reunited with her brothers and her father, Patrick, and the family moved to Little St. Lawrence. Patrick went to work in the new fluorspar mines in nearby St. Lawrence and married a local woman. As an adult, Margaret became Margaret Saint and lived in Fox Cove, farther up the Burin Peninsula. There were no photographs of her mother, so she never knew what Sarah looked like.