Left to Die

by Gary Collins

  Backing astern in her churned slobby channel for several lengths, he powered her forward. At the same time he ordered her helm hard over, hoping the ship would wallow to one side in the ice channel and her hull would rise above the ice. But her rudder was cumbersome to answer. Her engine had lost compression with age, and for his efforts the ship responded with a slight tilting of her uppermost riggings. Still, the skipper ordered the ship back and forth, forcing his way toward the seals. The sealers walking the deck leaned out over the gunnels and shouted encouragement to the ship as if she were a schoolboy trying to sprint across a ditch or chasm. Each time the ship came to a stop, they threw lumps of coal out onto the ice to see how far she had progressed. Jesse Collins decided to give the old ship some help.

  “Let’s give the ol’ girl a ’and, b’ys! All ’ands rally back and fort’ as she goes. ’Twill give us somet’in’ to do, if nothin’ else.”

  It took a while for Collins to make himself understood. Some of them thought he was crazy. However, Collins was not only a likeable fellow but very persistent, and he succeeded in getting his way.

  “’Tis simple, b’ys. When the skipper runs astarn, we’ll run far’d! And when ’e arders ’er far’d, we’ll run astern. Over a hundred and fifty of we fellers runnin’ astarn will lift ’er bow, fer sure!” The men now knew what he meant and got into the game.

  It was a spectacle never before seen on a sealing vessel. Each time the ship moved astern or forward, the sealers raced along her gunnels in the opposite direction. They shouted and yelled as they ran.

  “Come on, ya ol’ bugger! Go fer it! Run ’er up on the bloody ice, Skipper! Rally ’er, b’ys! Rally ’er!”

  The sealers roared with laughter. They piled into and sometimes tripped over each other, cursing and laughing as they ran on. Their commotion alarmed Wes Kean, who ran to the bridge rail. At first he thought his men had mutinied—he had dealt with such a thing before. He was about to yell the wrath of God down upon them when he realized what his men were doing.

  “They’re tryin’ to rally her, by God! Like a punt! Never have I seen men like it! Did you ever see such a t’ing before, sir?” Wes had addressed Green without noticing. The excitement of the seeing his swilers racing up and down the decks like madmen made him forget where he was for a moment.

  “I never have, sir!” replied Green, also caught up in the excitement.

  The men’s efforts were rewarded for a little while as the tired old steamer tossed back and forth in her roads. At times she rode almost half her length upon the ice with the weight of so many men in her stern, before giving way and foundering under her dead weight. And when the men dashed forward, their combined weight in the ship’s bows caused her prop to cavitate and claw for water. But soon the efforts of both ship and men proved to be in vain. Ahead of the Newfoundland, ice-rocks stretched like rows of eskers. The sealers grew tired of their game. They slowed and then stopped. The lumps of black coal on the ice were separated by only a few feet.

  Night came and the sealers went below.

  * * * * *

  Before midnight, Charles Green walked off the bridge and headed for his berth. He removed his heavy coat, his hat, and his boots before lying down on his bed and pulling the heavy quilts over him. Lulled by the throb and vibration of the ship’s overworked engine as she tried to make her way forward, he fell fast asleep.

  Wes Kean prowled the bridge and stared into the darkness at the twinkling lights of his father’s ship.

  Of George Tuff’s seventeen years to the icefields, ten of them had been as master watch. Now at thirty-two years old, he was first mate of the Newfoundland. He could not write. The only thing he could read was the compass rose. He was an excellent helmsman and could follow a chart. But his old habit of bowing to authority was still with him. His role as master watch had been an easy one. Though he had been in charge of a group of men, out on the ice he still killed seals with the best of them. He was one of them. He was a worker. But now he was not a part of them anymore. He could feel it when they spoke to him. He knew many of them well, yet they rarely spoke to him. As ship’s officer he was considered above them, and Tuff did not like it.

  After Kean came down from the barrel that evening, he consulted with his first mate. He told George he estimated the Stephano to be six miles or so to the south-southwest. Tuff hadn’t seen old man Kean’s signal yet. He knew that the son would also signal the father with a raised staysail if he found seals.

  From the bridge, George had shared in the joy of his comrades as they tried to rally the big ship. He had known Jesse Collins a long time. There was no one who could raise the morale of men like he could. Kean expressed his all too real concern about the lateness of the month. The seals were ready to moult, if they weren’t already doing so. Any day now, without warning, the females would abandon their young. The pups would take to water and their chances of a good hunt would be gone. Kean told Tuff he would order his men over the side in the morning and send them across the ice toward his father’s ship. The position of the Stephano’s derrick was the signal he had been waiting for. Tuff agreed. He would not be expected to go with them. He was not a sealer now but an officer. The sealers would be led by the four master watches.

  Kean assured Tuff he would keep working his ship toward the Stephano for as long as he could during the night, to shorten the men’s walk. Tuff stayed beside Kean on the bridge until his watch ended. He walked back to his berth, removed his heavy coat and hat, and fell into a troubled sleep.

  It was an uplifting sight for the Newfoundland sealers to see the lights of other vessels near them. Standing on the deck of the ship, they had watched the distant lights come on, a welcome relief after seeing nothing but ice for days. They recognized the long, spaced lights of the Florizel, the flagship of Bowring Brothers. She was specifically designed to navigate ice. Two other ships, well ahead of the Florizel, were also showing lights, though faintly. At intervals faint sounds came over the bed of ice: a ringing bell, a muffled shout, and, once, a single shot, as if a gunner were testing his rifle for tomorrow’s hunt. But it was the Stephano’s lights that drew the attention of the Newfoundland’s sealers. Though she was the farthest away from them, her lights shone brighter than the others. Barely three years old, the world’s newest icebreaker was the pride of the Red Cross fleet. Her steam-driven generating plant had the most modern design and gave off the brightest light.

  “’Lectric lights all over dat one, I ’ear. Burns ’em day an’ night, they says.”

  “Every man ’as ’is own bunk, too!”

  “Ol’ man Kean sleeps in what dey calls a stateroom. Drapes hung over ’is bed, and cow’ide ledder on the walls to keep the noise o’ the ship from the almighty when he sleeps!”

  “Got his own personal cook, too! He roasts a fat chicken wit’ gravy fer the ol’ man’s supper every evenin’. Kean won’t eat swile meat. Gives ’im the runs, they says.”

  “Toilets on ’er, too! Even fer the sealers. Heads, they call ’em.”

  “I don’t believe it! Never seen a toilet on a ship, nor in a house, neither, fer that matter.”

  “Maybe that’s why the Stephano’s got toilets on ’er, eh b’ys? To take care of the ol’ man’s runs! Ha ha!”

  Cecil Mouland, Albert Crewe, John Antle, and Peter Lamb were crowding the ship’s rail and listening to the talk. Everyone was staring toward the light from the Stephano. With the lights of the sealing fleet all around them, their hopes for a hunt as early as tomorrow ran high.

  “The scuttlebutt is we fellers will be walkin’ aboard that one tomorrow! The skipper saw the signal!”

  “Signal? What signal?”

  “Where ’ave you been, b’y? You must ’ave yer ears stopped up. Everyone knows about the ol’ man’s secret signal to let ’is boy know when there’s seals about.”

  “T’ree puffs of smoke fr
om her stack at the stroke of four dis evenin’, it was! The Stephano’s funnel is equipped wit’ a damper what allows ’er to blow smoke rings.”

  “Naw, b’y, you’re wrong. ’Twas dem ’lectric lights. The mast’ead one blinked five times jest as dark come on! Seen it meself.”

  Regardless of the nature of the signal and how it was presented, rumour travelled throughout the ship that they would be sent toward the Stephano in the morning and that Wes Kean would keep butting the ice all night.

  “Maybe you’ll get that ring fer Jessie after all, Cec b’y,” said Peter Lamb. “We’ll be in the fat tomorrow, fer sure.”

  “You could’ve walked ashore a few days ago when we was off The Funks, sneaked a kiss from yer girl, an’ caught up wit’ us again. We was goin’ slow enough, fer sure!”

  “One kiss from my Jessie would do me just fine right now,” Cecil replied. He shifted his eyes from the Stephano’s beckoning lights and looked west toward his home.

  “A good ways sout’ of The Funks now, we are,” said Albert. “Closer to the cape at Bonavista, I ’lows. I knows a girl in Bonavista. Real pretty she is, too. I spoke to ’er dis fall when Father an’ I was dere yafflin’ our fish fer weighin’.”

  John Antle’s voice was high in anticipation of the hunt. “’Tis not girls that should be on yer minds, but seals, b’ys! I can’t wait fer t’marrow to come. Jest t’ink, when I walks down the gangway o’ this one in S’n John’s I’ll be one o’ the ice hunters!”

  “Clear ’eads and not sleepy ones is what’s needed fer flipsyin’ pans,” growled Jesse Collins.

  The young sealers grinned at him and walked off the deck. Collins knocked his pipe against the scarred gunnel to clear out the dead dottle, spat over the rail, and walked off the deck.

  Stepping out of the shadows where he had been standing, Reuben Crewe smiled with pride and wondered who the pretty girl in Bonavista was. He couldn’t wait to tell Mary that their boy was becoming a man.

  * * * * *

  The wind died down and the temperature went up several degrees. A few stars shone through seams in the clouds. Overall, it was a pleasant night at sea. The dense smoke from the Newfoundland fell slowly from her stack as she tried to make her way through the ice. The wind, what little there was, bore the smoke down toward the water instead of up in the air. The lines of the ship’s rigging dissected the smoke; the ship’s lanterns illuminated the smoke, creating an eerie effect, like dark curtains on either side of the vessel.

  The ice became thicker and heavier. Westbury Kean figured he might as well try and butt his way through the cliffs of Baccalieu. He ordered the engines stopped. The Newfoundland’s lights dimmed while the lights aboard the Stephano shone as bright as ever. Wes Kean was dead tired. He staggered to his berth and, without removing one garment of clothing, lay down on his back. He pulled his hat over his eyes and fell asleep.

  George Tuff’s face showed the misery of his nightmare. His head moved slowly from side to side and his eyes watered. He was hot but he wasn’t sweating. His lips drew tight and trembled, as if trying to mumble something, but no sound came. His body, curled into a fetal position, continued twisting as if he were a small boy trying to hide from his tormentors. Then he awakened with a start.

  Sitting upright on the edge of his bunk, he went over the terrible dream in his mind again. The room was dark, with a pale light showing through the lone porthole. The new day was almost here and the ship wasn’t moving. The dream was not a new one for George. He had seen the images hundreds of times before. They were more frequent each spring, just before a seal hunt, and had appeared in his head so often he wasn’t as afraid of them as he used to be. The dream was always the same. Visions of dead men from the long-gone sealing ship SS Greenland haunted his nights.

  Built in Ireland in 1872, named for the world’s largest island, and owned by Newfoundland sealing companies for thirty-five years, the Greenland had brought over 400,000 seal pelts into St. John’s harbour. But she was fraught with misfortune. A fire aboard her did enough damage to sink her in September of 1884, when she was making ready for a freighting trip north to Labrador. It happened in shallow water, so she was refloated and rebuilt and continued to sail.

  Owned by Baine Johnston and Company of St. John’s in 1898, she left for the seal hunt on March 10 of that year. George Barbour was her skipper, and George Tuff sailed in her for his second year to the ice. It was the best year Tuff had ever experienced. The seals seemed to offer themselves to the slaughter. The hunters stained the ice blood-red in record time. To maximize the full potential of the harvest, Barbour dropped his watches in the thick of the seals at different places. They killed what seals they could before the ship returned for them. Their kills were piled, or “panned,” and flagged with the company’s colour for pickup at a later time. The Greenland then carried its hunters to other herds to continue the killing. For as long as he lived, George Tuff would never forget the day they returned to claim their harvest.

  To their surprise, all that remained of their hard work were bloodstained pans and downed flags. It left a hollow feeling in the gut of every man aboard. Every last one of their seal pelts had been stolen! And the only ship nearby was the Aurora, captained by none other than Abram Kean. The sealers aboard the Greenland roared and cursed their rage. They wanted answers and they wanted revenge. So did their skipper. Barbour ordered the Greenland in pursuit of the Aurora, which was steaming away from them in a great plume of smoke. Despite all of the Greenland’s signals for Kean to heave to, the Aurora plunged on through the ice. It took hours for the Greenland to catch her, but soon both ships were mired in heavy ice. Barbour walked across for his pound of flesh. Abram Kean was feared by almost everyone, but George Barbour was not one of them. He feared nothing on two legs, and few on four.

  Kean did not come out of the wheelhouse to greet Barbour, as was customary for captains to do. Even the crews of both sealing ships were silent: no shouted greetings, no friendly jibes thrown back and forth between the two vessels. George Barbour ran up the steps to the Aurora’s castle and burst through the door. The sound of the confrontation on the bridge came to the men in muffled shouts, lasting for close to thirty minutes before Barbour emerged outside again. He slammed the door as if he hoped it would destroy the whole ship. He shouted orders to his own ship while crossing the ice between them.

  “Heave ’er off! Away! Away from dis den of iniquity!”

  His ship started forward under his order. Barbour ran alongside her, sprang up on her side sticks as spry as a cat, and climbed aboard. The two ships went their separate ways with not a single shout of goodbye from the sealers on either deck.

  Barbour told his disgruntled crew that he had accused Abe Kean of thievery right to his face and had told the man just what he thought of him. But it was no use. Kean had taken Barbour’s tirade like water off a duck’s back, he said.

  Kean had said in no uncertain terms, “When I orders me men over the side fer swiles, I am not responsible as to where they finds ’em, sir! Every last pelt aboard o’ dis ship is mine, sir!”

  What infuriated Barbour all the more was that, although Kean had not admitted to stealing the pelts, he had not denied it, either.

  Now the Greenland’s sealers were distraught, as was their captain. The time for good hunting would soon be over. The young seals would soon be in the water and then the killing would prove to be much more trying. It was doubtful they could recover their terrible loss. The Greenland’s sealers were now facing a bleak spring. But Barbour was a relentless man. Infuriated by the theft, he pressed his men on, and they responded with a vigour born as much from desperation as it was from anger.

  They worked before dawn until far into the night. They tied seal fat to their gaffs and set it ablaze to provide a light. They ran among the seals killing young and old, oblivious to time and weather. They were off their guard, and for that
they would pay a deadly price.

  In the pre-dawn hours of Monday, March 21, the first day of spring, Barbour dropped off his first of four watches in the midst of a brewing storm. The sealers hunted without noticing their peril. Barbour managed to get only one of his watches aboard before the Greenland became hopelessly jammed in heavy ice. A storm of gale-force wind and heavy snow fell upon them like a thing possessed. Between Barbour and the rest of his sealers was a lake of water nearly three miles long. It is one of the mysteries of the ice, to hold within itself huge lakes of water, unfrozen and uncluttered with ice.

  On the ice, the sealers found themselves in a dire situation. The night came early. Shrouds of snow plastered them and froze them and hid them from view. Aboard the Greenland, George Barbour was sick with worry. His ship was caught in the ice and swell at the ice edge. In a blow, it was the most dangerous place for a ship to be. The rising wind and wave among the heaving ice pans could crush it like matchwood. He fought the elements all night to keep the Greenland from being pulverized. Knowing his men were facing a far worse dilemma, Barbour kept the whistle sounding every few minutes.

  The storm raged until late afternoon Tuesday. The Greenland had survived the gale, but many of the lost sealers had not. The rescue began. Among the ice hunters, most of them struggling and barely alive, was young George Tuff. All through that desperate night, the Greenland crew searched for their own and found young men dead and frozen in their tracks. With the sun closing down on another day, the Greenland left for open water. On her deck, covered in ship’s canvas, were the bodies of twenty-five dead sealers. Left behind were twenty-three others who were never seen again. The searchers had discovered hats and woollen cuffs and even coats in the lake of water. The items of clothing were greasy and left calm streaks on its surface. The sealers had waited long enough to hook every last one of them with their gaffs.