by Gary Collins
The crew from the Newfoundland hurried alongside the Stephano and began to climb up the ladders that had been lowered for them. They had just walked over the worst of terrains for five hours without rest or food. Many of the sealers had fallen through, leaving them with wet feet.
The men who had turned back were right. The Stephano had been moving away from them. Abram Kean had steamed farther to the northwest from where Wes Kean had spotted the ship at five o’clock. When they finally reached her, she was more than a mile away from her earlier position.
As quickly as the men came over up over the side of the Stephano, Kean roared from the bridge, “Hurry up and get yer dinner!” He also asked George Tuff to come to the bridge. Just before he walked inside with Kean, Tuff noticed Thomas Dawson. Dawson from Bay Roberts was one of the master watches of the Newfoundland. He was on deck with his crowd, looking confused as to where he and his men were supposed to go.
“’Urry below and get some grub fer yer men, Tom,” Tuff yelled.
“No, damned if I will! I’m no officer aboard o’ this one and got no orders to fetch prog fer meself nor me men, sir.”
Dawson hurried his men below, where he found a mug and water. He gave it to one of his thirsty men. Dawson walked back up on deck without eating or taking food with him, sat down on the after hatch, filled his pipe, and waited for the rest. It wasn’t a long wait.
Phillip and Joshua Holloway stood on the deck with Jesse and Fred Collins. Snow was falling and they couldn’t see the Newfoundland. They didn’t know why the old man was rushing them. Surely they would be staying aboard for a rest, and with weather coming on, probably for the night. They were the last to go below, and as they were going down, others of their group were coming back up, some with cakes of hard bread in their hands.
Abe had already ordered his ship away by the time Tuff sat down to dinner with the captain in Kean’s private dining room. He ate quickly while the old skipper talked.
“Now, George b’y, I’ll tell ’e straight the way of it. Early this marnin’ I put my men on a string of seals off to the nar’wes’. ’Tis only a narrow string of ’em and the Florizel’s crew have already foreled my men. The Bonaventure’s men are well on the hand of foreleading the Florizel’s crew. Be the time I could get yer crew onto that patch of seals you would be twelve or fourteen miles farther away from yer vessel. As ye know, that is not a practical t’ing to be doing.”
Tuff nodded at the captain and continued eating.
“Here’s me plan as regards to yer men. Yester evening I spied a fine spot of seals off to our port ’and. Dere’s a t’ousand of ’em fer sure, an’ if they’ve not taken to water there’ll be fifteen hundred or more. They bear to the southwest quarter and will bring you an’ yer men two miles closer to the Newfoundland than ye are now. When you pan the seals fer the day, you can board yer own ship. Is dat to yer likin’, George?”
“Aye, it is, sir,” said Tuff.
“I see ye finished yer dinner, George b’y. Best to get yer men on the go now. We ’ave to get ahead to our work quick, like, as some of my men are five or six miles away from us be now.”
At 11:50 a.m., the two men left Kean’s dining room and walked to the bridge. Through the windows Kean saw the men of the Newfoundland pouring up from the forecastle again. George’s men had been aboard the Stephano for no more than twenty minutes.
Kean asked his second hand, Yetman, if he had seen their ship’s flag, which had been left in the ice yesterday evening. Yetman replied that he did. It was in the southeast quarter, just a little off their port bow. Kean ordered the Stephano’s engines stopped and the wheel over to starboard, in order to press his vessel hard against the ice to facilitate easier access onto the ice from the lee or starboard side. He shouted from the bridge and Newfoundland men began climbing back down to the ice.
Kean approached the large binnacle and stared at the compass rose. He beckoned Tuff, who had been looking through the windows at his men, to join him.
“Here’s the bearin’ of yer ship, George b’y, southeast, plain as day, she is. ’Bout farty-five miles or so southeast of Bonavist’ Cape, we are.”
George looked down at the compass and out toward the southeast. He couldn’t see for snow, but as was his way to follow orders unquestioningly, he didn’t tell Kean that he couldn’t see the Newfoundland.
“Aye, sir, southeast. Looks like weather comin’, sir. Soft, though,” he ventured.
“Aye, George, soft it is. The glass is fair and ’twill be mild, is my guess. ’Urry, now! I have my men to pick up.”
“Aye, sir,” said Tuff, and without speaking further he left the bridge and joined his men as they left the Stephano.
* * * * *
For Joshua Holloway and his friends from Newport, dinner aboard the Stephano consisted of a few platefuls of leftover boiled beans, hard bread with butter just as hard, and cold tea without sugar. Jesse Collins hated cold tea, so he had none. He grabbed a cake of hard bread and shoved it in his coat pocket with the others he had taken from the Newfoundland that morning. The ship lurched her way through the ice while they were below. The sounds of the sheet ice brushing past her steel hull were altogether different than when the same ice flowed past the wooden walls of the Newfoundland. Here it was a tearing, screeching, frightening noise. The ship stopped suddenly; the noise of her movement faded away to nothing.
Someone yelled down the companionway, “All Newfoundland men on deck and over the side!”
“Over the side, did ’e say? My feet are froze, b’ys! I figured we would be allowed to warm up a bit.”
“I got wet to me knees crossing that last rent. I was ’lowin’ to dry me socks aboard dis one!”
“I’ve jest cracked me ’ard bread! Where’s the good grub aboard we all ’eard about?”
“What’s the ol’ man’s ’urry? There’s a starm coming, anyone can see that!”
“He’s steamin’ to the nar’wes’ to pick up his own men.”
“Funny queer t’ing, dat is! The ol’ man is in a tear to get ’is own men aboard because of the starm comin’, and in a bigger tear to get the crew of the Newfoundland off!”
Despite their concerns, no one complained to his master watch. They left the hold of the Stephano willingly, their bellies just as empty and their feet just as wet as when they had boarded. They walked up on deck and began climbing back down to the ice. From his perch at the after bridge rail, Abram Kean supervised the off-loading of the sealers. They climbed quickly down and walked away with Tuff leading them.
“Over the side, men! Don’t dally! You there, on deck! Get the rights! What are ye waitin’ fer? Over the side, quick! If ye don’t jump out right now, I’ll carry ye away from the seals! Or I’ll cut ye off before you can cross the bows o’ dis vessel!”
Kean kept roaring to the last six men of the Newfoundland’s crew until they were gone. Powered up and ready to go, the Stephano moved to starboard.
The men from Newport, as well as Reuben Crewe from Elliston and Theophilus Chalk from Little Catalina, scampered down the side sticks. Jacob Dalton was waiting for his friend, Offie. Reuben stared all around for Albert John and thought he saw his son heading off in the snowy gloom with some of the other men, so he went after them. The others walked away as the big ship ploughed ahead, crushing and renting the ice as she went. Smoke poured black and thick from her mighty engines and out her stack, drifting down upon the last of the men to leave her. They hurried to catch up with the rest of the sealers in the falling snow.
Hearing the rumble of the Stephano, Joshua Holloway turned back for a look. The noise of her butting through the ice was loud and clear, but he couldn’t make her out through the snow.
17
Tuff set off in a southwesterly direction without explaining his intentions to any of his master watches. Thomas Dawson wondered where Tuff was t
aking them. He caught up to him and asked where they were going.
“To the sou’wes’, Tom, as per Skipper Kean’s orders. We’ll find fourteen to seventeen hundred seals in that direction. We should come up on some seal carcasses first from the Stephano’s kill o’ yester evenin’, ’bout two miles. Just past that we’ll come on the seals.”
“Two miles? Sure, dere’s weather coming on, as ye can plainly see. Is the Stephano coming to pick us up dis evenin’?”
“No, we’ll ’ave to board the Newfoundland.”
“How the ’ell are we supposed to find ’er if we walk two miles and more to the sou’west?”
“We’ll allow a point or two.”
“George b’y, I’ve been to the ice fer twenty-two springs, an’ you would want to run ’er pretty neat to strike a ship on a day like dis one is shapin’ up fer. I couldn’t see the Newfoundland when we left the Stephano, an’ now ’tis much worse. ’Twill be like findin’ a bull bird in the middle of Bonavist’ Bay, I ’lows.”
Tuff did not acknowledge him.
By now the falling snow was thick, and though it was mild with a southeast wind, drifting had begun. Visibility was no more than a few hundred feet and the sealers coming up from behind looked like shadows to Tuff. He led on anyway, in what he said was a southwesterly direction, though Dawson did not see him use a compass. They had gone a mile before they came upon approximately 200 seals. Tuff ordered Jacob Bungay and his watch to start killing them.
Bungay was from Newtown. After spending five years at the seal hunt, he was now master watch for the first time. Trying to earn a good name as leader, and being a compassionate man by nature, he had seen that his men were taken care of on the Stephano before himself. When the order came for all hands over the side, he had led his men topside without eating or drinking. On deck he followed Kean’s further order to get out. In his pockets he carried several cakes of hard bread that he had taken from the Newfoundland.
The seals were skittish and hard to kill in the mild weather. Bungay’s men managed to kill twenty or so before the seals disappeared in the drifting snow. They pelted and panned them, stuck a Newfoundland flag in the snow, and walked ahead to join the others. Tuff was behind the men and not leading. He had shouted for them to stop. They gathered around him, and he was in heated conservation with one of the sealers, Lemuel Squires of Topsail.
“Where are ye takin’ us, Jarge?”
“What odds is it to you where I takes ’e?” Tuff answered angrily.
He and Squires had had a disagreement aboard the Stephano when Tuff shouted down from the bridge for the men to “Bolt yer prog or go wit’out it!” Squires, who had a ready temper, wasn’t about to let that go. “If you was down ’ere, by Chris’, I’d show you who’d be going wit’out.” Tuff didn’t respond.
“What odds is it to me?” Lemuel said now. “I’ll tell ’e, Jarge Tuff, what odds it is to me! My life is jest as sweet as any man’s on this ice, an’ I wants to know what course we’re goin’ and where we’re goin’ to.”
“Well, if you don’t like what I’m doin’, you can go off and perish be yerself!”
“That I won’t be doin’, by Chris’! I’ll stick with the gang. An’ your place is up ahead pickin’ out the best leads fer we fellers an’ not laggin’ behind!”
“Laggin’ be’ind? I can board our own buggerin’ ship meself in three hours!” George Tuff was shouting now. It was as if he had chosen this venue to vent all his frustration.
“The fastest time you ever travelled, I could keep up wit’ ’e, Jarge Tuff!” returned Squires. He walked away angrily.
“I knew we was in fer a night of it when I saw the Stephano leave,” said Reuben Crewe, not liking the confrontation between the two men. He was now standing next to Albert. He sounded worried.
“The only chance we fellers got of findin’ our ship is to find our trail from the marnin’ and follow it back to ’er,” someone said.
“The bloody trail will be snowed in be the time we reaches it, I ’lows,” came from another.
“We’ve the best o’ the day be’ind us now, b’ys, an’ not a’ead o’ us,” said Job Easton, a burly sealer from Greenspond. “I don’t like it one bit.”
Hedley Payne from the same community was standing next to him. At seventeen years old, this was Payne’s first time at the ice, and though he agreed with his friend, he said nothing. Payne would go wherever he was led without complaint.
“The Greenland disaster will only be a peck alongside o’ dis one,” said Jesse Collins in his matter-of-fact manner.
At this, Tuff lost his anger. The colour seemed to drain from his face, and he suddenly looked ill.
“We’re ’eadin’ back to our own ship right now, men,” he said. With that, he ordered Thomas Dawson to lead off to the southeast, saying that was the direction Abram Kean had told him to find the Newfoundland.
Dawson turned and started to lead off and the men followed him without comment. Tuff spoke to him as he passed.
“Keep the wind in yer eye, Tom b’y. ’Tis from the southeast, be my reckonin’, an’ ’twill take ye to our path o’ the marnin’s walk. Stop an’ wait fer all ’ands to rally up when you comes upon it. I will stay as the hinder man.”
Tuff looked at Lemuel Squires, who said nothing. Dawson took the lead and walked away with the sealers in tow.
“Keep yer flagpoles an’ gaffs in ’and, fellers,” Tuff said as he fell in behind the last man.
When the sealers left the Newfoundland, each man had carried a gaff. Close to fifty of them had also carried a heavy wooden pole with the Newfoundland’s flag attached to it. Over the long hike, some who carried both gaff and flagpole discarded the latter. Tuff had noticed the shortage of flagpoles when they had arrived at the Stephano. They played an important role in identifying the pans where the seal pelts were gathered and they could not be replaced while at the hunt. While he was arguing, he had seen at least two of the men with flags wrapped around their necks as scarves. There were other reasons why Tuff wanted them to keep their gaffs and flagpoles. They would make good fires should they be caught out all night. However, he didn’t want to alarm them, even though he was pretty sure they were not going to make the Newfoundland before dark.
William Pear was the only man aboard the Newfoundland who wore spectacles, and now he had lost them. Without them he was nearly blind. Pear fell to his knees in the snow and searched in vain for his glasses. A couple of the sealers who were walking past helped him for a minute or so, but soon they gave up and went on ahead. Pear was also sick. He had been ill for a couple of days but had told no one, and now it was getting worse. He stumbled and tried to stare into the blinding snow. It stung his eyes until he was forced to blink rapidly. The men who were walking away from him appeared as ghosts. He fell again, thinking he was alone, the last man in the line, when Tuff approached him. The second hand spoke words of reassurance to Pear, helped him to his feet, and pushed him ahead. Pear told him he was very sick and afraid of being left behind, but Tuff said he would stay with him.
There was a good reason for Tuff to walk at the end of the line. By his count there were 132 men in the group. All of them were walking, and sometimes jumping, over the same pans of ice and weakening the edges. As a result, men at the end of the line on a sealers’ walk were more likely to fall through. Last in line was the most dangerous place to be, and it took an experienced eye to spot the dangers.
There was another, much more troubling reason why Tuff had taken up the rear position. He hated being responsible for the lives of so many men. George Tuff was a good man. He was a hard worker, conscientious and very dependable. Though it was true he had volunteered to lead the men to the Stephano, he had been ordered by Abram Kean to take them onto the ice in a gathering storm, and he simply could not defy the voice of authority. Now he was caught up in an ordeal that wo
uld find old man Kean wanting, and images of the Greenland were already crowding his head.
Jacob Dalton was with Arthur Mouland’s watch. Arthur was from Lancaster, a fishing village a few miles east of Bonavista. He was known throughout the area as a seasoned ice hunter. Dawson, whom Tuff had selected to lead all of them, had called a halt. He had found one of the Stephano’s flags, which he believed to be the same one they had passed just one side of the path they had taken that morning. The number on it was 198. Some of the men argued that the morning’s flag had the number 189 on it. Below the flag were a few seal pelts tied to a strap. They argued about the flag number for a short while, then moved on again, searching for the path.
At 2:00 p.m., shouts from the head of the line announced that Tom Dawson had found the path back to the Newfoundland. Now all they had to do was follow—if they could manage to stay on it in this weather. There was still time to make the Newfoundland before dark. Jacob’s booming voice shouted back down the line of men coming up behind him.
“Dawson has found the trail, b’ys! Nothin’ to it now, we’ll jest backtrack to our own ship.”
The sealers cheered heartily at the news.
“Never t’ought we would find the path in this weather, b’ys!”
“A night out fer sure, I ’lowed.”
“Good eye, Tom Dawson’s got.”
“A gallon of ’ot tea fer me when I gets aboard, an’ a full pan o’ bread. I’m starved.”
“A feed of spuds an’ fish, smatchy or no, smothered in pork fat will do me.”
“I’m glad we’ll be gettin’ aboard the Newfoundland. Didn’t feel welcome aboard o’ the Stephano, I didn’t.”
“Me neither. Wouldn’t let me finish me drap o’ tea afore almighty Kean was bawlin’ to get out.”
“Cold, my tea was, an’ weak, too.”
“Skipper Wes is not like ’is ol’ man, dat’s fer damn sure.”
“Well, as dey says, b’ys, the last of the litter is always the best.”
