by Gary Collins
* * * * *
It mattered little now whose watch they were under, for though the master watches struggled to save their charges, in reality every man was under his own watch. Anyone who could stand was on his feet and moving. They had carved shelters out of the larger ice formations that gave them some relief from the bitter wind, but they didn’t stay there for long. They kept stamping their feet and slapping their hands and arms, anything to keep the cold out of their blood. To lie down on the ice for more than a few minutes meant death.
Jacob Dalton told the men about Offie’s strange behaviour and the boy’s disappearance. By now they had all witnessed death close at hand, but the death of one so young and from their small community troubled them greatly. Theophilus Chalk was the first sealer among the group from Little Catalina to die. He would not be the last.
Of the four Tippetts, the youngest, Edward, was in the best shape. George Carpenter and William Tippett were good friends and stuck together. For the most part the fleet-footed ice hunters had been hobbled, reduced to a shuffling walk. Low murmurs of talk came from the men. During the pauses between the walk-arounds they stared at the lights of the ships burned down against the winter night.
They talked about the skippers who had put them on the ice—they cursed them; they damned them—and of home and wives and especially their children. Then Norman Tippett fell to his knees as though he had been shot. It was so unexpected he dragged Abel down with him, who had been helping him stay on his feet. Abel was Norman’s uncle and considered the young man more as a son than a nephew. Norman was one of the sealers who had wrapped a Newfoundland ice flag around his neck in an effort to keep out the cold. The flag was made of rough, coarse cloth that had chafed his neck until it was sore, and the frost worked its way into the wound. Norman’s fingers and feet were also frostbitten, and now he was past hope. When Abel spoke to him, Norman tried to reply but was unable to utter more than a soft moan. Abel wasn’t much better off than his nephew. At fifty-six, kneeling defeated on the ice, he suddenly looked much older. Edward Tippett walked up behind and knelt down between them. Through chattering teeth Abel told Edward that Norman was dying. The old man cried and cried.
“Where’s William to, Ed? ’Ave you seen me other nephew?”
“He’s keepin’ company with Carpenter an’ the others,” Edward replied. “He’s still on his feet, Abel b’y.”
“My God! My God, Ed! What’s ’appenin’ to us, my son? I can’t feel me fingers. They’ve gone all scram on me, an’ I can do no more than keep Norman in me lun’.”
“I’ll bide wit’ you for a while, Abel b’y. We’ll nunny together, the t’ree of us, an’ share our heat and our lot as is our way, eh, Abel?” said Edward in a calm, reassuring voice. He put one long arm around Abel’s shaking shoulders and tucked Norman into the shelter of his body.
“Oh, Edward, my b’y, ’tis wonderful good o’ you to keep us warm. I feels better already, an’ Norman is not shiverin’ as he was.”
Edward did not answer. He hadn’t told Abel that he was freezing cold himself. He bent his head down and they rocked back and forth. Now the three men looked like children in a huddle, like they were sharing a secret and would soon burst away to continue with their game.
But they stopped moving after a while, and when the other sealers came upon them and touched them, there was no response. The living walked away, as they must, and behind them, kneeling, sculpted together with the cold, remained the epitome of the human bond: two were bonded by blood, but all three were joined by the greatest bond of all—love.
* * * * *
Charlie Martin from Elliston was coughing. He was weak and faint but still on his feet. Just before dark on this second night of misery, he had taken a gaff from a dead man’s hands and left his hometown friends with the intention of following George Tuff in search of their ship. Everyone now considered Tuff as their ice master. Trying to cross between two loose pans of ice and using the gaff for leverage, his stiffening limbs had betrayed him and he fell into the water. Pulling himself out, he was soon coated with frost. He tried to dry his clothing, but the cold beat him to it. His wet clothes froze solid and he was now in serious trouble. Eight of his friends from Elliston lay dying near him.
He had passed the frozen bodies of Reuben Crewe and his son, Albert John, several times during the night. Now the grey dawn was coming and the two men, frozen as one, were on display before him. It touched his heart until he couldn’t bear the sight of it any more. Charlie staggered past them and looked for a place to get warm, a sheltering place, a place to escape from it all.
He found his refuge: frigid mounds of ice banked with the white moss of snow. He half fell, half stooped and began crawling toward them. Through eyes glazed with weariness and a mind confused with hypothermia, he burrowed his way among the mounds. After a bout of coughing, he fainted away. The living had found a haven among the dead, for they were not mounds of ice at all, but the frozen bodies of dead sealers.
23
Thursday morning, April 2, 1914, would change the lives of hundreds of Newfoundlanders, most of whom didn’t know it yet. The sun rose up over the rim of the frozen sea without mountains or hills to challenge its arrival. It burst over the Great White Plain, revealing the carnage below.
The SS Newfoundland had drifted farther south and east during the night. Greenspond now bore seventy-nine nautical miles to the northwest. Elliston was forty-six miles away, also bearing northwest, and Little Catalina bore west-northwest at forty-two nautical miles. The steamer was paralyzed in the ice and Captain Westbury Kean was in the barrel.
The rising sun was to his back, and with the glasses held before his eyes he could see a great distance. He panned the horizon as the maw of the white wilderness glistened with the new day. Something was moving. He pulled the glasses down quickly, not wanting to see. Just as quickly, he raised them again. He refocused the lenses and saw a scattered line of men making its way toward his ship. There were so few. The glasses dropped from his hands and hung by their leather thongs around his neck. His legs went weak, his face turned deathly white, and he felt a sickening bile rise in his throat. If not for the sturdy barrel around him, he would have fallen to his death.
He was trembling so badly he doubted he could scale back down the rigging. Stepping back, he hauled up the trap door by its rope loop and began his descent. Staring again at the men out on the ice, he saw one of them go down. He staggered against the ratlines, lost his grip, and nearly fell before he made his way back down to the deck.
“Oh my God! Oh my God, my God!” Kean cried. “Green! Some o’ my men are comin’. ’Tis only a few, nine I believe, an’ they appear to be in grave distress. Oh my God, my God! Somet’ing terrible has happened. Sweet lovin’ Lard! The starm! The starm! What in the name o’ God ’as the ol’ man done?”
Kean was like a panicked child now, confused and disoriented. “Get a signal aloft,” he managed to blurt out, hysterically walking to and fro, not wanting to accept what he knew was coming. Charles Green took temporary command of the Newfoundland and ordered a flag run up the signal halyards with a bucket beneath them. Normally there would be a ball hanging under the flag, but the Newfoundland didn’t carry one. A ball on the signal halyards was the signal of distress.
* * * * *
Robert Randell went up on the bridge of the SS Bellaventure before daylight. They were doing well with the seals, and judging by the pleasant eastern sky, they would top up their catch and sail home. The ice was tight when he ordered his vessel southwest for a quarter-mile or so. Then he veered to the southeast after a more promising lead as the sun rose full and bright over the butting bows of the Bellaventure.
“Some men on the ice, sir!” the barrelman in the foremast shouted below. “Two miles or so on the nart’ side of the sun. Two of ’em ’eadin’ our way, looks like.” Then he shouted again, this time in a voice
filled with concern, “One of the two is down, sir! Up again, sir! He’s staggerin’, by God! Like a man crippled, ’e is!”
“Full ahead,” roared Randell. “Ram the bugger towards those men! They’ve been out all night, by God!” He turned to a few men on deck. “Over the side and tend to them!”
They raced down the side sticks, jumped from the ship, and ran ahead of her bows. The man who was in front fell again, and when he saw his rescuers running toward him, he stayed down. The man behind him staggered on. It was Jesse Collins, barely on his feet.
The men from the Bellaventure grabbed the first man and helped him along. The courageous sealer delivered the terrible news: the men of the SS Newfoundland had been on the ice since the beginning of the storm on Tuesday.
Randell wired the fleet.
* * * * *
Aboard the Newfoundland, Wes Kean was stricken with grief. He sent men to help the sealers walking toward them like drunkards. They stumbled and fell but kept on coming. Then he spotted two more men who were walking quickly, with obvious strength, and Kean’s spirits lifted. But as they came within shouting distance, he learned they were two of the Stephano’s men. Their ship was jammed in ice and their captain had sent them to inquire about the flag flying from the Newfoundland. Kean told them that it was a distress signal and then asked a question.
“Are my men aboard o’ the Stephano, b’ys?”
“No dey are not, sir! Dey was put on the ice along o’ twelve o’clock on Tuesday, sir!”
Kean was devastated. He ordered Charles Green to hoist the international signal for distress at sea to alert the Stephano.
At 8:00 a.m., the first of the survivors were near enough to identify. George Tuff, his trusted second hand, was in the lead, but he looked much different now than he had when he left the Newfoundland on Tuesday morning. He was haggard and appeared to be on the verge of collapse, but he was still leading.
With him were Stanley Andrews from Pound Cove, Sidney Jones and Jacob Bungay from Newtown, Arthur Mouland and his friend Elias Mouland from Bonavista, John Hiscock of Carbonear, Henry Squires from Topsail, and Samuel Russell from Bonavista. The news they had for Wes Kean was devastating. Tuff told his young captain he feared more than half of his men were dead. Kean ordered hot tea laced with rum for the survivors and turned away, dejected.
Staring out the bridge windows, Wes Kean watched as smoke billowed up from the Stephano and then the Bellaventure, six miles away. The modern technology he was denied was being put to good use. The other ships had learned the plight of his crew and were doing their best to get through the ice to assist.
Stephen Jordon had seen the men come aboard and had waited until they reported to their distraught captain. To Jordon, Wes Kean seemed to have aged since daylight. Many of the men were dead, but he heard no names mentioned. He walked toward Arthur Mouland, who saw him coming.
“Your brother died the first night of the starm, Jordon b’y. I could not save him! No one could.”
Stephen felt the pain of loss and frustration well up in his eyes. “What about me two nephews?” he asked, feeling sure they were safe.
But Mouland lowered his head. “I’m wonderful sorry to tell ’e, Steve b’y, but the two of ’em died along o’ two o’clock er so yesterday.”
Stephen turned away, shocked and lost for words. He kept thinking of the ice where his brother had left his coat.
* * * * *
The two Stephano men climbed aboard gasping for breath. Abram Kean, dressed in his long greatcoat, had been watching from the barrel. By the time they got on board, he was standing on deck, waiting impatiently.
“Well?” he barked.
“The men of the Newfoundland, sir,” one man blurted out. “Dey’ve all been on the ice since you ordered—I mean since dey left dis one on Tuesday, sir!”
Kean’s thick eyebrows rose and his steely blue eyes pierced the speaker. But it was a fleeting thing. Old man Kean rarely showed his emotions to anyone.
“Away to the rescue! Take grub an’ matches an’ flasks of spirits wit’ ’e!” he bellowed. “Get back to the Newfoundland and ask Westbury where his crew is. You there, aloft! Scan the ice fer men!”
Kean roared into action like a raging bull, flinging directions at his crew. He stormed back on the bridge and ordered a message to the Bellaventure, but there was no need. Captain Isaac Robert Randell had already mustered his own troops.
* * * * *
The men from the Bellaventure walked away from their ship after getting directions from the survivors. The ship was still battling her way through heavy ice when Randell ordered them to carry rum and blankets, stretchers, firewood, and coal oil to get a fire started. Food and kettles of hot tea were hurried to aid the living.
Alfred Maidment, from the little hamlet of Shamblers Cove just across the tickle from Greenspond, was barely alive when the men from the Bellaventure reached him. While one of the rescuers fished in his pack for a flask of brandy, another cradled Alfred in his arms and bent down to put his mouth close to the man’s badly swollen ear. He asked his name. “Maidment,” the suffering man told him through swollen, cracked, blue lips. The brandy was placed to his mouth and a dollop poured down his throat. The old ice hunter raised his head a little, coughed a few times, and died in the arms of a stranger.
Another crewman was too far gone to chew the food he was given. It fell out of his mouth minutes before he succumbed to the elements.
One sealer, still alive, was lifted away from a pan with twenty dead men on it. But when they rolled him onto a stretcher, his head drooped lifelessly over the side of the canvas deathbed.
Men walked in silence, in awe of the catastrophe wrought by the storm. They approached white mounds they suspected were humans and touched them with their hands. They walked around quietly, searching among the dead. Some of them would be haunted by what they saw until the day they died: dead men with their eyes sealed in icicles; faces burned and blistered with Arctic cold. Some of the dead looked as though they had been tortured: bodies contorted, and fingers forever pointing somewhere, to someone.
One sealer dropped to his knees without warning and clasped his hands in prayer. When his rescuers placed their hands on him to take him to safety, he toppled over. He died thanking Almighty God for his rescue.
The Bellaventure finally made her way through the ice and loomed over the carnage. The brilliant sun shone down and a warm wind came from the south. Those who could walk aboard did so on their own while many more needed help.
* * * * *
Jacob Dalton was on his feet though he had fallen many times as he approached the Bellaventure. He fell once again but, determined, stayed down and started to crawl. However, he had twisted and was crawling away from the ship that could save him. Jacob was blinded, and around him were swatches of blue water.
He had found the pain of snow blindness seeping into his eyes before dark yesterday and had suffered through it all night. The brilliance of this morning’s sun stung his eyes like burning sand while tears froze solid to his whiskered face. He tried to stand when he heard his name.
Aboard the Bellaventure, his uncle had seen him coming, and when he saw him go down he cried out in anguish. He ran down the ladders and yelled to Jake not to move. He reached his nephew just in time: Jacob was only a few feet away from a water hole. He was one of the last men to be rescued, the only sealer of the seven from Little Catalina to survive.
* * * * *
Now that the living were aboard, the floating hearse began the morbid task of collecting the dead. During the day the Bellaventure’s men helped the living—nursing them, feeding and warming them, giving them tea and spirits, carrying them aboard on stretchers.
The Stephano, the Florizel, and the Bonaventure had aided in the rescue, every ship responding as they were able. With the exception of the Steph
ano, they were miles away and the heavy ice hindered them all. Men from the Stephano carried Simon Trask of Elliston, who was near death, for two miles over the rough ice, and the ship’s doctor nursed him back to health. They picked up two dead men. One of them was Eli Kean, Abram Kean’s cousin. Patrick Hearn of St. John’s was able to walk aboard the Stephano. The Florizel’s men collected nine dead sealers.
The Bellaventure was nearest and saw the worst of it. When her crew had brought aboard all the sealers who had survived, they began to search for those who had not. They gathered the dead on separate pans of ice; the loading of the corpses began at 3:00 p.m. and was finished by four o’clock. The ice pans on which the dead had been laid were flagged with the Bellaventure’s own colours. The wheelsman followed the shouts of the scunner aloft in her barrel and the ship forced her way through. The flags that were once used to mark the carcasses of seals now led them to carcasses of hunters and Randell ordered his men to search as far as they felt was necessary. The body of young Peter Lamb, the would-be troubador, was found alone, a short distance away from a pan filled with dead bodies.
One of the Bellaventure’s crew was walking around the far western perimeter of the disaster area when he spotted a mound that didn’t look like ice. He approached it warily. It was the lone body of another dead sealer. Theophilus “Offie” Chalk had perished walking toward the lights of his home.
On one of the pans, the bodies of the three Tippetts were frozen together. Not far away, Reuben and Albert John Crewe were both found dead, on their knees and huddled together.
The rescuers talked in murmurs. They discussed how to load the dead sealers. They decided that the bodies of the men who had died together would not be separated. One man suggested they use the Bellaventure’s winch and the others stared at him. They would not have any part of slinging their fellow hunters aboard like a strap of seal pelts.
When the gangway was lowered, they carried the dead aboard, individual corpses first. The Bellaventure’s men had discovered the bodies of twenty men on one pan. Some had their arms folded on their chests as if they knew they were dying. Some were curled into fetal positions. Others were found lying straight. They were all frozen solid.
