The Gale of 1929 Read online

  Now the lifeboat was coming at them, sliding down the sea hills like a whaleboat on a Nantucket sleigh ride. The schoonermen lined the deck of their settling schooner, as if knowing without shout or sign that this was to be their final attempt.

  The lifeboat swept alongside the schooner. The near oars were shipped, allowing her closer. The Catherine B. heaved down, as if offering her handlers their last best chance. The drum at her bows beat a steady cadence. Ellis Janes held the Catherine B. in lee irons, her taffrail rising to meet the following seas. Quick as a schoolboy, Uncle Fred Short jumped down into the boat. The others followed, encouraged by the old man’s bravado.

  Janes was bent double, his back to the wind. He tried to light the lantern with match after match. The wick had been burnt hard. It wasn’t absorbing the fuel and the lantern needed a new one. His men were all aboard the lifeboat screaming for him to jump. Another voice yelled in a foreign language. Janes didn’t understand the words, but he knew the meaning.

  The wick flared! He tripped the lever and closed the broken chimney. He jumped into the rising lifeboat, flinging the lantern back over the deck of his schooner as he did. The chimney shattered and a shaft of fire spilled onto the deck. It licked at the film of kerosene, and for a moment it brightened—then the Catherine B.’s starboard rail shipped white water. It flushed toward the fire in great haste with a mind of its own, burying the fire before it could even begin.

  The ship was very close, a dangerous wall that must be scaled to safety. A rope ladder was lowered. Sometimes its lower rungs almost touched the water’s edge and sometimes it was above the heads of the men as the great ship wallowed and listed in the waves. The lifeboat was laden deep, its human cargo staring up in fear at the precipice that bent and swayed above them.

  The lifeboat scraped against the side of the ship and some of the men jumped to the ladder. Clawing their way upward, they disappeared over the side.

  Fred Short stared at the men as they climbed. He had been the first to jump down into the lifeboat, but Fred knew that to pull his tired, aged body up over that undulating net would take time. There came a shout from above and a rope’s end came tumbling down. A wave sucked away from the ship’s underbelly, creating a hole. The lifeboat fell into it and the water surged back again eagerly, wrenching the lifeboat up along the steel plates just as the ship rolled down. The gunnels and top strakes of plank were sheared to pulp, taking away precious inches from the shallow freeboard of the lifeboat. Instantly, water found the new opening and at every downward plunge rushed in over the damaged side.

  There were three men left aboard. They could hear the drum sounding close by. They were out of time. The ship would have to leave or it would crush them and the deck of the Catherine B.

  The others tied a bowline around Uncle Fred’s waist. He reached up and half climbed and half pulled himself up over the side of the ship, bruising his aged ribs as he went. The last two men followed. The lifeboat lurched against the ship again, bulging in her damaged side. The ship pulled away, her broad stern narrowly missing the schooner’s bows where the drum continued to beat.

  Both captains met as the ship left the scene. Schapp told Janes that he couldn’t return to St. John’s. The crew of the Catherine B. would have to go across the Atlantic to the Holplein’s home port in Holland. Janes and his crew were disappointed at this news, but one look back at the sinking Catherine B. showed them how lucky they were to be alive. Janes asked the captain one more favour. It took a while before Schapp understood him, but finally he nodded and walked up to his bridge. Janes and his crew stood at the constantly moving rail of the ship and stared as the Holplein turned once more and bore down on the pitiful remains of their once proud schooner.

  Jane had asked the Dutch captain to give the schooner just a “pat” from his ship to hole and sink her. Schapp agreed with Janes: a vessel afloat in these shipping lanes was a danger. The problem Schapp had was dealing the schooner no more than a glancing blow. He had no intention of forcing the Holplein directly over the Catherine B. Her spars or rigging or almost any part of the schooner could become entangled in his ship’s propellers and place his own ship in grave danger.

  The port bow of the Holplein hit the starboard bow of the Catherine B. like a battering ram, butchering the vessel. Schapp gave his ship hard right rudder as soon as the schooner disappeared beneath his bows and his ship heeled away at full power. The Catherine B. scraped along the hull of the lumbering ship, her tall masts tilting at a steep angle toward the rapidly turning ship. The mainmast cleared her stern but the foremast leaned farther to starboard and hooked the high stern of the freighter, tearing itself apart at the throat halyards. Then the huge ship was free from the small sinking schooner and setting a course for the Atlantic crossing.

  The stern of the Holplein topped three of the larger seas, giving the black figures standing there one last look at their schooner. When she rode up and tilted the fourth grey swell there was nothing left to see. The body of the Catherine B. had gone under. The men slowly turned away and headed for the warmth of their new vessel.

  6 Janie E. Blackwood

  The island of Newfoundland appears like no other island on earth. It sometimes appears as a rugged triangle with torn edges, jammed at an oblique angle against the mainland of North America. At other times it appears as a snarling, mythical leviathan rising out of the sea, crouched and waiting on the very edge of the western ocean.

  On closer inspection, the island’s entire jagged coastline seems to have been forever tormented by the might of the restless North Atlantic. This is especially true on its rugged northeast coast. From its northernmost tip on Quirpon Island at Cape Bauld to its most southerly point at Cape Pine, the entire coastline appears ripped and otherwise steadily worn down by our planet’s most powerful force: water.

  Nowhere is this powerful force, which is constantly at work, more evident than on the north side of Bonavista Bay. It is a place spattered with hundreds of islands and treacherous offshore reefs. In the year 1929 scores of these islands were occupied by fisher families.

  The fairest island of them all, as its name suggests, is Fair Island, a relatively flat island as far as the other islands that surround it go. With its south-facing front to the sea and the high islands, and an even higher mainland protecting it from the north, it was an ideal place to settle for people who depended on the sea. Just a short punt row or easy sail out of its wide, sheltered harbour were the fishing grounds. Like so many other settled islands and isolated coves around the coast of Newfoundland that relied heavily on the sea for its very existence, Fair Island was home to many schoonermen.

  * * *

  The late evening of Friday, November 29, 1929, was a raw, windy one on Fair Island. Several men had gathered around the wharves. Most of the boats had already been hauled out of the water, but there was one that hadn’t. Scuds of wind baffled through the tickle. Dark had come early. The lone trap skiff tied to one of the wharves was pressed solid against the wharf with the pressure of the wind, which appeared to be from the west but backing with flaws from the north. The boat was deemed to be safe enough. Two extra lines were fastened to it. The men stood in the lun of a stage and smoked tobacco and talked about the wind and the night. Backing from the north with the glass gone bottom up wasn’t a good sign. Then someone mentioned Skipper Charlie.

  “Don’t s’pose Skipper Charlie in the Janie is on the water d’night.” It was more of a comment than a rhetorical question.

  “Naw, Skipper Charlie is too smart fer dat, b’y. Sure, ’e got a glass aboard. Besides, I hear they got people what tells ’ee the weather long before it comes in S’n John’s.”

  “Well, if the man is on the water d’nite ’e’s in fer a rough go of it, I ’lows!”

  “Dere’s not much we can do fer ’im if ’e’s under canvas dis night. ’Tis a warm bed an’ me soft woman I’m headed fer!”


  And with that the men walked away to their separate homes. One of them crossed the beam of lamplight soaking out into the night from a bare kitchen window. For an instant the man’s shadow blocked the warm light as he passed. Then a squeaky door was opened and closed. A curtain was drawn, dulling the lamplight. And then all was silent, save for the moan of wind from the distant islands and the rote of the sea.

  * * *

  Skipper Charlie Rogers was thinking about his home in Fair Island, but he was far from it now and sliding farther away by the minute. His tough schooner was in trouble and he knew it. The wind howled like a blast from hell. The sudden gale had taken him completely by surprise.

  He had left St. John’s earlier that evening with several other schooners, all of them northbound. Nine of the schooners were from the north side of Bonavista Bay and the captains all knew each other. Skipper Charlie was respected by all of them, and in turn had a lot of respect for his fellow schooner captains. He hadn’t made his decision lightly, to leave the safety of St. John’s harbour with dark coming on. It was just the way of all fishermen everywhere to be competitive.

  During the fishing season, on any given morning around the coast of Newfoundland, lamplight from every kitchen would spill out into the pre-dawn dark. Doubtful mornings, when the weather was bad, it would only take the sight of one boat leaving the harbour to make them all to do the same. It was like that with the schooners.

  When Skipper Charlie’s good friend John Bishop slipped the lines from his schooner, the little Water Sprite, which was fastened to the outside of the Janie in St. John’s, Rogers’s mind was already made up. And following close behind his friend, the Janie E. Blackwood was the second schooner to cast her lines away from the shelter of the old harbour.

  The Janie Blackwood, or Janie, as everyone called her, with a gross registered tonnage of just sixty-nine, couldn’t claim a ton for each of her seventy-two-foot length. Built by the Fishermen’s Union of Port Union, Trinity Bay, in 1924, the Janie was now owned and commanded by the intrepid Edgar Charles Rogers, or, as he was better known, Skipper Charlie of Fair island.

  Standing before the mast with helm in hand, Charlie Rogers felt the first flaw of wind when the Janie fell behind the Water Sprite as they cleared the harbour and headed north for the open sea. It was not coming from the southeast, as he had thought. The bowl of the St. John’s port had been deceiving. He was sure the wind was coming out of the west, but it was difficult to tell with night already upon them under these walled headlands. Still, a west wind wasn’t a bad one for sailing north along by the land. It would simply mean a few extra starboard tacks.

  Crossing Trinity Bay could be a problem if the strength of the wind increased, but they could still make the sheltered seaport at Catalina that night and make it across the outer reaches of Bonavista Bay and get home the next day. It was the first deadly flaw of wind from the northwest roaring down off Sugar Loaf Head and Flagstaff Hill, just north of the St. John’s Notch, that concerned Rogers. He was sure their night voyage for home was a mistake, but he never mentioned it to his crew. It would only worry them.

  Skipper Charlie crossed the mouth of Torbay with its welcoming lights. He altered his course a bit farther to the north after he cleared Blackhead, and after passing the sleeping community of Pouch Cove he changed course again a bit east. The Cape St. Francis light, clearly visible on his port bow, warned him of the dangers of the shallow brandies under its lee, and Rogers allowed his vessel a comfortable berth around them. He had no intention of standing farther to sea than was necessary with the ever-increasing wind now hard from the northwest.

  The schooner crossed the outer edges of Conception Bay with little trouble, although the wind was breezing. By midnight they were passing under the light at Baccalieu Island and Rogers was already dreading the crossing of Trinity Bay. There was no sign of the little Water Sprite. Fred Hounsell, who stood beside Rogers on the open deck, said he thought he saw what he believed to be two schooner lights astern. However, a quick glance behind showed nothing, and Rogers concentrated on the bows of his vessel and didn’t look astern again.

  When he had put the Baccalieu light behind him, he glanced at the binnacle. With a firm grip he hauled the bows of the Janie around to magnetic north. This would take him across Trinity Bay and almost directly to the Green Island light guarding the south entrance to Catalina. Rogers knew that, bound north as he was, he must keep the Green Island light open with the south head of Catalina harbour until the Cape Bonavista light came into view.

  Everything Charlie Rogers had experienced during many crossings of Trinity Bay, both by day and by night, did not prepare him for the onslaught of wind that bore down on his vessel as she plunged into the fury of that cruel bay. The hurricane-force winds tore the tops away from the huge grey rollers. The spewed white spindrift from their frothing tops was the only source of light in that black night of misery. A constant deluge of icy spray tore across the open deck of the Janie as she made her torturous way to safety. Charlie thought they had made it across the worst that Trinity Bay could bring, but he was wrong.

  They were only what he estimated to be twenty miles from Green Island and the safety of Catalina harbour when the God Head Bay showed what it could really do. The furious wind came down out of the long bay with a blow that just kept on coming.

  The first of the schooner’s sails to go was the jumbo. Skipper Charlie regretted not hauling it down before he rounded Cape St. Francis, as was his intention. He hadn’t imagined such a furious attack of wind.

  Like bedsheets from a clothesline the sail shredded from its pins, and the Janie went heeling after them. Rogers ordered the other sails lowered and tied off for fear of losing them all. Away from the sheltering cove where her virgin keel had been laid, the Janie heeled before the wind. And standing before her bare poles, Charlie Rogers yelled a warning.

  To be astray on the boundless sea at night, in a fierce gale that continually bears you away from the precious land, presents a frightening dilemma to any experienced seaman. It is one thing for a man of the sea to deal with a dangerous situation when he has at least some degree of control, but quite another when that same man knows he has no control. A veteran like Rogers—when his vessel answered only to the howling winds and not to his steady hand on the helm—knew he was in bad trouble.

  Skipper Charlie’s yell of “All ’ands on deck” brought a sudden glimpse of light into the darkness as the forecastle door flew open. His first mate, John K. Rogers, was first to appear, and he was quickly followed by the rest of the crew. Even their passenger, Fred Cutler, was with them. He would not be a passenger for long. The last man out on the tossing, plunging deck closed the forecastle door, and the faint comfort of that glimmer of light disappeared. The men who stumbled aft on that rolling deck appeared as ghostly apparitions.

  Clustered around their captain and holding on to whatever they could, some of them to each other, the men couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The Janie was just about broadside to some of the wildest seas any of them had ever seen. Her masts were bereft of all her sails. The tattered skeins of sailcloth that remained on the halyards snapped and whipped, only adding to the cruel roar of the storm. When the heaviest of seas broached over the bulwarks, her decks went awash with the white spume. Her scuppers, roughly six inches high and two feet long running horizontally directly over the deck, could not take the water away fast enough to make room for the next attack. The rushing water fumed along the bulwarks, looking for escape. The schooner was in great danger of capsizing. Rogers stood braced before the helm just astern of the captain’s cabin.

  “Get a line far’d to hang on to! Be quick, by gawd, or we’re done fer!” Rogers shouted to no one in particular.

  Fred Hounsell raced to the inside port rail with Aubrey Cutler on his heels and untied a long hemp rope hanging there. The two men prepared to lay a safety line from the captain’s cabi
n, near the helm in the stern, to the bow section of the boat. It had to be done, but it was not going to be easy to do.

  “Rig a sea anchor!” Rogers roared to the other men. “Get it over ’er bows! Use whatever you can fine! Barrels and buckets, sailclot’ from the locker, anyt’ing! Tie it off and give it lots of scoop! We gotta get ’er bows to the win’ard! The scuppers’re not able to ’andle the water! The weight of it will broach ’er fer sure! Someone get a maul from below and widen the bloody scuppers!” The men half ran, half stumbled to do his bidding.

  Rogers had the big wheel as far over to port as it would go. It made only a marginal difference to the deadly sideways push of his schooner, but for the moment there was nothing more he could do to ease the strain on his rolling, sideways-pitching schooner. The immense weight of the water crashing upon her deck kept the vessel tilted dangerously to leeward. An extra channel to allow the burden of water to run off the deck had to be made, and he had to get the foundering bows of the Janie into the wind before she became seas awash.

  * * *

  He stared ahead and saw Hounsell and Cutler were returning aft, their hands clinging to the line they had successfully tied off. “Thank God fer that much at least,” Rogers mouthed into the wind.

  Now all of the men worked in desperation to fashion a crude sea anchor. At last a collection of wooden barrels, large pieces of sailcloth, galvanized buckets, and one empty puncheon were all lashed together. All of the men pulled the contraption to the weather side and, heaving as one, pushed it over the side. They paid out the line until the makeshift sea anchor had cleared the bows and floated and dragged on the boiling surface as intended. Then they tied on to the grump just ahead of the forecastle doors. At first it seemed as though their dangerous effort was all for nothing. Surely such a pile, of what now looked like no more than the tangled debris from a sunken vessel, would never work. But slowly the bows of the Janie began to turn, until in less than twenty minutes her proud bows were almost full into the tearing wind. The schooner was now “in irons.” The drag of their sea anchor was working!