The Gale of 1929 Page 14
“Now’s yer chance, b’ys! Beat some ’oles over the lee scuppers!”
Two men sprang to the lee bulwarks, their legs awash in the rushing white water. They hung on like men who had drunk too much and were staggering home from a time. The sound of the blows as they slammed the maul against the bulwarks again and again was lost in the howl of the wind. With a few more swinging blows, a few of the scupper holes tripled in size. In two places the bulwarks, complete with gunnels, were beaten and torn away from the schooner, and now the water eagerly gushed away from the churning deck.
The difference was dramatic. Now the vessel met the huge marching swells head-on. She parted some of them, but others were so high they came crashing down over her deck and raced toward the open bulwarks. For now the schooner at least had a fighting chance, a small means of defence against the might of an Atlantic storm.
All of the men crowded around their skipper. Some of them were clinging to the thin wooden railing that rimmed the low roof of the cabin just a few feet in front of the wheel. Rogers ordered his crew below again. There was nothing else they could do. Charlie’s first mate, John Rogers, who was also part owner of the schooner, stayed on deck with him. Both men stood beside the wheel and considered the gravity of their situation. But no matter how trying the conditions, Rogers would have a man at the wheel and a watch maintained on his vessel around the clock.
He was soaked to the skin and his body shivered against the cold. His oilskins were threadbare, especially at the elbows, knees, and shoulders. He had planned to buy a new suit when he was in St. John’s, but the low price finally offered for his summer’s voyage of cod—which he had no choice but to accept—changed his mind.
Now cold water leaked beneath his collar and trickled down his spine and chest, chilling his torso.
Sometime around 3:00 a.m. it started to snow, a wet, lashing snow that cut into the narrowed slits of a man’s eyes and stung like hell. Through the blinding snow, his sight was limited to no more than the length of his arm. Rogers figured their ordeal could only improve. However, their ordeal was only beginning and would get much worse.
* * *
On the small Fair Island, which for all who lived there was the pride of Bonavista North, the night of Friday, November 29, 1929, was dark and windy. Before dark, which had come early in that late autumn evening, the sky had seemed to press its cloud cover down among the distant mainland hills. A cold, dry west wind blew out of the bays and their forested islands. With the full spread of darkness, the wind backed from the north and increased in strength.
The fishermen as well as their wives were well aware of the adage, “The west wind that comes with the sun will die when day is done.” It was a tried and true saying, one that, although not one hundred per cent accurate, always gave hope that a gale of wind from the west—which started in the early morning—would go down with the evening sun. Equally known and more feared was another saying: “The wind that rises from the sun’s west bed will pay its debt and lace it with dread.” On this night the wild winds of early winter would, indeed, settle their debts.
The people who lived on this island at the very edge of the western ocean also knew well the wiles of sudden summer storms, and especially winter gales. Everyone on the island knew the Janie was due outbound from St. John’s any day now, and in fact many considered the schooner overdue. But the weather always played a major role in the schedule of vessels, especially the schooners under sail, which depended on the blows of unpredictable winds, and even the master of the Janie would not be bold enough to venture into the teeth of a storm.
Still, Skipper Charlie was not known for his patience while waiting in port when he wanted to be away for home. The man was a fearless, almost reckless seaman, born to stand before the mast of a free-sailing schooner. He loved nothing better than to stand with his legs braced against the roll of the deck, his eyes squinted against the spray as his vessel hissed along, her full sails as tight as the head of a new drum. He was known in every port, small and large, all along the northeast coast of Newfoundland. He often augmented his fishing earnings by coasting, the term used for the practice of freighting goods to isolated coastal communities. This activity took him far beyond the island shores of Newfoundland, to the north coast of Labrador. And in every harbour the captain of the Janie was simply referred to as Skipper Charlie.
Not only her home port of Fair Island relied on the Janie’s return. There were other isolated offshore islands in the area that eagerly awaited the jaunty schooner’s arrival. Across Fair Island’s wide tickle, on the landward side, other occupied islands with their mountain-like hills of stunted evergreens, deep-sheltered harbours, and snug houses waited for Skipper Charlie’s return. North of Fair Island, across the bight and to windward, the fishing settlement of Silver Fox Island loomed dark and solid against the lowering sky. Farther north and pocketed inside the safest of harbours was Newport, one of the few communities of the area located on the mainland. And across that wild ocean bight to seaward waited the Deer Islands, an upheaval of granite islands growing harsh and wild between the Lockers and Pitt Sound reaches.
When the schooners sailed north from St. John’s in the autumn with their holds well-burdened with commodities, and for once free of the stinking salt codfish, they were always warmly welcomed. Sailing south in the fall, the schooners laden with the summer’s voyage of fish were watched until they were hull down, but the first sighted sail of these same schooners returning back up over the rim of the autumn sea were heralded like warriors returning from a victorious battle.
It was an amazing thing! Islands separated by miles of cantankerous water, most of them with no means of communicating with each other, suddenly knew a schooner had returned from St. John’s! The word would spread from punt to punt on rolling fishing grounds. Up in the wooded bays where men chopped firewood and women picked berries, the word was carried farther.
“Seen ’er go nart’ yesterday. Long ways off, she was. But I figured ’twas the Janie, as she gen’ally sails two points off the win’. Den when she took ’er starburd tack—which as ye well knows steers ’er to port—I knowed fer sure ’twas Skipper Charlie of Vair Island.”
And: “Jest caught a glimpse of ’er last evenin’ long be dark time, it was. Seed ’er red light goin’ in under the land. Too small fer the Janie an’ she never went down ’long to the nart’. Bishop, in the Water Sprite, I ’lows.”
Men, spyglasses in hand, would stand in the high steeple of the Bragg’s Island church and, sighting across the five or so miles of water, would see the masts of several schooners tracing the sky above the barren land of Fair Island Tickle. They would identify the vessel by that distant etching alone and they were seldom wrong.
And so it would go. The schooners sailing back from St. John’s were the highlight of the season. Children would run laughing and screaming down the path to the wharf as the vessel shortened its sail, rounded the point, and crept into the harbour. Apron-clad wives would follow behind their excited children to see what, if anything, the schooner’s waist held for them. And behind all of them came the sombre, plodding inshore fisherman, who knew from experience that, save for the bare necessities, for him the schooner had brought nothing at all save for a pencilled statement that would indenture him for another year.
For not all of the outport fishermen went to the Labrador to fish for cod. This huge land north of the island of Newfoundland compared only with the far-off Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where nations from all over the North Atlantic fished for the prolific codfish. And though the Labrador fishery—like the one around the island—had provided seasons of plenty as well as a few summers of famine, it was still the most sought after. The floaters—seasonal schooners and crews fishing the Labrador Coast—could only provide so many berths. These were usually family members of the vessel owners who were not captains, or family and friends of the captains. Even then, the o
nes who were fortunate enough to have secured a berth aboard such a schooner were expected to work at all the preparations needed for outfitting such a voyage in the spring—for nothing. These people were known as being “in collar.”
This work would usually begin during the winter months. Sails had to be made or mended. Huge cod traps had to be crafted, their walls of twine fashioned and knitted in chilly twine loft as well as warm kitchen, by quick-handed fishermen flashing long wooden needles. Salmon and herring nets were repaired and new ones knitted. Plans were made, past seasons weighed and carefully thought out.
Spring came and the nets and traps and even some of the sails had to be barked. Huge iron cauldrons with hundreds of gallons of water in them were heated to boiling point alongside roaring fires. The new traps and nets had all been knitted with white twine and now they must be coloured. This process was as much preventive against sea rot as it was a measure to camouflage the linnet, or knitted twine, so the nets would fish better. Large chunks of bark, looking forever like the reddish-brown plugs of chewing or smoking tobacco, were thrown into the bark pots. The nets and traps were then stuffed in over the edge of the smouldering pot using gaffs and poles. The rendered bark stained the twine to its own tawny colour. After the twine had stained to the skipper’s liking, he pulled it dripping red from the bubbling water and spread it to dry on nearby wharves and smooth rocks. Small boats that would go to Labrador on the decks of schooners, and bigger ones towed behind, were caulked tight with skeins of tarry oakum and then painted. Empty wooden casks to hold cod oil were rolled aboard. Casks filled with fresh water were fastened on deck and barrels of flour stored below. Ropes and grapnels, balls of twine for the constant mending, tools to repair schooners and boats. Everything needed to maintain the boats, gear, and the men must be carefully planned. Nothing was left to chance, for once the island of Newfoundland vanished astern of a schooner heading north, all traces of assistance disappeared with it.
The fishermen who stayed behind ventured out to sea for miles in their one-masted sloops, or rowed with bent backs away from the land in small punts. They fished the inshore grounds as their kind had done for ages, and if the gods of the saltwater fishes favoured them. By late autumn they, too, had codfish ready for market.
The schooners returning from the Labrador fishery were usually well-laden. The fresh, wet cod stored below their decks, and buried with the added weight of hundreds of pounds of coarse salt to preserve it, was very heavy. The same fish weighed hundreds of pounds lighter when stored again aboard the same schooner, after being spread on willowy flakes and laid down on every available smooth rock to dry and cure and finally be made by wind and sun. This made room for the enterprising schooner captains to carry extra freight. For a price, the fish, caught around the islands and shores and skilfully cured, were weighed aboard and a tally was carefully kept. Subtracted from the tally was the list of provisions the fisherman hoped to get for his catch, either from island shopkeeper or St. John’s merchant. In either case he rarely received any hard cash for an entire summer’s work. The tally was weighed against the pencilled list of necessities, and it always seemed the list was found wanting.
The people who chose to live around the terrible coastline of Newfoundland were a hardy breed. Their roots had long since been torn from another group of Atlantic islands. From the British Isles, north to the Hebrides and south to the Scilly Isles, they had immigrated for a better way of life. And from all over Ireland, independent and fiercely proud people had left forever their native soil, only to toil and forge their determined way on a much bigger island. But here the land, though wild and rough almost beyond measure, became their own.
Out of necessity, the newcomers quickly became subsistence farmers, hunters, and gatherers, and the best fishermen afloat on any of the world’s salt seas. From out of the sea came the bulk of their existence. Cod and herring, capelin and salmon, squid, mackerel, and scavenging lobster. Migrating seals, sleek-sided dolphins, white polar bears, porpoises, and whales. And over the sea came flying great flocks of all manner of seabirds. All were harvested.
The virgin land, too, yielded up its bounty for those who foraged its sylvan depths. Firewood for heat was as important on these winter coasts as food itself. Logs for houses and boats. Logs for wharves and sheds and furniture. Logs for coffins.
Berries by the barrel. Fur-bearing foxes, muskrat, and beaver. Swift-swimming otter, rabbits, and sweet-roasting black bears. Warm-haired caribou and, later, huge moose.
They raised multicoloured hens and fattened pigs. All would fill the larders of the outport people. Out of the shallow mineral soil they coaxed precious vegetables. And beneath the sod of that same nourishing earth they cellared them away from the winter’s frost.
But there were other necessities of life that neither the rich land nor the bountiful sea could provide. Flour for their daily bread and the butter to spread on it. Tea and sugar, as well as molasses to make that brew more palatable, would come in the returning schooners. Wheels of yellow cheeses wrapped in clothlike meshes. Bolts of coarse cloth, spools of fine thread, and the silvery needles to fashion and mend clothing. Skeins of colourless wool for the knitting of warm socks and mittens. Rubber boots cherished by the fishermen, and shoes for women and children. All manner of cordage and bales of twine, buckets of tar, and barrels of nails. Even a barrel of sweet apples, and, if they were lucky, a barrel of oranges—a rarity for most of them, and only seen in the late fall—just in time for a Christmas treat at the bottom of a few carefully hung stockings, and the decorative orange peels spiralling on Christmas trees. All would come out of the bulging holds of the schooners sailing home from St. John’s, a place only a few of these isolated citizens would ever see.
Charlie Rogers was well aware of how precious the cargo so carefully stored below the heaving deck of the Janie was to his people. He knew the feeling of being the first schooner back from St. John’s. It was similar to the feeling of being the first one home from the Labrador with his schooner laden to the gunnels with its summer catch. He had been the highliner many times. But on this night Charlie secretly doubted if he would ever see his beloved Fair Island again.
He wondered if Hannah knew he was adrift on the sea on such a night. He hoped she didn’t know.
* * *
Hannah, Charlie’s good-looking woman of just thirty-seven years old, was worried, indeed. Despite the assurances of the men, as well as the women of Fair Island—that her husband was sheltered away in some safe harbour somewhere—she knew he wasn’t. Perhaps he had not left the safety of St. John’s harbour, or, if he had, he had taken shelter from the storm in Catalina, Port Union, or even around the cape to Bonavista. It was the normal thing for schooner captains to do. Rarely was their freighting as simple as sailing from one port to another. It was usually a series of well-made plans of taking advantage of favourable winds. Days were often spent in distant harbours waiting for a good time along, and it was an even more common occurrence during the stormy months preceding winter. Men who still kept their time by the turn of the tide, and who still trusted to the age-old ways of studying wind patterns and the skies, would take calculated risks.
Charlie’s wife knew all of this. This wasn’t her first time staring out to sea wondering if her man would return before the day turned black. She, too, knew the ways of wind and wave. As the wife of a schoonerman, she had spent as many hours searching for that first glimpse of a distant sail as had the man for whom she so anxiously waited.
Charlie was on the sea. If Hannah were asked how she knew this, she would not be able to answer. Nor would she share her fears with anyone. For her it was an inherent fear that is common among women the world over, an instinctive gift of feeling, a premonition of future events. Maybe the sudden viciousness of the storm had triggered it in Hannah, this trick of nature that lures knowledgeable men of the sea out onto a night ocean where they should not go. Maybe it is the bo
nd of love that enters into the blood of the true lover; so that when one enters into a dangerous flow, the other feels the ebb. It mattered little to Hannah the reason why. She simply knew that, on this cruel night, her fearless husband was in the worst trouble of his life.
Stepping lightly up the stairs, she entered the bedroom and tucked the blankets under the chins of her three sleeping children. The two boys, Ronald at thirteen years and Lester at eight, had asked before she had sent them off to bed when she expected their father. She had told them not for a day or so yet. When she leaned in over her six-year-old daughter, Ethel, the child stirred as her mother’s warm lips gently brushed her cheek.
Hannah stood, lamp in hand. Wishing for the sweet oblivion of a child’s sleep, she walked away. The light followed her shadowy figure, never revealing the wide-open eyes of young Ronald. Back down the shadowed stairs the quiet figure crept, alone with the terrible uncertainty of a missing mate and the burden of responsibility that all women bear.
In the kitchen Hannah lifted the cover from the warm stove. Inside, on the grate, there remained only a few coals glowing with heat. Gripping the teakettle in her hand, she poured the contents on the hot coals. The water popped and steamed. Satisfied there wasn’t a trace of fire left in the stove, she replaced the cover. She was deathly afraid of fire and would never go to bed with even one spark in the stove below her sleeping children. She looked out the window again as she had been doing at regular intervals all day and night. The wind howled and tore across the island like a banshee and the house shook with the force of it. Hannah could see nothing but blackness, as she knew she would, but through the single pane of glass she could plainly hear the fearful rote of the sea. She sat for a moment on the chair next to the window. The woman who stared back at her in the glass could have been any woman. Any lover. Any mother. Any wife who will forever stare and search and faithfully wait for her man to come back over the slope of the sea.