The Gale of 1929 Page 21
A fuming Bishop, not showing any of his usual patience, paid cash for the two smaller sails and went out of the sailmaker’s shop and slammed the door behind him. The sailmaker, who was a timid man, jumped as the door slammed shut, and he just remembered he hadn’t asked Bishop if he was going to pay—in advance—for the rest of his order.
* * *
That night the wind shifted from southeast to north and then northwest. The only cloth left on the Lloyd Jack was the two new sails. Bishop ordered her helm down, and with her back to the wind’s full fury, the vessel fled south with it and disappeared into the Atlantic night. In would be no less than twenty days later before the schooner made land again, and during all of that time not one sign was seen of the schooner Lloyd Jack. She was feared lost with all hands.
In the village of Wesleyville, the families of the Lloyd Jack’s crew had never given up hope, though there were some in that community who doubted the schooner had survived. They never voiced their doubt to anyone, though. They would not be heeded, anyway. It was known that the Lloyd Jack had left St. John’s harbour around the same time as the schooner Neptune II. The Neptune II was from Newtown, just a few miles north of Wesleyville, and she had not being heard of either. All of the other schooners that had gone adrift in that wicked November gale had been accounted for. Some had been wrecked at sea. Some had been towed back to port. But the smallest one of them all, the little Water Sprite, had made it back to port unaided. The Water Sprite was skippered by another member of the Bishops of Bonavista North: John Bishop.
Mid-December came with winter blows that seemed never to let up, and always the wind blew away from the land. Christmas was near, but no one in Wesleyville was in the traditional outport Christmas spirit yet. Each time when news came of another schooner’s safe arrival back to land, the spirits of the people of Wesleyville were lifted and buoyed afresh.
The only means of modern communication was in the village post office, in the form of telegraphy. The postmaster, who was also Morse code receiver and dispatcher, waited daily for news. News of public interest came at a set time each day, usually in the evening. When the little machine with so much power sitting on his lone desk became animated, he carefully copied its messages.
Between his office and the porch that led to the outside was a low, narrow wicket through which mail was handed and news relayed. But as each passing day brought no news from the Lloyd Jack, the crowds who eagerly waited for comforting news grew until the porch could not hold their numbers. The postmaster now went outside each day at the appointed time for news and, standing without coat or hat, read from the writing of his own longhand. Children and adults waited in complete silence, huddled against the bite of wind careening over that barren land. With great anticipation they feared the postmaster’s words but longed for them nonetheless. The postmaster, who knew every man aboard the Lloyd Jack and was friends with most of them, shook his head sadly before he even looked at his single sheaf of paper.
The news the man had to tell those who so anxiously waited was not bad, but it wasn’t anywhere near good news, either. With the exception of the three-masted schooner Neptune II out of Newtown, the Lloyd Jack was the only schooner not accounted for. The man added that not one sighting of the schooner had been reported from the three steamships sent by the Newfoundland government to search for the missing fleet. The last two schooners had simply disappeared. Maybe the two schooners were at sea together, someone suggested hopefully, but the words came without comfort. The crowd shuffled away, murmuring among themselves over the drifting snow–covered lanes. As they passed the church built on a knoll just up from the sea, two men descended a ladder that led to the high, peaked roof. They had been searching the sea in vain for evening sails. Walking behind the scattering crowd, their shadows blended with the others.
* * *
When the wind veered viciously out of the north and west on their first night out, the Lloyd Jack was nearing the entrance to Catalina harbour. They had made it across Trinity Bay. The lights from Catalina twinkled. Then came a roar of wind that still could not hide from Skipper Bishop’s ears the hated sound of tearing sailcloth. Both the main and topsails ripped from their gaff topsails to their clews. The sails luffed and flapped when they spilled their wind, like the broken pinions of giant birds. Bishop ordered the torn sails down and furled, before they were destroyed beyond repair. He cursed the St. John’s sailmaker for not having his full complement of sailcloth ready. The new sails held, but they were stretching as new sails will. Bishop ordered frequent tightening of the sheets to allow for it.
Among the thousands of pounds of other goods, the Lloyd Jack had stored in her holds twenty-five tons of loose coal and five tons of loose salt. Lashed to her deck were 200 steel barrels of gasoline and kerosene. But, as Bishop put it, despite her weight the Lloyd Jack was tossed about as though she were nothing more than a bull bird in Bonavis’ Bay. Bishop wasn’t about to take a chance on trying to keep his heavily laden schooner before such a wind without at least a reefed mainsail. And so, with all of the crew on deck soaked and shivering, many of them without oilskins, Bishop carried his vessel before the wind. In the black of this violent night there was nothing more he could do.
It was nearing dark on the next day when the deck cargo started to loosen. Their lines were lashed tighter and they added more rope, but it was no use. The wind, which had slacked briefly, had increased to gale-force again, bringing with it blinding scuds of snow. The constant wrenching, and sideways deck roll, the pitch and plunge of the schooner’s bows, and the mountains of crashing water sluicing around and against the barrels slackened the ropes as quickly as they were retied. Bishop decided to jettison all of them.
It was a gut-wrenching decision for him to make. To him it was like throwing money over the side, and there was no insurance to cover discarded cargo. He consulted with others of his crew and they all decided it had to be done. Visions of loaded steel drums tumbling loose on an uncontrolled deck were in everyone’s mind. They had heard of one schooner whose aft cabin had been shattered to pieces by stampeding barrels. Another story was told of a barrel that had been thrown against the forecastle hatchway and had tumbled down the steps, breaking timbers as it went. Holed bulwarks during such an event were as common as the breaking of limbs.
The decision to dump the heavy barrels overboard, though a difficult one, was just as difficult to carry out. The drums, each filled with fifty gallons of gasoline and oil, weighed as much as 300 pounds per drum. Someone suggested chopping open the barrels and letting the seas wash it out through the scuppers. It would then be an easy matter to toss the empty drums over the side. But Captain Bishop, who had seen a spilled barrel of oil on his deck once before, said no. It would take days, he said, for the slippery oil to be washed from the deck, and weeks before the smell of it left the vessel.
It took nearly three hours for several of the crew to dump the last of the drums over the side. The ropes that restrained them could only be released one at a time for fear that all of them would be set loose. The time had to be gauged just right between particularly high seas and relatively lower ones. When the chance came the barrels were hurried by use of swinging boom to the lee side one by one and quickly lifted over the washing bulwarks. The filled drums dropped with a chunking sound and bobbed on the tormented surface alongside the schooner for a while before disappearing below the frothy waves. When the last of the barrels had been thrown from the Lloyd Jack the only thing remaining on her now significantly less cluttered deck was the securely tied trap skiff, which, if it was necessary, would become their lifeboat. The whole time it took to jettison the freight, Eldon Bishop had managed to keep his schooner, for the most part, in irons before the wind.
Almost as soon as the task was completed the wind increased in its fury. Huge waves came at them like great watery dams. So intense were the oncoming waves that, as the schooner remained virtually neutral in
her movement, there came the vertigo of an intended fast forward motion where there was none at all. When the three largest of the waterfalls had broken over her raking bows and had dumped their icy contents on her deck, the master of the Lloyd Jack followed his instincts again and heeled away to leeward, with the gathering seas in hot pursuit.
* * *
Everyone who saw her agreed that the Lloyd Jack was a good-looking schooner that had a fine cut to her. She had broad flaring bows and a rakish stem tipped with a long bowsprit. Her clean lines, which traced over a graceful bulge amidships of a full twenty-three feet, followed her seventy-eight-foot length aft, veered upward toward her sloping stern, and ended below a semi-round taffrail. She was built in LaHave, Nova Scotia, in 1899, and after sailing the seas for nearly thirty years she was well past her prime. She was originally a banker and, employed in that offshore fishing trade, sailed out of St. Jacques in Fortune Bay with the name D.M. Owen scribed on her bows. As she aged the vessel was sold and, with the same name, found her way to Notre Dame Bay on the east coast of Newfoundland. She changed hands again, to the Robertses of Wesleyville for a time. By now it was 1925 and the Lloyd Jack had sailed the waters of Newfoundland for more than a quarter of a century without repair, and it was doubtful the schooner could be salvaged. Her owners decided not to repair the schooner.
Noah Bishop was another well-known schoonerman from Wesleyville. In the autumn of 1925 his schooner, the Bessie S., sank on the northeast side of Newman Sound, near Happy Adventure in the central part of Bonavista Bay. Noah needed a schooner for the following spring. On board the Lloyd Jack in Wesleyville harbour, Bishop discerned that the schooner was sound enough below her waterline, but, as is the case with most wooden vessels, she was in decay above it. He offered Roberts a one-time, take-it-or-leave-it price for the schooner. Roberts accepted and the Bishops took ownership.
The Bishops were hard-pressed to get the vessel ready for the following spring. Undaunted, they hauled the schooner far enough on the land to walk around her stern at the highest of tides. They stripped her of her rotting structure to just below the Plimsoll line. Next they bought the long planks needed for her deck and hull, but the sturdy knees and crooked timbers required they cut themselves. This was not easy to do. The north end of Bonavista Bay is not especially blessed with stands of timber, but inland from its barren coasts, several species of trees grow in abundance. All that winter the Bishops—along with the crew who would sail in their restored schooner—cut by axe and bucksaw and hauled by horse and sled enough timber to repair the big schooner. Richard Sturge was considered to be the best boat builder on the north side of Bonavista Bay. Noah hired him to do the work on his schooner, and by spring she was ready. Considering his vessel was more than half new, Bishop figured she should also have a new name. One that would reflect his family. It was said that changing the name of a vessel that had undergone extensive repairs wouldn’t bring her bad luck, but Noah Bishop wasn’t superstitious, anyway. Besides, with a name like Noah, the biblical boat builder, how could he be wrong? And so, while the Arctic ice floes still choked every cove and inlet of the coast, she was launched. Without champagne, but with much cheering and family pride, the schooner went down to the sea again, and on her brand new bows she wore the names of Noah Bishop’s two grandsons—Lloyd and Jack.
* * *
Standing on the deck of the schooner, Lloyd Bishop, who had given the vessel the first part of its name, was concerned but unafraid. He knew his grandfather Noah was a fearless schoonerman. The stories about his feats of seamanship had been told again and again around the kitchen table. There were stories about his father, Eldon Bishop, too. Lloyd was beginning to see why. His father seemed fearless. He didn’t know when his father slept. He was seldom away from the open deck for more than an hour at a time. Even then he simply entered his cabin near the helm and lay down in his berth for a nap without removing his wet clothes. He had never seen him forward in the forecastle. There was something else, too. Lloyd had never seen his father with a scraggly beard. In fact, everyone aboard, himself included, wore beards, not of their choosing.
His father had informed them days ago their supply of fresh water had to be rationed. He had no idea how long they would be at sea; he told them this straight out. There would be no water for shaving. They could try salt water, but he had tried it once, he said, and it got all frothy when it heated and it burned his face like hell. Neither would there be any water for washing. He didn’t give a damn, he said, how long their beards grew or how scruffy their skin. The limited water supply was for drinking only.
An empty pipe tobacco can, its sides emblazoned with Big Ben—a horse—was hung near the water barrel. Each man was allowed one full tin—about one pint—of water a day.
Noah Best was the cook aboard the Lloyd Jack. He wasn’t doing much cooking on this trip and the shortage of fresh water wasn’t the main reason. Cooking a scoff of vegetables in salt water didn’t matter much to men whose diet consisted of salty foods. Fresh codfish was cooked in salt water and they ate salt cod almost daily. Codsheads, salted capelin, and salmon, along with barrels of pickled herrings were salted down for the winter. Slaughtered pigs were salted, as well as seabirds. Salted green cabbage leaves and even the white heads were considered a delicacy. Along the shores of Newfoundland, the world’s most plentiful of spices was the main preservative of foods.
It was the constant yaw, pitch, and side-to-side roll that was causing Noah so much grief. Even with the wire strap he used to keep the pot secured to the bogie rail, liquid still spewed out of the big bosun kettle and onto the floor. Despite the cook’s frequent mopping the floor in an effort to keep his galley clean, the floor was perpetually slippery. Added to the cook’s woes were the frequent watch changes. Presently he heard the forecastle door slam open. Another watch change. Noah waited for what he knew was to come.
A dark figure appeared in the companionway above his head.
“Be quick wit’ the door,” he shouted up to the hunched-over man climbing backward down the ladder.
The man reached above his head and started to haul the vertical door shut, but not before Noah saw the surge of sea water race across the schooner’s deck, lick up over the edge of the coaming and pour down the steps. The water dropped from step to step ahead of the man, spraying as it fell. When it reached the floor it rinsed and flushed over the grimy surface with every motion of the schooner.
“Oh, ’tis you, Noah Kean.” Noah Best always called the other Noah by his full name. “I didn’t know ’ee wit’ yer back turned.”
Noah Kean stood on the floor of the forecastle and wrung the water out of his mitts before he answered. The water from his drenched clothing dripped endlessly.
“Oh, das a’right, Cook. If we don’t soon get a shave an’ a good wash, I ’lows no one’ll know us be the front er the back!”
The cook rubbed his bearded face at the reminder. “You know what, Noah Kean? I t’inks I’m startin’ to like it. One t’ing I’ve come to notice about havin’ a beard. Me face seems to be a bit warmer when I’m on deck.”
Being a cook was only part of Best’s duties. In a blow he also helped on deck. He was a competent deckhand and his services on this trip had been required as much above deck as below.
“Find a spot to ’ang yer cuffs above the bogie, Noah Kean. If ye can. Mind ye, don’t drop ’em into me pot, now.”
Noah Kean looked into the coverless pot half-filled with beans and onions and junks of salt beef simmering on the stove as he hung his mitts to dry. “Oh, scunner beans, is it!” he exclaimed. “Loves ’em, I do! Will ’ee be havin’ spoon duffs wit’ ’em, too?”
The cook was standing over the table peeling carrots and turnips with a big knife that looked more suited to cutting the throats of cods than it did for peeling vegetables. He crossed the floor with a big pan filled with the chopped and diced vegetables, then dumped them into the
pot and stirred the contents. The dark red of the salt beef and the bright orange and yellow colours of carrot and turnip blended with the white navy beans and onions as he stirred. Neither man spoke or seemed to notice the water slick washing back and forth across the floor.
“Did ’ee ever see me cook scunner beans wit’out makin’ spoon duff? Sure, the ’ands would be surlier dan a cat smeared in cod oil if I didn’t cook the duff fer ’em.”
Noah Kean pulled another pair of mitts that were more warm than dry from the hooks above the stove. The two men talked briefly about the gale they had been in for so long, about what their families must be going through at home. Noah Kean made ready to climb outside again.
“You know what, Cook?” He grinned. “I been t’inkin’ ’ard on it, an’ dis is ’ow I figures it. If one Noah could survive fer forty days and nights adrift, two Noahs should double the time wit’ no trouble a’tall.”
Both Noahs laughed at the comment, and Noah the cook watched as Noah Kean climbed the ladder. He heard the roar of wind as the door opened, caught a glimpse of sullen sky, and watched as the eager water washed over the coaming and trickled down the stairs again. Without saying a word he crossed the floor, mop in hand.
* * *
During the course of their lengthy ordeal at sea, the Lloyd Jack’s handlers had brought their schooner in sight of land several times, but each time the intensity of the storm drove them back to sea. The incredible duration of sustained winds was as nothing any of them had ever experienced. They had spotted seven ocean-going steamers in total. Their time out in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream had been an anxious one with the ever-present fear of being cut down by one of these huge ships. It would not be the first time. All the schoonermen believed that many of the schooners lost at sea had in fact been rammed by ocean-going ships, especially at night. Skipper Bishop hauled lighted lanterns aloft from his gantlines before dusk of each day.