The Gale of 1929 Read online

  Aside from general goods, the cargo that went aboard the Jennie Florence for the trip home was also different from the other northbound schooners. The inner villages of both Northwest and Southwest arms of Trinity Bay were largely logging communities.

  Many of them boasted modern sawmills powered by water wheels and steam. The mills had been started to cut timbers for the building of the Newfoundland railroad in the closing years of the nineteenth century. All of the timber was harvested from the sloping hills around the inner bays and winter-hauled by horse and sled directly to the sawmills. Even after the establishment of the railroad, though, the most common means of transporting lumber was by schooner. The skipper of the Jennie Florence had transported thousands of board feet of newly sawed lumber from her home port of Hillview to markets in St. John’s, as well as to the shipbuilding yard at Trinity, just a day’s sail out the bay. The Jennie had on board many items for supplying this logging and sawmill industry: rolls of wide leather belting manufactured in Canada and England and destined for pulleys on a sawmill in Trinity Bay were rolled aboard; smaller rolls of leather belt-lacing were carried aboard, as well as several hammer-driven belt-hole punches; tubs of hard grease to keep bearings cool; pounds of molten bavit, which the sawmillers used to pour their own steel shaft bearings; boxes of soap cakes to keep the hot bavit from sticking to the metal shafts during the pour; rotary saw teeth; saw blades, four feet in diameter; horse harnesses; bucksaws and axes; hand-held wood hooks and curved peaveys.

  The Jennie’s bow swung away from the wharf as soon as her forward line was let go. It was as if she wanted to keep ahead of the other schooners and not be the last one to leave. When her raising foresail luffed with the first of the wind she cleared the starboard bow of the Catherine B., which was also swinging away from the wharf. Stoyles’s friend Ellis Janes was at the Catherine B.’s helm. The two Trinity Bay schooners, with the Jennie Florence in the vanguard, were the first ones out of the harbour.

  * * *

  Out past the Narrows and venturing onto the roads of the North Atlantic the schooners dispersed like a herd of black sheep chased by a yapping dog. Though they were all headed north they all went their various ways. Soon only faint glimpses of swaying, winking oil lights against a black sky showed where in the distance. Then that night company, too, disappeared and the schooners were each on its own. The Jennie Florence went to the outer reach of her port tack to clear Sugar Loaf Head. Her helm was over for the starboard tack, which would take her as far north as Logy Bay, or, if the wind held to its southerly point, as far as Outer Cove.

  Then an unexpected blast of wind out of the northwest hit her port bow just as she was coming around. Stoyles had shortened his offshore tack. He had had a bad feeling about this night, but he was surprised at the suddenness, the viciousness, and the sheer weight of the wind. With the wind change came the quickly building seas. They looked even bigger in the darkness. He heard the mainsail rip first; even with the roar of wind in the rigging and the sound of crashing waves there was no mistaking the sound of renting canvas, a sailor’s most hated sound. Without sails they had little control of their vessel, they were at the wind’s mercy, and on this night the winds had none.

  The crew worked feverishly to get the foresail down before it, too, was swept away along with the mainsail. They downed the foresail just in time to save part of it. The luff side—where it was fastened to the foremast—had suffered a rip of fifteen feet or more from head to half-mast. It was difficult to tell in the dark. Her deck tilted and careened to one side as she went over before the wind. Her lee bow fell over a huge roller with a white cresting top and went under. For one moment that seemed to take an hour it appeared as though the schooner would not bear the strain, but she slowly rose and then shot up suddenly as yet another wave lifted her. The rush of water pouring away from her forward deck caused the schooner to vibrate and tremble all over. Now she was directly before the wind and plunged obediently on. The naked rigging thrummed. Somewhere above, on one of her masts, broken sheets snapped and whistled through the air like a cat-o’-nine-tails. Then it started to snow.

  * * *

  The schooner Jennie Florence, despite being recklessly tossed and carried steadily offshore, survived that night without further incident. With the daylight her crew mended her foremast and raised it double-reefed. Her fore-staysails, which were still intact, were set, and now with a measure of rudder control she tacked and beat for the hidden land to the west. She crept closer to that shore until noon of that day. Then, when it looked as though the schooner would win her fight, the gale blew fiercer still. They had no choice but to bear away downwind again.

  They smelled the smoke from the big ship before they saw her. Then they topped out on a huge grey roller and there she was, rising out of a grey trough to the east of them. It was the ore ship SS Daghild, which had left the iron ore mine at Bell Island and was sailing for Sydney, Nova Scotia. She was deeply laden with rich Newfoundland ore and the seas were breaking over her lowered deck. They immediately saw the Jennie’s distress signal, and so began an unrehearsed rescue that only men of the sea could perform. The Daghild, with her threshing prop sometimes breaking water in the swells, hove abaft of the Jennie Florence’s weather side. The men aboard the Jennie could not understand the foreign language shouted from the bridge of the huge ship. Only two words from the ship registered in the ears of the anxious schooner skipper.

  “Stand by!”

  An empty steel barrel flew over the taffrail of the ship as she passed. Attached to the barrel was a small line. The steamer rolled sideways, her steel bulwarks shipping sea water. The schooner, looking small and pitiful beneath the ship’s bulk, plunged and listed dangerously. The barrel drifted to the schooner’s port side, where it banged and boomed against the schooner, demanding urgent attention.

  A man with a rope tied to his waist ran across the washing deck. He snagged the barrel line and hauled it over the heaving side of the Jennie. He was joined by two other men and they fumbled with the knot for a second. Then they cut the line from the barrel. Back from the end of the smaller line, a bigger, four-inch bass tow cable, was hanked on by its bight. The heavy line strained as it knocked astern and drooped and lifted in the undertow. The weight of it alone could easily carry a man over the side. The three men got firm holds on the smaller line, and as quickly as possible they hauled it to the chains of the schooner. They could not drag or lift the heavy line out of the swelling seas by hand. Instead they fastened it to the windlass to haul it up over the pitching bows of the Jennie. The bight of the cable was wrapped twice over the Jennie’s main bollard. It draped and hung in the water between the two vessels, appearing and disappearing as the waves rose and fell. Then a steady stream of smoke poured out of the Daghild’s stack and the cable tightened. The Jennie’s bow was plucked around into the wind and, willingly, she followed her rescuer.

  She was towed to shelter under the land just outside the St. John’s Narrows. The tugboat Hugh D., which had already been messaged from the ship, came bursting out of the old seaport. The Jennie dropped the Daghild’s cable from her bow. The ship blew twice on her whistle, and with the crews on both ship and schooner waving she headed back to sea. The Hugh D. towed the schooner into the safety of St. John’s harbour, and just like that the Jennie Florence, which had been the first of the schooners to sail out through the Notch, was the first of the stricken schooners to return. She had been gone for less than twenty-four hours. She was one of the fortunate ones.

  11 Neptune II

  The end of the third decade of the twentieth century was one filled with firsts. Some of them were simple. Others were life-changing events that would have a worldwide effect. One such event was the discarding of the old Julian calendar and the adoption of the Gregorian one on January 1, 1929. That year also saw the first appearance of the cartoon character Popeye. It was one of the simple occurrences. May 16 of that same year produced,
for all those who could afford the venue, the very first Academy Awards show. Continuing in the burgeoning field of entertainment, a month later, on June 27, the first public demonstration of colour television appeared. The colour was indistinct, but as the springtime robin makes way for the more colourful summer birds, this new phenomenon ushered in more lifelike television images that were here to stay. There were no televisions, however, with or without colour, in any of the outports on the northeast coast of Newfoundland.

  Across the sea, in the place Christians regarded as the Holy Lands, some unholy events were happening. The Palestine riots, also known as the Western Wall Uprising, had been threatening major violence and finally erupted on August 23. By late evening of August 29, 113 Jews and 110 Arabs lay dead on dusty streets, shadowed by their own blood. They had fought using mostly primitive, hand-held weapons in a minor skirmish upon soil that had been warred over since before Christ. The news never even reached the isolated settlements of Newfoundland.

  Then on October 18 a major accomplishment was achieved in the nation of Canada. It was of great interest to a group comprising nearly fifty per cent of the entire population of the island of Newfoundland—women. In 1876 the British Court ruling had stated thusly: “Women are persons in matters of pains and penalties, but are not persons in matters of rights and privileges.” The Supreme Court of Canada agreed with the British Lords by making their own ruling, which stated, in part: “That the word persons did not include female persons.”

  Incredibly, it would take half a century for that nefarious ruling, which had been presided over by an all-male jury, to be overruled. This time it was done by the decades-long work of women, all five of them. They were from the province of Alberta. Their names were Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy, Louise McKinney, Henrietta Muir Edwards, and Irene Parlby. They became known as the Famous Five. They fought to have women included in and to be a part of “matters of rights and privileges.”

  William Lyon Mackenzie King was Canada’s Liberal prime minister. He presided over Canada’s sixteenth parliament. The Famous Five, after months of trying, finally acquired an audience with Canada’s governor general, the Viscount Willingdon of Rafton. The Persons Case, as it was now known, had already been debated in Canada’s highest court for two years.

  The governor general presented the women’s petition to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, and on the evening of October 18, 1929, Canada’s Supreme Court ruling was overturned. It was ordered to read, in part, “That the word person is to henceforth include the female gender.”

  On October 24, 1929, the day that became known as Black Thursday, made worldwide news. The American stock market came tumbling down. In just five days the New York Stock Exchange lost no less than $30 billion. Rich businessmen who were suddenly destitute jumped out of high-rise buildings to their deaths. Thousands of men and women were out of work. Prices of goods fell, including that of Newfoundland fish.

  November 18 brought another first. Off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter Magnitude Scale rumbled far beneath the ocean waves. Its explosion was muffled and heard by no one, but the underwater explosion tore apart twelve submarine telegraph cables. Its shock waves erupted out of the sea and sent a tsunami surging toward the unsuspecting south coast of the island of Newfoundland. The immense wave brought death and destruction with it and marked Canada’s most deadly earthquake. It was also the first tsunami to strike the northeast coast of America.

  A more pleasing and celebrated event occurred before this month was out. On November 29, Bernt Balchen, Captain Ashley McKinley, Harold June, and United States Admiral Richard Byrd flew over the very centre of the frozen South Pole. They were the first men to do so.

  * * *

  It took a few days for the news of the Famous Five event of October 18, 1929, to reach the coastal communities of Newfoundland. Some women heard the news from their husbands when they returned from the post office, where they had listened to the postmaster read the daily news. Most of the women never heard of it at all.

  Mary Sturge was sixteen years old and had long since done a woman’s work. She heard about the news up there in Canada from her employer. He hadn’t told it to Mary directly but to his wife, Pearl, and Mary had overheard him. He was the village schoolteacher. His name was Joseph Yetman, but Mary would never call him anything other than Mr. Yetman.

  Mary wasn’t sure if she was yet considered to be a woman. She knew women had been allowed to vote in Newfoundland since April of 1925, but she had to be twenty-one years old to exercise that right.

  Maybe when I’m old enough to cast my vote I’ll be considered a woman, she thought.

  Mr. Yetman had told his wife that Canadian women were now deemed by law to be persons. Strange, though, he had not said what women had been considered to be before that. Mary was “in service” and had been for the last six years.

  * * *

  “Really, Mom? You actually went to work when you were but ten years old?” Sophie Gill was astounded. She was sitting at her mother’s kitchen table and listening to her tell the story about the time the schooner Neptune II had gone adrift.

  “Oh, yes, my dear! Indeed I was!” Mary said wistfully. “And not only me. A good many more young girls just like me. Boys, too. But not in service like we girls were. They worked down on the wharves, the boys did, or out in the stages as soon as they were strong enough to lug a fish to the flake. Long before they were ten years old, too, mind you! But at day’s end they could go back to their own homes. Not us girls, though. We had to live where we worked. Just a few doors down from our parents, in some cases. We weren’t allowed to go home.”

  “Child labour,” said Sophie.

  “Well—maybe, but it wasn’t like that, Sophie, maid. Although the work we had to do was little more than slavery. Still, we weren’t forced to work, not really. It was just the thing we were expected to do. My parents loved me, as far as I know. It began with family work. Everyone was expected to help. To pull their weight, no matter how slight it was.”

  Mary looked out her window at two children playing in the snow beside the well-plowed road that ran by her door. The sight seemed to brighten her mood. She smiled the mischievous smile that Sophie loved so much. Then, as if on cue, she continued.

  “But we girls, though . . . I have to say, we didn’t know much about playing. Not much time for daydreaming, either, you know. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t working. Never wore a bright-coloured winter’s coat, either.”

  Sophie followed her mother’s gaze out the window. The two children were walking away. They were girls, dressed in warm, colourful winter jackets. Mary paused for a moment as if deep in thought. She watched her daughter, who was busily writing.

  “What a wonderful thing it is, Sophie, to have the ability to put your thoughts upon the page.”

  Sophie looked up. The tone of her mother’s words saddened her.

  * * *

  It was January 16, 2010, in the coastal community of Newtown on the northern edge of Bonavista Bay. Mary Sturge Blackmore was nearing her ninety-seventh year. Her full head of hair had lost its youthful auburn lustre and was now burnished with a silver-white sheen. Her eyes had lost some of their former aqua hue, and though they showed the faint rheumy signs common to old people, they were still bright and her mind was sound and clear.

  Mary had awakened early on this morning, as was her wont. She lived alone in the same two-storey house she had shared with her late husband, David Blackmore, who had died nine years before. She had made her way carefully down the stairs and turned on her radio. She filled the kettle and set it to boil for her morning tea before crossing her immaculate kitchen floor to the window.

  Not as many flags flying today as there was in 1930 on this day, she thought. It’s almost as cold, though. Minus six degrees, the man on the radio said behind her
. Mary still didn’t have the Celsius scale figured out, but she knew it was well below the zero freezing point on the Fahrenheit reading that she had grown up with. Outside her window it was snowing and thin drifts of snow scudded across her small garden.

  Her daughter Sophie was coming over this morning to ask about her memories of that long-ago time when news of the castaway schooner Neptune II finally came. My oh my, thought Mary, how times have changed! And isn’t it wonderful that they have.

  * * *

  Grey Islands is the name given to the two islands that stand to sea well north of the mouth of the long White Bay, on the east side of the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. Both islands were well-known to early European explorers, especially the French, who used the craggy islands as a fishing base in the sixteenth century. This was made evident by the writings of Jacques Cartier, who sailed into the Groais Islands Harbour in 1534 and mapped the islands thusly: “Les deux Belles Isles qui sont pres de cap Rouge.” As time and politics wore on, the islands came into English possession, and they of course soon dropped the French word Groais in favour of Grey, and the islands’ name held.

  The northernmost of the two islands, Groais Island, has an elongated shape and lies about seven or so miles from Cape Rouge on the mainland. The other island, the larger of the two to the south, is as misshapen as the huge island of Newfoundland, which lies in its lee. It is fifteen miles from land and is separated from its sister island by five miles of icy sea. It bears the name Bell Island. Of the two islands, it is here that can be found the only cove to provide suitable anchorage for harbouring vessels. It was given the appropriate name Grey Islands Harbour, and during the first few decades of the twentieth century it was still a thriving fishing community.

  All species of fish common to that piece of the North Atlantic, situated on the southernmost reach of the Labrador sea, were harvested. Black herds of spring-migrating harp seals, carried freely on vast ice floes of white, came mewling along by the bitter islands and stayed long enough to swell the ranks with their white-furred young, which were the prize of that fearless of all predators—the seal hunters.