The Gale of 1929 Read online

  Before the two men had finished talking, they had to shout to be heard. Another blast of wind broadsided the schooner and the wheel was almost wrenched out of John’s hands.

  “Get the boys on deck,” John yelled to Nathan. “We have to reef ’er. And drop the jumbo, too.”

  The wind still came from the southeast, but the sudden flaw had seemed to be backing from the west. Besides the captain and his daughter, Hazel, and his son, Nathan, there were seven others aboard. Nathan Gaulton, Norman Stockley, George Windsor, Israel Wicks, Wilfred and James Bishop, and Stanley Best made up the rest of his crew. The men were soon on deck and ready for action. By now the wind was almost a full gale. They made a reef in the foresail and the fore-staysail and lowered and secured it on deck. For the moment the schooner was still under control, but she was hard to hold. They were farther away from the land than Bishop would have liked, especially at night.

  Nearly six hours later the Water Sprite was nearing Baccalieu Island on the north end of Conception Bay. The Baccalieu light, though far away, was plain to all on deck. The men had run a heavy safety line from the wheel post to the forecastle opening, a common practice aboard a schooner during rough weather. The wind was increasing at an alarming rate.

  “Lower the main boom, boys, and lash the mains’l tight to ’un. An’ take another reef in the fors’l. I’m goan to come to the first chance I can get.”

  To come to or heave to meant to haul the bow of the vessel directly into the wind or as near to it as was possible. While the schooner would be borne astern by the gale, it was far better than been swept away before the wind with little or no control. With nothing more than a few yards of canvas for control, it required great seamanship to accomplish. There was no sign of the Janie Blackwood’s light now.

  It took several tries to get the schooner as close to the wind as he wanted. It was now nearly gale-force from the south and veering farther west and kept casting the boat off. Just when the determined crew of the Water Sprite had the vessel more or less under control, the wind would move farther around the compass.

  Without any visible sign of change in wind or wave, they were suddenly enclosed within a vortex of driven cold rain and hurricane-force wind. There was nothing to do but hold her bows to the fury of the storm and pray.

  All that terrible night the little schooner held her own under her handlers. The men took turns at the wheel, with Bishop standing the longest of watches. Pushing against the wind, the Water Sprite seemed to be riding at anchor. Her bows heaved aside what swells they could and severed the rest as they came at her.

  Saturday morning gave them no relief. The temperature dropped and the snow came as a blinding white curtain, coming from all sides, surrounding the schooner. The weather conditions deteriorated so badly on Saturday that Bishop ordered all hands below. There was nothing anyone could do on the deck of the storm-tossed schooner. With the wheel lashed securely to its post and the sheets in the reefed foresail doubled, they abandoned the deck of the Water Sprite.

  * * *

  Many times during that long day, one of the men would slide the forecastle door open enough to peer out. It was not a pretty sight. The nineteen-foot-wide deck of the Water Sprite was constantly awash. Yet after each onslaught of water, she rose again and again, undefeated.

  The Water Sprite was one foot shorter and two feet wider than her original construction. Her first registered displacement remained as it was, just fifty tons. She had been built for Thomas Foote of Grand Bank, Fortune Bay, Newfoundland in 1893, in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. One of the oldest boat-building towns in North America had done a good job with the schooner, whose timbers were of stout seasoned oak. The men below, who watched her wooden skeleton flex and bend, silently praised the workers at every protesting groan the schooner made.

  Local craftsmen, too, had had a hand in the vessel’s strength. The Water Sprite had been rebuilt just seven years before, in 1922. Stephen Bourne had been the man in charge of making the schooner shorter as well as giving her width a two-foot increase for safety. When the schooner left the place of her reconstruction in Safe Harbour, Bonavista Bay, she looked brand new again. She was in fact thirty-six years old, the oldest of the fleet. Most of her original oak frame still kept her afloat.

  Saturday night came and the fight continued. The snow had stopped, but their jumbo had vanished without a trace. The foresail had taken a couple of rents, but they could be easily mended with awl and needle when the weather proved more favourable. A three-sided box that partially enclosed the wheel had shifted sideways. The ropes around the wheel itself had saved it, and the crew were relieved to see it could be repaired. A keg of blackstrap molasses had broken free of its lashings and gone over the side. More than likely it had broken on the bulwarks, as evidenced by a couple of pieces of its staves, still sticky with the sweet sugarcane sap, laying awash on the deck as if searching for the scuppers.

  Now it was Sunday morning and still the hurricane showed no sign of releasing the schooner. Down below, one of the men began singing a hymn. The young girl joined in, though she didn’t know all of the lyrics. The seaman continued until the song was finished, and after that no one said anything for a while.

  “Amen,” said Hazel in an unsure voice.

  “Amen,” came from one of the men deep in the shadows beyond the triangle-shaped table.

  “Amen,” said each of the others.

  “’Ere endeth the first lesson,” said Bishop. With that, he climbed the ladder and went out on deck.

  * * *

  They endured Sunday night as the night before. Amazingly, despite the terrific pounding she was taking, the Water Sprite showed no major leaks.

  “When Steve Bourne carks a plank, she stays carked,” Stanley Best said to no one in particular below decks. It was a bit past midnight, the time of night seamen call the middle watch. Some of the crew slept for a spell. John Bishop sat up from his bunk, his eyes staring at the smoky lantern swaying in the gimbal above his head.

  “Was the mast’ead light filled fer the night?” His voice betrayed his weariness.

  “Filled it meself and ’auled ’er aloft on the gantline, Skipper,” said Israel Wicks. “Though mind ye the lantern is not so bright as it was.”

  “We ’ave to keep a light out. Dere could be steamers about—starm er no starm. Dis one will only look like a turr in Bonavis’ Bay to dem ships.” Bishop looked at the bunk nearest the stove, where his daughter was silently sleeping.

  A lump of emotion rose in his throat. He had heard in St. John’s that it wasn’t until last month—October 18, if he remembered right—that women were considered persons. Passed up there in Canada, it was. It was law now, they said. Women were finally persons! What were they considered before that, he wondered—animals? And what did that make his sleeping daughter then, he wondered, she not yet a woman. Did they figure children weren’t persons either? All people were persons to him, male or female. It was simple. He couldn’t understand any other way of thinking.

  “You know what, b’ys? I fancy the luns’r longer than the flaws. I always heard that was a sign of a dyin’ wind.” Wilfred Bishop was usually quiet. He also always thought long before he said anything. His single statement was a wonderful hope.

  James Bishop was curled in his blankets like a dead man. Everyone looked his way when he spoke.

  “I bin noticin’ the same t’ing fer the last hour or so. Maybe the starm will soon be done wit’ us.”

  His voice, too, sounded hopeful, unafraid, and—something more. It was as if he were saying, “We’ve come through the worst of it, b’ys. It can’t get any worse.”

  John Bishop settled back onto his narrow bunk. There could never be a better crew, he thought. Through it all, not one word of complaint came from any of them. Maybe the boys were right about the wind giving out. After all, it had been blowing for days. It coul
dn’t last forever. And besides, all in all they were in pretty good shape—considering. He felt better.

  * * *

  Monday morning came up over the eastern sea reluctantly with the wind still hard out of the northwest. The gale had lost most of its might and the huge swells still marched toward them without relent, but the tops weren’t blowing off them as they had been. The cloud cover seemed thin, as if it would soon clear.

  “All ’ands on deck! We’ve drifted far enough. Time to be gettin’ dis bloody vessel back to lan’.” John Bishop’s voice was loud and clear, sure of his decision. Manropes or safety lines still ran all over the deck, as the vessel was still rolling and pitching dangerously. Hazel wanted to help, but her father ordered her below. She closed the door and obeyed.

  Ice was chopped and hammered and heaved over the sides, and when it fell on deck it was sluiced out the scuppers in broken pieces. The downed main boom had frozen to the deck. They tried to prise it free and—unbelievably—it broke. This was a devastating blow; they needed a mainsail. They secured a triangular jib to the fore-topmast stay and kept the foremast double-reefed. By midday the Water Sprite had turned into the wind and was beating west toward land. After nearly four days of being borne astern by a relentless wind, the feeling of actually making some headway was a jubilant one.

  The men sprang to the skipper’s bidding and repaired the wheel housing. They laboriously unfurled the mainsail from its mast. The break in the huge pine spar wasn’t as bad as they thought. It could be scarved with pieces of square balk stowed below deck.

  All day and into the night the valiant schooner made slow progress toward land that was still out of sight. Twice on this night they saw a faraway light. At first they thought it could be a lighthouse, but they reasoned it was impossible. They had drifted too far off shore to see land yet. They determined it was a masthead light bearing away toward the west. Maybe it was the Janie Blackwood.

  Monday night saw a constant hand on the helm. The men spelled each other at regular intervals. They kept the binnacle light, and the compass guided them northwest. Despite the constant tacking and reaching across the wind, the Water Sprite gradually gained water for home.

  Mid-morning Tuesday saw a major change in the Water Sprite’s chance to make land. The crafty crew had laid two heavy pieces of squared lumber against the split in the boom. The splint was fastened with a few rusty but still sound bolts they found, as well as with dozens of eight-inch nails, and finally wrapped tightly round and round with rope. When it was finished they knew that, although the boom didn’t look pretty, it would make do.

  The men fastened the mainsail to the jerry-rigged boom and hauled it aloft. They reefed it by leaving several yards of the sail remaining on the boom. Bishop wouldn’t chance full sail on the repaired spar. Now they had more control of the rudder and could reach farther back and forth as they tacked west.

  On Wednesday the Water Sprite was still struggling west and a bit north. She looked like a battered waif with her sails sporting several brown patches sewn in ragged patterns. She wasn’t trim and lithe-looking as she had once been and she was slow in answering her helm. The wind from the west still tried to bear her back with each burdened flaw.

  But with each new tack and calculated reach, her determined crew brought her closer to the coast. Finally they saw a faint yet constant beam of light.

  “A light, Skipper! From a lighthouse too, by gawd.”

  “Aye. A light, sure nuff. ’Tis no ship. It must be a lighthouse. But where is it?”

  “It don’t matter a damn where ’tis. Dere’s land under that light, dat’s fer sure!”

  “I ’lows ’tis Fort Amherst. Wouldn’t dat be somet’ing, now, fer the skipper to bring us right back to where we started from!”

  “Could be Cape Race, too. We’ve been goan astern like a bloody squid fer days.”

  “The next starburd tack will bring us close nuff to make it out better.”

  Skipper Bishop was silent. He knew now they would all survive their ordeal. He allowed Hazel to stand on deck, but close to the open forecastle door. The seas were still far from smooth. John was pretty sure he knew the light everyone was so joyously looking at. He would soon know for certain if he was right.

  He pulled a large, silver-coloured watch from his pants pocket. It was tied to one of his trouser loops by a simple fob of spun yarn. Bishop waited for the light to flash again. When it did he glanced quickly at the watch in his hand. Again he waited for the light to flash and he counted the seconds between flashes. Forty-three, with a seventeen-second flash. Now he knew.

  “’Tis the light on Cape Spear!” he said. And then, “Thank God we’re home.”

  * * *

  Since Friday the lighthouses all along the northeast coast had been flashing day and night without cease. A distress signal raised to the top of the foremast of the Water Sprite was immediately seen by the lightkeepers at Cape Spear. A tugboat was dispatched from the port of St. John’s. Under tow by the Hugh D., the Water Sprite was eventually towed to safety. The city’s night lights twinkled on as they were passing under the shadow of the old castle keep on the hill. Standing by his side at the easy wheel was Bishop’s daughter.

  “I agree, Hazel, my love. She sure is a pretty sight.”

  Looking away from the splendour of the closing land of lights, Hazel looked up into her father’s eyes before she spoke.

  “It sure is, Father, but there’s a lamplight in a kitchen window far from here that I’d like to be seeing right now.”

  2 Northern Light

  The body of water the French named the Baie of Notre Dame is usually considered to begin with Cape Freels and end with Cape St. John—depending, of course, on your direction of travel. However, and it may be distinguished on a map, all sailors call the section of coast between Cape Freels and Musgrave Harbour the Straight Shore, with Notre Dame Bay really beginning—or ending—at Musgrave Harbour.

  Long after the Seven Years’ War—or what was better known in North America as the French and Indian War—was over, the name meaning “Bay of our Lady” remained. Of all the bays around Newfoundland, none can boast as many sheltered coves in the lee of as many islands as this one. It is also the largest of all the province’s bays. It has enough runs, arms, tickles, bights, and narrow guts to confuse any seaman. Despite this conglomerate of reefs, rocky atolls, and wooded islands, the ocean finally gives up its ageless struggle with the land and the green island to the west of the bay really begins. The island’s greatest rivers begin from the vast forest interior beyond the sea edge, and eventually, disguising their freshwater flow among the islands, they also end.

  Others had been here long before bearded men with white faces had come from over the rim of the eastern sea. Coloured, sun-browned people came to the sea edge from the fast-flowing rivers. They loved and lived on these sandy beaches and rocky, sea-smooth islands alike. They feasted on the abundance this marvellous bay provided.

  They even reached off shore to the Funk Islands, thirty or so miles out to sea, in their fragile birchbark boats, and reaped the spring harvest of eggs from birds nesting there. The island’s European name, meaning “evil odour,” derived from the stench emanating from the tons of guano deposited there by millions of birds over thousands of years. So many were the seabirds, sometimes their numbers blackened the sun when they flew. The white men easily found the same island. Here the great auk flourished, as flightless as its southern cousin the penguin. These large birds were the easiest of prey. By the time the Europeans had finished, the bird colony darkened the sky no more and the great auk would never be seen again, anywhere.

  Always the strange white people in their massive boats brought inevitable change to the others who already lived here. Greedy, far-seeing eyes claimed for their own all that was revealed before them. Around the shores of this bay, more than all the others around the isl
and of Newfoundland, the native peoples fared the worst from the European intrusion. Here the true people of this new-found-land were dealt a blow from which they would never recover. Driven from the rivers they depended on for their existence, denied the sweet-tasting salmon that always came, their land and all of its wealth was taken from them. These people, who knew no boundaries but the salt sea, had nowhere else to go. They would not bend to another’s will. Leaving behind only the vaguest of legacies, the Beothuk disappeared as if they had never been.

  * * *

  This wonderful bay had much more to offer than the sea bounty. Everywhere the white man stepped ashore, long-barrelled muskets in hand—they always feared the native peoples as well as the animals—they found great tracts of virgin timber. In most places the green forest started from the very edge of the bays and stretched farther inland than these newcomers had yet dared. Endless softwood drokes of spruce and fir and juniper; valleys filled with hardwood stands of tall, quivering aspen and white birch; and majestic, towering pine trees rising above all the rest could be viewed while still out in the bay. Enterprising men saw the potential and quickly took advantage of it. They started small logging operations: lumber was needed to build house and stage, and there was also a ready market for lumber products in the largely treeless England. And so Notre Dame Bay was settled, its many island outports as dependent on the products from the green land as they were from the sea itself.

  * * *

  John Hodge lived in the small village of Seldom Come By, Notre Dame Bay. This place with the unusual name was on the south side of the isle of Fogo. The island appeared on European maps as far back as the sixteenth century as Del Fogo or Isle of Fire. Many theories have been given for the island’s origin. Maybe it was as simple as a tired, worried sailor who was far from his homeland and forever looking westward, and maybe he finally saw the sunset, like fire one evening on that wonderful isle, flaring its welcome out of the western sea.