The Gale of 1929 Read online

  “The engine is not much good to us wit’out the boat, Skipper,” said Boland.

  Manuel was about to say that the four-horsepower one-lunger Acadia motor could be used in another boat, but he knew his men were only thinking of their present situation, not the future.

  * * *

  Unbelievably, the storm continued for the next several days. By Wednesday the following week, the schooner was leaking in several places, and it leaked through the opened planks of the forecastle roof. Salt water seeped up through the seams of the forecastle floor. At times it was two feet deep. Sea water was in the bilge. It got into their meagre food supply, making it unpalatable, and it soaked the clothing of the vessel’s handlers. The water that had always sustained them was now the cause of their misery.

  They had to man their pump at all times, a two-man operation, one hour on and one hour off. Each crew member taking his trick at the wheel had to be tied on for fear of being swept overboard. The crew of the Gander Deal were nearly at the end of their endurance. And now, with their rudder broken, they had no control of the schooner whatsoever.

  Jesse Gill was at the wheel when it happened. Gill knew that when the wheel spun over and over, either the rudder had been torn away by the force of the waves or the connection from wheel to rudder had parted. Looking back, the men saw the rudder floated astern of the schooner, ripped from its fastenings by the sheer weight of the following sea.

  The Gander Deal broached to atop one mighty roller for just a moment before sliding broadside down the face of that slippery hill, only to be carried, still broadside, with a sickening gait, up the ridge of another one. Her crew had no means of any steerageway, no answer from the helm. All that day and through the slow, passing, dreadful night, the schooner suffered in the throes of roaring wind and never-ending waves that wrenched the schooner with their every whim. No one voiced it, but every man knew they would not survive much longer. They were out of fresh water. For days now they had been like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, with “Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink.”

  Very early Friday morning, still dark, found most of the crew of the Gander Deal on her deck. There wasn’t much to do except take turns at the pump. Their schooner might sink at any time. Most of them preferred to stay above deck than inside the cold, crowded forecastle.

  Below, in the forecastle, young Herbert lay huddled beneath a press of damp blankets. The floor was awash with cold sea water. Articles of clothing and other debris from the cabin sloshed back and forth with the nauseating roll of the vessel. He was shivering violently. Herbert hadn’t had a decent meal since this voyage began. He didn’t vomit any more because there was nothing in his stomach to come up, but his chest still sometimes heaved in pitiful, urging spasms. He was thirsty, feverish, and weak, and his father was very worried.

  Jesse Gill stood on deck with the rest, cold and wet. He was shivering and wrapping his arms around his upper body in a rapid slapping motion to keep warm. Far astern and high in the sky he watched a lone star peek through the cloud cover. They hadn’t seen the sun or any other light in the firmament for days. The star rose and fell on the seas, rising and falling like a masthead light.

  Gill stopped beating his arms and gasped at what he was seeing. It wasn’t a star at all, but a light! A ship was approaching, maybe even passing them by.

  “Look astern, Skipper! Dere’s a light! I bin lookin’ at it an’ t’inkin’ ’twas a star. But ’tis not a star a’tall, ’tis a ship! A big one!”

  Everyone turned and looked at Jesse’s light. He was right—it was a ship, and a big one! Barbour stared astern like the rest. It was difficult to tell whether or not the ship was headed their way or if they had even been seen. Then the answer came.

  The Gander Deal lifted above the torn surface of the sea on the breast of one of many rollers that kept coming at her. Far astern the lights rose as well, for there was not only one, but four of them. And underneath the four sky-lining ones were dozens of other lights. It took a while for Barbour to figure out the design.

  “It’s a liner, boys. A big bugger, too. She’s broadside, though, not headin’ fer us. She’s sailin’ away. We don’t ’ave a light, fer gawd’s sake, ’er lookouts can’t see us.” Barbour looked around the dishevelled deck as if searching for something to draw attention to them. “Jim, run below an’ fetch the ’am er what’s left of it. Bill, bring the gallon can wit’ the kerosene in it. Look lively, the two of ya. We’ve not much time.”

  James Perry and William Sainsbury made forward to do the captain’s bidding, splashing through deep water as they ran.

  “Get a line ready to go aloft, Jesse. The rest of ya, back to the pumps, we’re not rescued yet.”

  Barbour’s voice was stern and hoarse from shouting. The others thought Barbour had lost his mind. Why else would he order food be brought topside?

  The two men appeared on deck again, one carrying a half-eaten salt-cured ham, the other a galvanized gallon can. They reached Barbour’s side.

  “Quick, Bill, douse the ’am with the oil, an’ don’t spare it. Tie the line to it, Jesse, and get it up the spar.”

  The captain’s orders were quickly carried out. A line was fastened to the ham and a match from a cupped hand put to the oil-drenched pork quarter. It flared and smoked as the meat dripping hot fat was lifted skyward on the gantline.

  “Pray God the ship sees us before the line burns off,” Barbour voiced to himself.

  * * *

  The SS Republic was an American passenger liner plying her usual route between Liverpool, England, and New York City. She had been buffeted by headwinds for days on the worst crossing her captain had ever experienced. The storms just kept on coming. His ship had suffered cosmetic damage to her superstructure, and his passengers, many of them sailing to the United States for Christmas, had not had a pleasant sea cruise. Many aboard, especially first-timers, had suffered from seasickness since their first day out of port. Most of them were still sick. It was a memorable trip, but it was about to become even more memorable.

  The Republic’s captain had changed their westerly course a few degrees to the north in order for his ship to take the brunt of the storm on her starboard bow. He understood the misery of those passengers suffering from the gut-churning nausea that came from a constantly rolling ship. His course alteration would hopefully give them some comfort. It was this change in course that brought him closer to the huge island of Newfoundland than normal.

  The captain usually retired for the night by the end of middle watch, but the storm had set different rules for everyone, even him. Two of the crew on watch saw it at once.

  “Over there, sir. It’s a—a fire—er—a torch, sir—a torch burning. In the sky, sir!”

  The captain turned toward the starboard window of his wide bridge. He saw what his lookouts saw: a fire! As he and the others watched, the light started to fade.

  “A course to intercept, quickly!”

  The burning light fell a short distance and disappeared from their sight. The first officer spoke the course of the sighting and the captain ordered the course change needed to investigate. The great liner turned farther into the gale, searching for a doused light in a deadly black sea.

  This wasn’t the first time the SS Republic’s history had been altered. Her course had been an ever-changing one since the day she was built. She was constructed by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, and financed by the wealthy American businessman J. P. Morgan. Before she was even completed, Morgan grew dissatisfied when the deal he had made with the Wilson and Furness-Leyland Line didn’t go as planned. He pulled his money. The ship launched February 19, 1903, and christened SS Servian spent the next four years on her hook in the Musgrave Channel of Ireland. She was one of the first ships to anchor in that channel, which had been dug the same year to allow better access into the North Channel o
f the Irish Sea.

  She was purchased by a Hamburg-American company in 1907 and renamed the SS President Grant. She sailed the next seven years between Germany and America, until the war of 1914 saw her anchored again, this time on the other side of the ocean in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her German partners feared her destruction by their own warring nation on the high seas. When the nation who had sheltered her entered into the same war in April of 1917 and declared war on Germany, she was immediately seized and turned over to the American Navy. Her name changed again. This time she was called the USS President Grant, commanded by J.P. Morton. She safely carried 40,025 American troops to French ports to fight in deadly battles. She brought 37,025 of them home again to the docks of New York City.

  In 1919 her name was changed once again, to SS Republic, under the control of the United States Army. She sailed as far north as Siberia, bringing repatriating Czechoslovakian soldiers to Trieste in 1920. Given over to the USSR by the American Army in 1921, she lay at anchor in Norfolk, Virginia, for another three years, until in 1924 she was purchased by the United States Line for work as a North Atlantic passenger ship.

  * * *

  As Manuel Barbour feared, the howling wind soon cut through the line holding the burning ham aloft. The line fell from the sky with a trail of flankers and hit the water-filled deck with a faint hiss, and the ham thrashed back and forth like the bloated carcass of a singed beaver.

  * * *

  She came out of the night sky like the top half of an apparition, her black hull invisible below her lighted superstructure. At sixty-eight feet, two inches, her deck was almost as wide as the Gander Deal was long. She powered up over the biggest waves and knifed through the lesser ones, her steep bows separating and making way for her length. Powerful beams of light searched the ocean, exposing the awesome might of wind and wave. One of the beams splayed across the Gander Deal. The huge ship slowed and settled to a wallowing hulk as she lost her way. Now that the Republic had found the source of the mysterious night light, her captain wasn’t sure how to save her.

  * * *

  “Sweet lovin’ lard, she’s as big as Pinchar’s Islan’,” said Garfield Boland as he stared at the liner looming out of the night.

  At one foot short of 600 feet, the 33,530-ton Republic looked monstrous. She was more than eight times longer than the schooner Gander Deal, which now showed tiny and naked below her blinding lights. The great ship slowed even more as she came alongside, keeping a weather distance between her hull and the schooner in its lee.

  Eight volunteers readied a lifeboat and dropped down the side of the heaving steamship. The surface of the sea seemed to reach for them and then founder away beneath them again as the vessel rose and fell on the swells. When the craft finally made the water, it was with a jolting thump that up-seated the crew and sent them frantically rushing to release the hooks that held them. Oars flashed in the light and the crew aboard the lifeboat pulled away from the ship before it could crush them.

  “Who is your captain and from what port are you?” came a yell from the lifeboat when it approached. It was still some distance from the Gander Deal and the roaring wind nearly drowned out the voice. Barbour yelled back a reply, but the crew member standing in the lifeboat pointed to his ear, indicating he couldn’t hear him. Barbour ordered a gasoline funnel be had brought on the voyage, and placing the narrow end to his mouth, he shouted again.

  “I’m Captain Barbour, sir! Out of the port of S’n John’s, we are! We are in distress, sir!”

  “We will come alongside when the opportunity permits, Captain! You and your men must jump aboard! Be ready as we bear close!”

  Barbour ordered his men to prepare themselves as he stood to the wheel and tried to steady his schooner for the dangerous rescue. The men aboard the Gander Deal viewed the roiling ocean between them and their rescuers. If they missed the boat and landed into the sea, they would be done for.

  The darkly clothed men on the deck of the schooner held to the rigging, their wet clothes white with frost. The lifeboat came closer and men yelled back and forth. The seas rose and fell between them, flinging its icy spume all over. The huge steamer passed nearby in the background, her lights shining on the scene. The open sea came at the schooner and lifeboat again as the ship passed, and the lifeboat hove high and away from the schooner. They had missed their chance. The lifeboat disappeared into the troughs and the schooner bore away again before the wind.

  The small boat kept after the schooner. The great Republic rolled heavily as she turned for another pass. Her searching lights faded as she turned, then brightened as she bore down on them again. She drew closer than before, as if she would squeeze her lifeboat against the Gander Deal.

  James Perry beat his hands to ward off the cold. He kept looking back and forth between the approaching ship and at something toward the bow of the schooner. Then, without a word to anyone, he ran forward.

  “Where the ’ell’re you goan, Jim?” someone yelled after him.

  James went on unheeded. He clung to the main hatch coaming as he passed, threw back the narrow forecastle doors, and vanished below.

  The forecastle floor was calf-high with water and sodden bedclothes from the bunks. The locker doors were torn open, some of them hanging by one hinge, their contents strewn about the floor. Perry staggered through the clinging debris and found his bunk. A shaft of light shone into the cabin. Perry turned toward the light, then realized the steamer had returned. Fumbling above his bunk, he found what he had come for and raced back to the deck.

  Tucked and bulging inside his wet jacket was the dress he had bought his wife for Christmas. He had never given her a store-bought Christmas gift before. The dress was the prettiest one he had ever seen, hanging there in the St. John’s shop window. If he survived, the dress would be with him.

  Barbour strained at the helm and the Gander Deal yawed away to starboard. The lifeboat neared her port side, with the Republic looming like a high headland beyond, sheltering, protecting, threatening.

  “One more time, Captain! Have your men jump when your vessel rolls rail down toward us!” a voice shouted from the lifeboat.

  Barbour was now posted to the deck, his entire weight applied against the useless helm. He could feel the schooner tremble beneath his feet, as if she just wanted to be free.

  “’Ere dey comes again, b’ys! ’Tis our las’ chance, I ’low! Jump like you would panning swiles!” Barbour roared to his men.

  Two men kept the lifeboat as close to parallel with the schooner as they could. The other six waited to catch the men who would jump.

  Water rose to a boil between them and flushed the deck of the Gander Deal. It poured in over the gunnels of the lifeboat. Men shouted. Men cursed. Men jumped.

  Barbour watched and counted the figures as they flung themselves away from his schooner. Nine figures plummeted down aboard the boat and the crew of the Republic broke their fall before he left his post. Barbour reached the bulwarks of the schooner. The lifeboat was rising and the schooner was dropping. The boat chafed once against the Gander Deal and men pushed her away. The man ahead of him jumped. Barbour thought it was James Perry, although he looked thicker around the middle than he remembered.

  Barbour jumped. For one sickening moment he thought he would fall into the sea—until the Gander Deal’s fall was checked by her unmanned wheel, saving her master. Barbour landed hard across the gunnels of the lifeboat, hurting his ribs. The waiting men pulled him aboard. The Gander Deal was free, her ordeal almost done.

  The crew aboard the Republic lowered the hooks and fastened them to the crowded rescue craft. Men with oars kept the small boat from smashing against the side of the ship as they were winched upward. A swaying block broke the foot of one of the Republic’s men in charge of the hoisting procedure, and the man screamed in pain. Soon all were safe aboard. Bert Burry was confined to the warmth of
the ship’s sick bay. The relentless cold and constant wet had weakened the boy. The crew of the Gander Deal stood at the rail of their rescuer, staring at their schooner dying in the sea far below them.

  Day had come, another morning without the rising sun. The Republic came into the wind and waited for the Gander Deal to give up the ghost. She settled low and appeared to have gone under several times, but always she rose above the next roller. For two hours the patient captain of the Republic waited. He was about to order full ahead and away from the scene when several shouts rose as one from his bridge. The schooner was finally sinking.

  No sound at all came from ten of the men standing at the rail on the lower deck of the great ship. They had gathered as one to watch their schooner die. There was no warning, nothing different as she fell down over yet another wave. She just didn’t rise again. Her masts dropped from the grey morning sky and she was gone, leaving her mourning crew to stare at a suddenly empty ocean.

  * * *

  A wireless went out from the radio room of the Republic to Newfoundland, advising first that the crew of the Gander Deal were all safe aboard, second that the schooner had sunk, and third that her crew were continuing on to the Republic’s destination in Hoboken, New Jersey. The boys from outport Newfoundland had seen nothing like the Republic before. The ship with its opulent surroundings and unheard-of luxury was, to these simple men of the sea, miraculous.

  When they entered the mouth of the Hudson River, passed downtown Manhattan, New York City, and finally tied up on the west bank of the river, they stood in awe. More than 30,000 Newfoundlanders had emigrated away from their native land in search of employment and many of them had come to America. The plight of the Gander Deal had become known to many Newfoundlanders living in New York. One of them, from Pound Cove, Bonavista Bay, waited on the waterfront when the Republic docked. He shouted from the pier.