Spindrift, page 20
For the families, it was very bad: when a man was lost at sea, swept overboard by a heavy sea, or knocked off deck by a boom, or lost in a dory, or in a dory that swamped, the vessel would come back to port with a flag at half mast, as the Bluenose did when Bertie “Boodle” Demone drowned in 1922, or Philip Hanhams was swept overboard on a winter trip in 1938. “Ah, there was a lot of scared times for the folks at home,” an old man remembered in Lunenburg after the Bluenose had gone. “Times that wasn’t nice, you [know]. I ’member a boy of 19 once, an’ his dory overturned an’ he was lost, an’ his mother saw the boat come in with the flag at half mast, but she didn’t know who.” Some of the old sea captains’ houses had a flat platform on the roofline that they called the widow’s walk, from which the women could see the sea, where they could watch for the boats coming back home, watching for the flag at half mast. There’s a house like that on Pelham Street in Lunenburg, built for a sea captain who never came home to live in it, lost at sea when he took to a dory to rescue a boy, his nephew, and never came back. Mostly the body would be missing, but sometimes not, and then they’d put it in the hold where they iced the fish until it was home for burial, but that didn’t affect the selling of the fish—what the buyers didn’t know couldn’t hurt, could it?
Some survived, some didn’t. Nobody’s fault, as they said.
—from Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose (2007)
The Ground Swell
E.J. Pratt (1882–1964)
A ground swell is a broad and deep surging of the sea, usually caused by a distant storm. Used colloquially, the term describes a growing shift in public opinion. Poetically, however, it intimates an eerie presentiment of some impending tragedy or trauma.
Three times we heard it calling with a low,
Insistent note; at ebb-tide on the noon;
And at the hour of dusk, when the red moon
Was rising and the tide was on the flow;
Then, at the hour of midnight once again,
Though we had entered in and shut the door
And drawn the blinds, it crept up from the shore
And smote upon a bedroom window-pane;
Then passed away as some dull pang that grew
Out of the void before Eternity
Had fashioned out an edge for human grief;
Before the winds of God had learned to strew
His harvest-sweepings on a winter sea
To feed the primal hungers of a reef.
—from Newfoundland Verse (1923)
The Sailor and His Bride
Isabella Valancy Crawford (1850–1887)
“Let out the wet dun sail, my lads,
The foam is flying fast;
It whistles on the fav’ring gale,
To-night we’ll anchor cast.
What though the storm be loud, my lads,
And danger on the blast;
Though bursting sail swell round and proud,
And groan the straining mast;
The storm has wide, strong wings, my lads,
On them our craft shall ride,
And dear the tempest swift that brings
The sailor to his bride.”
“Fear not the tempest shrill, my heart,
The tall, white breakers’ wrath;
I would not have the wild winds still
Along the good ship’s path.
The ship is staunch and strong, my heart,
The wind blows to the strand;
Why tremble? for its fiercest song
But drives the ship to land.
Be still, nor throb so fast, my heart,
The storm but brings, betide
What may to ship and straining mast,
My sailor to his bride.”
Blow soft and low, and sigh, O gale!
Sob, sea, upon the bar !
No more o’er thee the ship shall fly
White-winged as vesper star.
Roll up the shattered mast, O gale!
Upon the yellow strand,
A dead man’s form cast, gently cast,
Upon the waiting land.
And when again thy breath, O gale!
Wails o’er the vaulting tide,
Bear not on hurtling wings of death
A sailor to his bride.
—from The Collected Poems of Isabella Valancy Crawford (1905)
Rescue at Sea
James Richards (1931–2014) and Marlene Richards (1938– ) with Eric Hustvedt
In December 1912 the Nova Scotia–built three-masted schooner, W.N. Zwicker, under the command of Captain Andy Publicover (1877–1960), was returning in ballast in heavy winter weather from New York to home port in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. En route she undertook a series of daring manoeuvres to rescue the stricken crew of a waterlogged American schooner. The following year this act of great courage was formally recognized by President Woodrow Wilson and celebrated at a festive public occasion in Bridgewater.
A nor’wester started to blow as we left our berth in New York, so all we needed was a tow as far as Flushing Bay, where we let go the hawser at two in the afternoon, December 11. The wind was so strong that all we could carry were our lower sails. We were amazed to find ourselves blown all the way to Pollock Rip Shoal by daylight the next morning. Then it started to blow even harder. We had to take in our spanker and reef our mainsail. Besides the reefed mainsail, all we left on her was the whole foresail, fore staysail and one jib. Even then the vessel nearly capsized at times.
When we got abeam of Cape Cod, I went below to get my first rest of the trip. A few hours later we started to roll deep, so Charles, who was on watch, woke me to ask if we should take in more sail.
I took my glasses (binoculars) on deck for a look around. It was early afternoon. The gale was still blowing and now there were snow squalls. The visibility was poor, but I was able to sight a three-masted schooner about three points on our lee bow about five miles away, heading to the south’ard. I saw that her sails were all blown away, so I ordered the man at the wheel to keep off and run down towards her. I had a couple of the crew go forward to haul down the jib.
As we approached, I saw she was waterlogged. Her decks were level with the water and she was floating on her lumber cargo. When we got close, I could see her crew of seven lashed to the top of her furled up spanker boom. They were getting soaked to the skin by the mountainous seas breaking over the vessel from stem to stern. None of them had oilskins and I knew they couldn’t survive the night.
Our own vessel was rolling and pitching so much, I didn’t think we could launch a boat, so I manoeuvred the Zwicker closer under the lee of the other vessel in the hope the wind and sea would soon go down. We hauled down the forestaysail and hove to, heading to the north. Because we were so light, and the other vessel was so deep in the sea, we drifted faster to leeward. After a couple of hours with no change in the weather, we could just see the other vessel to windward through the snow squalls.
I felt if we lost sight of her I could feel I’d done all I could for her crew. I wasn’t sailing away; I was drifting away by the wind and sea.
Also, if I tried to rescue them with a single-hand dory in such a sea, I would be risking the lives of my own crew.
Just before the schooner disappeared from sight, I knew I couldn’t leave them to die.
I would have to work fast because it would be dark in about two hours. So, I began to wear ship to get close to the distressed vessel again.
I wanted to go in the dory by myself and keep the crew out of danger. But, as I didn’t think I could row against the wind alone, I called for a volunteer. [My brother] Charles stepped forward, but I wouldn’t let him go. He was the only other man capable of navigating the Zwicker back to land. If we were both lost, our own crew would be doomed, too.
Then a seaman named Fred Richards, the only unmarried member of the crew, called out, “I’ll go with you, Captain.”
I didn’t want his family to hold his death against me or my family in case we were lost, so I said to the rest of the crew, “If this young man loses his life tonight, I want you all to bear witness he volunteered of his own free will, with no pressure from me.”
After giving instructions to Charles on our position and the course for Cape Sable, we lashed two thwarts, two pairs of oars, four pairs of tholepins and a bucket into the dory and hove the Zwicker around to windward of the water-logged schooner.
Our first task was to get the dory into the water and safely away from our own vessel. It was touch and go, because the Zwicker was rolling so deep that the bilge was coming out of the water halfway to her keel. The men had to let go the dory tackles at just the right time or the dory would be drawn under the Zwicker as she rolled away to windward, then crushed underneath her when she rolled back again.
The crew waited to drop us down at the very moment the vessel rolled deepest on our side. We let the tackles go at just the right second, but we were still lucky to get away with our lives. Rowing as hard as we could from the moment we hit the water, the dory still got drawn under the Zwicker’s quarter as she rolled away. As she was coming back we crouched in the bottom of the boat, waiting for the worst to happen.
Then we began to feel the leeward roll of the Zwicker send us back out from under her stern. We could only pray we would be pushed out of harm’s way before she slammed down again.
Our prayers were answered, but it was a close call. We felt the quarter of the Zwicker scrape against us and feared our bow would be pulled so low the dory would fill. As we scrambled to the oars and tried again to get away, we were relieved to see very little water in the boat. A few moments later we were out of danger from our own vessel and were rowing with the wind and sea toward the waterlogged schooner, a quarter mile away.
Reaching her, we rowed around her stern on the way to her lee side and saw by her nameplate she was the Henry R. Tilton out of Maine. Close under her lee, I shouted to the master that I was going to try and save them. I knew that manoeuvring the dory close enough to the Tilton for a man to jump into it in stormy winter seas was a difficult and dangerous business, so I told them to follow my instructions exactly.
I had one man unlash himself and come down to the lee rigging. As I instructed, he waited until we were in close enough, then jumped in the stern of our dory and crouched low in the bottom. I had a second man come down and jump in the bow.
Meanwhile, the Zwicker had come down around and was hove-to close under the lee of the Tilton, so Fred and I were able to row with the wind and the sea back to our own vessel.
My crew were waiting for us with heaving lines, as I’d ordered them. When we were twenty feet away from our own vessel, I told one of the Tilton’s crewmen to grab the first line thrown to us, put a boland [bowline] in it and slip it down under his arms. Then he was to jump overboard and let our crew pull him onboard.
I thought this would be the easiest part of the operation, but that seaman almost brought the whole rescue to a sudden end. Once he had the line around himself, he got scared to leave the dory. The crew pulled on the line anyway, bringing the dory in against the side of the Zwicker just as she made a deep roll toward us. The crew quickly pulled the man on deck and we just did manage to row far enough away from the Zwicker’s hull to keep from getting sucked under her as she rolled away again. The second man jumped in the water when he was supposed to and was pulled onboard the Zwicker without mishap.
As each rescued man went onboard our vessel, he would get hot coffee from the cook and warm clothing from the crew, then be taken down to the dining room for a hot meal.
The second trip to the Tilton was much harder work than the first one because we had to row against the wind and sea. It seemed to take hours. While we were getting the next pair of shipwrecked sailors in the dory, the Zwicker drifted further away, so we were happy to have the help of the wind and sea on the return trip.
When the second pair of seamen were safely onboard the Zwicker, we set out for a third trip to the Tilton. We were getting tired. It was getting near dark and we had been working at the rescue for nearly two hours. The gale was still blowing, the seas were still high and snow squalls still whirled around us. I decided this would have to be our last trip, even if it meant carrying five men in our small boat.
With the longest and hardest trip, we got the last three men off the doomed schooner. We rowed back with the water up to gunnels, but got the shipwrecked men safely onboard the Zwicker. Then our crew threw a line to Fred, who was hauled onboard safely holding onto his oars and thwart. Two lines came out to me. I tied one to myself and the other to the dory painter before I jumped out of the boat with my own oars and thwart. After I made the deck, the crew hauled the dory painter onboard and made it fast to one of the dory tackles. The dory came up onto the deck bow first a short time later.
All we lost was one tholepin.
Fred and I had saved the seven-man crew of a waterlogged vessel from certain death and saved our own rescue boat in the bargain.
We even managed to live through the adventure ourselves.
—from The Sea in My Blood: The Life and Times of Captain Andy Publicover (1986)
The Titanic
Gabrielle Roy (1909–1983)
The sinking of the Titanic, 15 April 1912, still resonates from coast to coast in our collective imagination. Gabrielle Roy’s story of a childhood social gathering recalls how the raging gale of a Manitoba night brought to mind the horrific loss of that doomed ship some 600 kilometres south of Newfoundland.
A great ship had been lost at sea, and for a long time, for years even, people talked about it at night gatherings in our Manitoba homes. A mere nothing, perhaps no more than a sharp gust of wind, would bring it back to mind. The raging gale—so vicious that particular night—probably recalled the disaster to us more vividly than usual …
“They were dancing,” Monsieur Elie continued, “on board the ship. Dancing,” he marvelled, “in mid-ocean!”
“Do they have music to dance to on a boat?”
My uncle Majorique smiled a little at my question, but not to make fun of me. Quite the opposite; my uncle Majorique liked to explain things, and he was good at it, for he had at home a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica … So he began telling me about ocean liners: they were equipped with kitchens, pots and pans, libraries, parlours with chandeliers, fresh flowers, games of all sorts for the passengers’ recreation, counters at which to settle bills, a small shipboard newspaper, a barber, a masseur, stewards; in short here was a town venturing forth upon the seas … At night it was alive with lights that spilled out over the waves, and there were moments, maybe, when the black water seemed gladdened by them.
And—I know not why—as he kept listing what there was on board the ship, my heart was ill at ease, though I was eager to learn more. When my uncle added that certain completely up-to-date ships even boasted swimming pools, I got a picture at once curious and funny, but one that certainly did not make me laugh; on the contrary, I felt an unknown and terrifying sadness at the thought of people plunging into the water of a swimming pool contained within a vessel itself afloat upon infinite water. My uncle Majorique was answering Monsieur Elie: “True enough, they were dancing, but we must not forget the couples aboard the Titanic were almost all newlyweds, Monsieur … on their honeymoons!” …
I was thinking of those poor people so happy to be together on the ship. Abruptly Monsieur Elie began to scold. He said of them, the folk on the Titanic, “Hammerstein! … Vanderbilt! … Big bankers from New York! … Those were the people on the Titanic! Millionaires!”
So in fact those poor people were rich!
“Yes,” my uncle Majorique agreed, “wealthy couples, handsome, young, happy! …”
“And they thought their boat proof against all danger,” said Monsieur Elie.
“Is there something wrong,” I asked them, “about building a sturdy ship?”
Even Monsieur Elie seemed taken aback at my question. He granted that there was nothing wrong about it, probably nothing at all, but it most certainly was wrong to imagine oneself out of the reach of God’s wrath. Yet why did he seem so pleased about God’s wrath?
“Alas,” said my uncle, “the captain had been warned of the presence of icebergs in the neighbourhood. They might still have been saved had only the captain given orders to reduce the vessel’s speed. But no; the Titanic was cutting through the waves at its normal speed—very fast for those days …”
“An iceberg?” I asked. “What’s that?” and I was afraid of the answer.
My uncle Majorique told me how mountains of ice break off from the Labrador ice masses; how unfortunate, even how cruel is our country, since these mountains drift down into the navigation routes … and under water they are seven or eight times larger than what appears on the surface.
So then I had a vivid picture of the graceful, sturdy white ship. With all its portholes brightly aglow, it slipped along our kitchen wall. Then, from Monsieur Elie’s side, there moved straight toward the ship the monstrous mountain that had severed itself from Labrador. And they would meet at a point where the sea was at its worst … Was there no way to warn them once again? … For surely the ocean is a vast expanse! …
