Heroes of the Sea: Stories from the Atlantic Blue
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About this ebook
Globe and Mail bestselling author Robert C. Parsons presents more than fifty exciting stories of high-seas adventure! Set mainly along the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1800s and 1900s, these are true stories of men and women who faced the deadly Atlantic Ocean—and won.
Featuring:
Ann Harvey of Isle aux Morts, a teenaged girl who helped rescue 160 passengers of the doomed brig Dispatch in 1828
George Lake of Fortune, captain of the schooner George Ewart, who narrowly escaped death when an iron steamer smashed into his vessel off the coast of Spain in 1917
Captain Frank Poole of Belleoram and crew of the schooner Dorothy P. Sarty, who in 1954 were shipwrecked and rowed twenty-five miles to shore in a lifeboat . . . and even refused a lift from a passing coal carrier
Captain Arthur Jackman of Renews and crew of the Plover, who in 1890 were at death’s door after the sinking of their steamship but were rescued in the nick of time
Henry Taylor of Newfoundland, captain of the barque Constance, who in 1884 was awarded by the Italian Admiralty for rescuing three Italian harbour pilots
The forty-six men and seventeen women who miraculously escaped the wreck of the steamer Capulet after it went aground at St. Shotts in 1896
. . . and many more!
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Heroes of the Sea - Robert C. Parsons
Heroes of the Sea
Stories from the Atlantic Blue
______________________________
Robert C. Parsons
Flanker Press Limited
St. John’s
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Parsons, Robert Charles, 1944-, author
Heroes of the Sea: stories from the Atlantic
blue / Robert C. Parsons.
Includes index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77117-561-6 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-177117-562-3
(epub).--ISBN 978-1-77117-563-0 (kindle).--ISBN 978-1-77117-564-7 (pdf)
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada.
—————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————
© 2016 by Robert C. Parsons
All Rights Reserved. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well. For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll-free to 1-800-893-5777.
Printed in Canada
Cover Design by Graham Blair
Cover Illustration: Wreck of the Dispatch by Lloyd Pretty
Flanker Press Ltd.
PO Box 2522, Station C
St. John’s, NL
Canada
Telephone: (709) 739-4477 Fax: (709) 739-4420 Toll-free: 1-866-739-4420
www.flankerpress.com
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
We acknowledge the [financial] support of the Government of Canada. Nous reconnaissons l’appui [financier] du gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Part 1: Unusual
Death and Destruction by Hailstones!
In the Days of Little or No Communication
A Torpedo or a Collision?
The Double Demise of the Bessie Dodd
The Barque Constance: A Storm, a Medal, a Drowning, a Race, a Stabbing, a Lawsuit
Mystery of the Loss of the Belle of Burgeo
Part 2: Wreck
The Wreck of the Dispatch
St. Shotts Rocks: Making Captains Another Shade of Grey
The Wreck of the SS Delta
The Curious Tale of the Cow Head Salvagers
The Unlucky Plover: Four Times in Wreck
Only Half Enough to Eat: After the Loss of the General Rawlinson
One of the Most Talked-About Wrecks in Our History
Part 3: Danger
Between Scylla and Charybdis: St. Lawrence and Lawn
Caught Between Lawn Point and Chamber’s Pinnacle
Gone Past Her Prime: The Devon
Sickness at Sea
Part 4: Anxiety
Posted as Missing: The Hawker
Where Do We Find the Susan E. Inkpen?
A Derelict
The Grim Tale of the Reaper
What Ship is This?
Part 5: Survival
Hope Dies Hard with a Sailor
Two Fishermen Carried to Sea on a Raft
The Perils of the Pauline
The Itaska on the Saint Pierre Rocks
The Atalaya: One Survivor
Part 6: Abandonment
Rescued in Mid-Atlantic
Taken to Cuba: The Moran’s Exhausted Crew
A Roundabout Voyage Home
Eleven Days Drifting in the Atlantic
Brigantine Seretha and the Good Samaritan
Part 7: Court
The Curious Case of the Fife
Yet Another Fife
Ashore at Red Bay: The Aftermath
The Inquiry: Seven Deaths on the Pubnico Belle
The Casting Away of the Bessie Dodd: A Remarkable Marine Story Exposed
The Ivydene’s Negligent Captain
Prison Time for the Crew of the Birch Hill
Part 8: People
Down Under Wreck: Captain Williams
Some Honeymoon! On the SS Virgo
Broke and Disgusted
Captain Moores’s Third Shipwreck
What a Way To Celebrate Christmas
It Could Have Taken the Whole Family: The Corsair
Captain Cave’s Heavy Loss
The Price of Lobster
SS Bar Haven Aground at Ragged Point
The Only Thing I Saved Was a Twelve-Gauge Shotgun: The Keith and Kevin on the Labrador Coast
Part 9: Conflict
HMS Comus
Surviving the Gas of World War I
Maid of Harlech: Another Vessel Gone
What Happened after Watanga
Buchans Gold Finally Reaches England: Twenty-Nine Years Later
SS Rothermere and Humber Arm
The Four Chaplains Leave St. John’s on the USAT Dorchester
Appendix A: Newfoundland Vessels Lost in 1921
Appendix B: In Memory of Captain Isaacs and Crew
Sources
Index
INTRODUCTION
These are the people’s stories, their tales of the sea, many of which were recorded in print. Some were passed on in the oral tradition. These were told years ago around kitchen tables and in the warmer forecastles on ships.
Newfoundland and Labrador has a great vault of history and culture. The majority of the trove comes from folk tales or are housed in our archives waiting for us to piece them together.
The stories in this volume, many of which were compiled from a combination of oral and written sources, are true. Often the storyteller may have forgotten specific details or misconstrued certain facts (or the interviewer may not have asked the relevant question), but the event did happen in some form many years ago. Again, each depends on the whims of individual memory or on the notions of newspaper reporting.
Several tales in Heroes of the Sea were sparked by a story, or a fragment, I received from correspondents. Someone, somewhere read a story in a previous book, then sent me further information on events, crew members’ names, or what happened to significant others after the wreck or loss of life. Two or three accounts within are expansions of earlier tales.
Also, the staff at various libraries usually found what I wanted or steered me in the right direction. Specifically they are the Newfoundland Reference Section at the A. C. Hunter Library and three venues at Memorial University: the Queen Elizabeth II Library; the Maritime History Archives; and the Centre for Newfoundland Studies (CNS).
I would like to illustrate a case in point. On May 29, 2015, as I was augmenting several tales in this volume, I realized I had only the first initial S
of Magistrate Avery. S. Avery had spearheaded several relief missions, fundraising campaigns, for distressed families of lost seamen. I called the Newfoundland Reference Room of the A. C. Hunter Library in St. John’s, asking if they could search out some extra information on Magistrate Avery. Within an hour or so, back came the answer: he was Simeon Avery, a stipendiary (salaried) magistrate who had been stationed in Burin and on the west coast.
As well, to those people—tradition bearers, storytellers, information specialists—who sent me relevant information, I shall say thank you!
Newfoundland is rich with oral history: the oral has to be recorded and preserved before the singers, poets, sealers, and bank fishers pass on. Two or three stories in Heroes of the Sea were taken from folk songs or poems. These are included but are annotated to fill in certain background information.
As you, good reader, will see, the stories are presented in categories: ships that were abandoned, were victims of war, disappeared, ships and people that ran afoul of the law, and so on. It is a departure from my other books, which tend to be arranged chronologically or geographically.
Today, in this electronic age with its proliferation of material and images, the problem of proper copyright is compounded. Yet I have made every effort to identify, credit appropriately, and obtain publication rights from copyright holders of illustrations, photos, and written material used in this book. Notice of any errors or omissions in this regard will gratefully be received and corrections made in any subsequent edition.
As well, should any reader like to add or augment a story from this collection, contact the author at the address below. I will receive them with pleasure.
Robert C. Parsons, Box 131, Grand Bank, NF A0E 1W0
Email: robertparsons@personainternet.com
Website: http://www.atlanticwrecks.com
"Preserving Newfoundland and Labrador’s
Maritime History, One Tale at a Time"
Part 1: Unusual
The six tales in this first part are of unique, odd, and curious happenings on or near Newfoundland’s shoreline. Some of the events could be explained. Others are of a more clouded and puzzling nature.
I have found, over the years of searching for Newfoundland and Labrador stories, many of the unusual, hard-to-believe events have a kernel of truth behind them. Those included here, like all the accounts in this volume, are based on research, written documentation in old newspapers, or oral history of families, poems, songs, and recitations. The sources for each are to be found at the end of this volume.
In all instances, the following accounts were cross-referenced in other sources, sometimes with results, sometimes not. But that didn’t preclude me from presenting the story to you, good reader.
Death and Destruction
by Hailstones!
It was a glorious summer day in the early hours of June 26, 1930, in eastern Newfoundland, especially in Bonavista Bay North. In the town of Lumsden there was no indication of the harsh weather that was soon to come.
But in the mid-afternoon, an unheralded freak of nature fell upon the people of that fishing community. Located on the Straight Shore and renamed in 1917 from Cat Harbour to Lumsden (after Reverend James Lumsden), it was a fishing community which in those days was referred to as Lumsden North and Lumsden South.
A thunder and lightning storm and hailstone shower struck the town that evening. No ordinary hail, but huge balls that extensively damaged homes, sank or overturned fishing craft, and most grievous, killed three people. So rare was this type of event it sent the people into a panic.
The first messages to get though to St. John’s told of an intensely heavy electrical storm that broke over the north and south arms of the town. The rare storm brought with it hailstones: Very large masses of ice, some of which were estimated to weigh ten pounds, crashed to the earth.
These damaged roofs and glass of nearly all buildings, especially the north-facing windows. Even more devastating to the very livelihoods of the fishermen, the storm and hail upset thirty boats, killing three men who were on board them.
Granted these were smaller boats, possibly trap skiffs or fishing craft, but the weight of the hail sank or overturned all in the harbour.
Those who could rushed to the moorings to bail out or to throw a temporary cover over the boats. Three men were caught on their craft: Baxter Goodyear, married with three children; Roland Cuff, married with five children; and Samuel Goodyear, unmarried. Another gentleman, Wilf Goodyear, was said to have rescued seven of his fellow fishermen.
These three men, according to official reports, died in the storm. Some sources say they drowned or perished as they held on to their boats when they turned over. Another says the men were beaten to death by the huge hailstones that rained down on them. Later that evening, friends and relatives brought their remains to shore.
So sudden was the storm and the great damage it inflicted, it spread terror through the settlement, located a few miles north of Cape Freels. At that time, Lumsden North had a population of about 150, and the southern section 250. To make matters worse, there was no doctor or clergy residing in that vicinity at the time.
As soon as Lumsden’s people got over the shock of nature’s onslaught, the telegraph office sent this communiqué to Postal Telegraph in St. John’s:
Lumsden
Bonavista North, June 26, 1930
(To the Minister of Posts)
Very heavy lightning, thunder and hailstorm struck Lumsden North and South this evening. Pieces of ice fell weighing ten lbs., causing disaster to premises, destroyed all roofs of buildings and window glass, upset thirty fishing boats.
Three lives were lost. Bodies of all three were recovered.
By June 27, the next day, the Government of Newfoundland was quick to respond to the disaster, sending to Lumsden via the SS Prospero 1,400 rolls of felt, a supply of window glass, and other home-repair materials.
The news of three men being pounded to death by heavy hailstones swept around the world and was carried in print in several foreign countries. Although exaggerated with nineteen deaths
when in fact there were five (three in Lumsden, two on the Avalon Peninsula), the Advertiser of Adelaide, Australia, ran the story in their June 30, 1930, edition.
Although Lumsden was the sole town inundated with hailstones that inflicted death-dealing damage, the powerful lightning storm struck other parts of eastern Newfoundland on the same evening.
In Pouch Cove, residents were terror-stricken as lightning came in chains accompanied by thunder that shook houses to their foundations. Dishes were shattered. Telephone poles fell, prompting one observer to say about the down sticks that they were sprawled as if with an axe.
George Diamond, aged thirty-nine and a father with four children, stood in his doorway in Shoe Cove, near Pouch Cove. A bolt of lightning hit and killed him instantly as he stood observing nature’s awesome spectacle.
At Pouch Cove, Mr. A. Payton knelt by his bedside praying as he prepared to go to bed about 9:00 p.m. Lightning hit his house, came into the bedroom, and struck him. Payton’s condition was serious, but he eventually recovered. Another man, unnamed, in a nearby residence, was burned around the chest by lightning.
Perhaps the strangest incident associated with the freak of nature occurred in St. John’s. James Clarke, a thirty-seven-year-old resident of the city, was using the telephone at the residence of his brother-in-law, Roddy O’Neil, South Side Road West.
Clarke left his home on Brazil Square about 7:00 p.m. and went to O’Neil’s house, where there were two families residing—the O’Neils and the Coadys. About an hour or two later, Clarke went out in a field with some children to look at the crops. Then the rain came; lightning followed.
When he returned to O’Neil’s house, the telephone rang and a Miss Coady answered. The call was for Mrs. O’Neil and she took the receiver. As she did, lightning travelled down the telephone line, giving Mrs. O’Neil a shock—enough that she fell to the floor semi-conscious.
She was revived by her husband and James Clarke. But the phone rang again. Mrs. O’Neil, naturally apprehensive, as well she should be, wouldn’t answer, instead asked Clarke to answer.
Clarke did. It was his wife. He was saying to Mrs. Clarke to hang up as lightning was affecting the phones. However, at that moment, there was a bright flash of lightning, followed by a heavy peal of thunder. James Clarke dropped to the floor, killed instantly by the lightning which travelled through the O’Neil phone line.
Dr. Herbert M. Mosdell (who later became an author and Newfoundland MHA) responded to the call for medical aid but found no marks or burns on the deceased body. Clarke, who left a wife and seven children, was well known along Water Street in his employment as a window cleaner and maintenance man.
In a general non-judicial inquiry which called for an explanation or cause of Clarke’s death, the manager of the Avalon Telephone Company, Robert Joseph Murphy, gave a public statement, saying that 200 telephones were out of order in St. John’s due to fuse blocks
being damaged by the lightning storm.
Speaking of the danger of using the phone during a severe electrical storm, Murphy explained: All telephone lines have fuse blocks, which burn off when a heavier electrical current attempts to go through the phone system. Electricity from ordinary power lines will not jump this gap, but strong lightning plays all sorts of freaks and is liable to go almost anywhere.
On the other hand, no liability or compensation (or sympathy in the public statement) from the Avalon Telephone Company went to the Clarke family for what was termed later as Death by Phone Call.
In the Days of Little
or No Communication
In an era when ship-to-shore or wireless communications were non-existent, a yet-to-be-invented device, the town of Burin, like many other Newfoundland villages, endured the frequent hardship of seamen and their schooners that had gone missing. In the years of all-sail ships, many of the town’s marine calamities were the result of storms at sea, collisions with steamers, navigational errors, or being blown off course.
One incident that gave unnecessary worry to Burin residents occurred in mid-winter 1885. The Goddards—George, who settled in Spoon Cove (later Epworth) in the 1850s, his brothers Thomas and Gabriel, and son Captain William Goddard—owned and operated several fishing schooners in the late nineteenth century: Swan, Lily, Kate, Defender, Success, Laurel, Bella G, and May Belle.
The latter schooner, May Belle, left Burin for St. John’s on January 27, 1885. Built in Fortune in 1878, the sixty-nine-foot-long schooner was owned by Gabriel Goddard. That winter, he put Captain Philip Hollett in charge with a crew of George Bonnell, John Woundy, George Roberts, John Plank, and Thomas Evely.
In a voyage that would normally take around two weeks (including discharge of its fish), the little fifty-five-tonner seemingly disappeared with crew. What loved ones back home didn’t know was that the schooner wasn’t long out of port when it fell into a typical mid-winter storm. It ravaged the May Belle.
It reached St. John’s on February 12 but had to undergo repairs there. This was in addition to the temporary mending it had already undergone at Bay Bulls before it reached its destination.
The May Belle finally left St. John’s on March 7. However, that same night it became jammed in ice off Mistaken Point, near Cape Race.
Nine days later, Captain Hollett and crew freed the schooner from its grip in the ice. Two days after that—March 18—it sailed into Mud Cove, Burin. All six men were worn out, hungry, and cold, but nonetheless safe and well. A local historian noted May Belle was gone fifty-two days, the same length of time it took John Cabot to reach Newfoundland from Bristol, England, in 1497—400 years previous.
The Goddards had devastating luck in the salt fish trade. Several of their ships met untimely ends. As well, two of Thomas’s sons perished at sea. Albert, a bank fisherman on Goddard’s Lily, died of exposure in a dory adrift in May 1887. His brother, William, was captain of the schooner at that time.
A few years later, William’s family moved to Halifax. Gabriel Goddard lost two children while living in Epworth. That family eventually moved to Vancouver.
The tale of the schooner Happy-Go-Lucky is an equally curious story from the days of sail and limited means of communication. The message of its loss at sea was picked up in a drifting bottle.
The fifty-five-foot-long Happy-Go-Lucky was built in 1877 in Port Medway, Nova Scotia. Its original owner, a Nova Scotian, brought the thirty-five-ton schooner to St. John’s in the fall of 1887, advertising it as a good craft for the Bank fishery.
It was put on display at Brooking’s wharf for two days, and then at Goodfellow’s for two more, until Thomas Keech of Burin purchased the fast sailing schooner.
The Keech and Weare clan were hard-working dealers and fish procurers at the turn of the century. Thomas Keech, a native of Dorset, owned several other fishing schooners in conjunction with his son, William, including the Mary, Gladys, and Princess Alice, the latter of which was registered to Mary Keech, one of the few women shareholders of that era.
For four years the Happy-Go-Lucky procured Grand Banks cod for the salt fish trade. Then on August 7, 1891, word came back to Burin of its end. That day, a bottle drifted into Point Molle, Little Placentia, which was brought to Magistrate Thomas O’Rielly in Placentia.
The message from the sea was signed by Thomas Lee, stating that on July 19 the schooner Happy-Go-Lucky of Burin was run down by the steamer Sunbeam, bound for Liverpool. Keech’s schooner was twenty-five miles south-southwest of Cape St. Mary’s and had 250 quintals of fish in its hold.