The Crested Seas
By Arthur Hunt Chute
Introduction by Gerald Hallowell
Formac Publishing Company Limited
Halifax
“Come on, it’s now or never!” I sang out sharply
Presenting Formac Fiction Treasures
Series Editor: Gwendolyn Davies
A taste for reading popular fiction expanded in the nineteenth century with the mass marketing of books and magazines. People read rousing adventure stories aloud at night around the fireside; they bought entertaining romances to read while travelling on trains and curled up with the latest serial novel in their leisure moments. Novelists were important cultural figures, with devotees who eagerly awaited their next work.
Among the many successful popular English language
novelists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were a group of Maritimers who found, in their own education, travel and sense of history, events and characters capable of entertaining readers on both sides of the Atlantic. They emerged from well-established communities that valued education and culture, for women as well as men. Faced with limited publishing opportunities in the Maritimes, successful writers sought magazine and book publishers in the major cultural centres: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, London and sometimes Montreal and Toronto. They often enjoyed much success with readers at home, but the best of these writers found large audiences across Canada and in the United States and Great Britain.
The Formac Fiction Treasures series is aimed at offering contemporary readers access to books that were successful, often huge bestsellers in their time, but which are now little known and often hard to find. The authors and titles selected are chosen first of all as enjoyable to read, and secondly for the light they shine on historical events and on attitudes and views of the culture from which they emerged. These complete original texts reflect values that are sometimes in conflict with those of today: for example, racism is often evident, and bluntly expressed. This collection of novels is offered as a step towards rediscovering a surprisingly diverse and not nearly well enough known popular cultural heritage of the Maritime provinces and of Canada.
Arthur Hunt Chute
Introduction
Nova Scotia is “pre-eminently the seafaring country of the Western world,” wrote Arthur Hunt Chute in Blackwood’s Magazine in April 1922. In “The Bluenose Skippers” he claimed that what England is to Europe, Nova Scotia is to North America, partly because of its geographical position — a peninsula almost entirely surrounded by the sea — but more because of the maritime propensities of its people. Nova Scotians farmed, cut timbers, built ships, loaded them with produce and sailed to the ends of the seven seas in their clipper ships, with sails aloft, “cleaving the sea in a glory of whitening foam.” “Those were wonderful days for Nova Scotia,” he wrote, “when in answering the call of the sea her sons followed their true vocation.” In The Crested Seas, Chute recreates the world of the Bluenose fishermen who followed that irresistible call by sailing their magnificent schooners to the Grand Banks in pursuit of fish.
As well as being a writer of adventure stories, novels and many articles for journals, Arthur Hunt Chute was a soldier, a traveller and, briefly, a clergyman. His father, Arthur Crawley Chute, born in Digby in 1853, went to Acadia College in Wolfville and became a Baptist minister, like his father, Reverend Obed Chute, before him. Arthur Crawley Chute studied at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Morgan Park in Chicago and was ordained in 1884 at Stillman Valley, northwest of the city. That same year he married Ella Maud Hunt and their first son was born on April 19, 1888. In 1892, Arthur Crawley Chute became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Halifax, and from 1901 to 1922 he served as Dean of Theology at Acadia. Thus young Arthur grew up in Halifax and Wolfville.
After studying at Horton Academy and Acadia University, Arthur Hunt Chute received a Bachelor of Divinity from the Newton Theological Institution in Massachusetts in 1914. In the meantime he had studied at Edinburgh University and travelled in Europe and the Near East. In September 1914 he signed up for the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Valcartier and went overseas with the First Canadian Contingent. According to his attestation papers, he was a journalist, a Baptist, twenty-five years old and six foot, two inches tall, with blue eyes, fair hair and a fair complexion. He had served in the militia with the 75th Regiment (Lunenburg) and was a lieutenant at the time he enlisted. He became a captain in the artillery, serving for three years until forced by shell shock to return to civilian life in 1917. His first book, The Real Front, published in 1918, was based on his wartime experiences. On September 15, 1919 at Cornwallis, Annapolis County, he married Lorna Payzant Pitt of Hamilton, Bermuda. It was on a journalistic quest ten years later, on September 22, 1929, that Chute died in a plane crash on Lake Manitoba.
Chute’s first book of fiction, published in 1923, was White Sails of Judique. In the early twentieth century, sea stories were among the most popular fiction published in the monthlies and pulp magazines of North America. The Roaring Forties, about “Clipper Ships and Yankee Skippers,” was serialized in the American pulp magazine Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1924 and published as a book that year. Then, in 1926, Chute published The Mutiny of the Flying Spray, in which two boys — red-blooded fellows with a craving for excitement — set out in a dory looking for adventure. Hauled aboard the Flying Spray in the black of night, they later help defend the captain against “a swarthy crew filled with a lust for gold.” Far Gold, published in 1927, told the story of Cape Breton men hunting for seals in far-flung places, including the Bering Sea.
Chute’s writing of sea stories culminated in 1928 with the publication of The Crested Seas, with its vivid depiction of the life of seafaring Nova Scotians, particularly the fishermen of Cape Breton. Chute’s father noted shortly after his son’s death that his sea stories had a high moral tone. His knowledge of sea-going and his command of the vocabulary of seamen were based on wide reading about the sea and sailors from an early age, but also on extensive travel on sailing vessels and cattle boats as well as on comfortable steamers, and one trip across the ocean as a common sailor on a barque carrying lumber.
The narrator in The Crested Seas is young Johnnie Angus, twelve years old when the story opens, but sixteen for most of the novel. He and his constant companion, Louis, “a Gaelic-speaking negro,” contrive to get themselves aboard the Airlie, the Gloucester schooner captained by Johnnie Angus’s uncle, the famous Bluenose skipper Jock MacPhee. Cap’n Jock’s great rival is Black Dan Campbell, skipper of the Gloucester vessel Dundee, and a nasty piece of work. The rivalry between these two men, reflecting the ancestral hatreds of the clans in their Scottish past, leads to many high adventures on the high seas. The main theme of the novel would seem to be revenge, and the right way to exact it.
The principal characters in The Crested Seas all come from Judique, a small fishing and farming community on the southwestern shore of Cape Breton, on the edge of St. George’s Bay in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The first permanent European pioneers in the area were of Highland Scots descent, having moved to the area mainly from Prince Edward Island in the late eighteenth century. In the 1790s some of the Highland Scots moved further north along the coast, to Port Hood. Boys like Johnnie Angus hung around ships that were being built and knew all their parts, from stem to stern, long before they went to sea. It is in Port Hood when the fleet is in — where the fishermen are “living great stories,” not just reading them — that Johnnie Angus and Louis manage to board the Airlie, and thus begin their own great adventures. South of Judique, towards the Strait of Canso, is the village of Creignish, where Johnnie Angus once saw his Uncle Jock at mass “within the high white walls of Stel
la Maris,” the parish church. At the other end of the strait on Chedabucto Bay is Canso, the closest port to the Grand Banks fishing grounds and therefore a good place to replenish ice and bait and to mingle with other fishermen.
The earlier settlers in Cape Breton had come to the New World largely by their own choice. In the first half of the nineteenth century, however, there was a large influx of Highland Scots due to the forced displacement of the population in Scotland during the Highland clearances. Their faith, their culture and language, even their animosities, survived the ocean crossing, as did their surnames. MacEacherens, MacDonalds and Campbells appear in Chute’s book, as does one John Mystic MacDonald, called “John Mystic” after his boat to distinguish him from the many other John MacDonalds in the neighbourhood. Despite the passage of time, the emotional ties to the old country remained strong.
From the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas —
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides:
Fair these broad meads — these hoary woods are grand;
But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.
Canadian Boat Song (Anonymous, 1829)
Gaelic words and phrases help create the Highland Scots atmosphere in The Crested Seas: M’eudail (my darling), ochone (an expression of sorrow or regret), the Gaelic imprecation Bas Diarmaid and such sayings as a man had to be “both canny and fendy” to win the title of highliner. At a moment of great danger at sea, Little Rory brings forth his bagpipes, and at the skirl of the pipes “our Highland crew became like men possessed”; though dour and grave ashore, under the spell of the pibroch they were aroused at last to “the acme of conflict with waves and tempest.” The tartan against the world! From the men flowed a feast of old songs and old traditions “with the beautiful legends of Iona and Oronsay.” The deep Catholic faith of the community is best seen in Jock MacPhee, who refuses to fish on Sunday, even though his competitors are hauling in a fine catch. “It’s different wi’ our Hielan’men from Judique.” The sea is the Blessed Mary’s Treasury, and one day should be set aside to give thanks. There’s no such thing as luck at sea, he tells Johnnie Angus. “Those who wait fer us to come back from the sea must wait on the mercy o’ Him who watches the fall o’ a sparrow.”
Despite his solid Baptist background, Chute writes convincingly about the Catholic Highland Scots of Cape Breton. His interest in and knowledge of them may have come from his time in the Great War, for he served there with the 17th Battalion, Nova Scotia Highlanders. He undoubtedly knew his fellow soldiers well, and no doubt some of them were fishermen. One wonders if one of the men had a tattoo on his chest like Wild Archie MacEacheren, the Judique giant, “his own and his wife’s initials, with a heart between and the Saviour on the cross above,” tattooed in China ink and gunpowder.
The fishermen in The Crested Seas are Cape Bretoners, the skippers Bluenose to the core, but the vessels they sail on are out of Gloucester, the principal Banks fishing port of New England. The people of Judique and Port Hood knew American fishermen well for, from the early 1830s to the late 1860s, the New Englanders maintained a large mackerel fishing fleet in “The Bay,” as they called the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Many of the seven or eight hundred American vessels fishing in the Gulf around the middle of the century were manned by fishermen from Cape Breton. There was also a lively trade when the Americans arrived in port for ice, bait, barrels, fresh vegetables and other supplies. Without these connections, life would have been much harder. As late as the 1880s American vessels were calling into ports along the coast, such as Port Hood and Rory’s Cove at Judique, to buy bait. American vessels with local men aboard went down in the Gulf in the Yankee Gale of 1851 and the great hurricane of 1873.
There was, as well, plenty of movement southward. The Port Hood Eastern Beacon wrote in 1879 of “the weekly leave-taking of so many Cape Bretoners for the United States by every Boston-bound steamer, as well as by Gloucester and Boston sailing vessels.” As Gloucester historian George H. Procter wrote as early as 1873 in The Fishermen’s Memorial and Record Book, when more fishermen were needed to replenish the fleet it was natural to turn to “the Provinces.” Among the large number of Nova Scotians in Gloucester, he said, were some of the smartest skippers in the fleet. Many arrived with scarcely a dollar in their pockets and “through their energetic spirit of industry and perseverance” they became owners or part owners of vessels. Born and reared by the sea, with a need to earn their own living at a young age, they were naturally fitted to become highly qualified seamen. Statistics give some idea of the number of men who went south. On the fishermen’s memorial in Gloucester there are some 5,000 names of men who lost their lives at sea. Of these, about 1,700 are Maritimers, some 1,200 from Nova Scotia. According to the Canadian Fisherman in March 1914, thirty-eight Canadians and Newfoundlanders were lost in the Gloucester fleet in 1912, twenty in 1913, twenty-two more in 1914. The majority of these men were from Nova Scotia. At the end of each fishing season the North Sydney Herald reprinted from the Cape Anne Advertiser of Gloucester a list recording the Cape Bretoners lost in the fleet that year.
At first it seems peculiar that Chute never mentions fishermen from other ports in Nova Scotia, from Liverpool, Digby or even Lunenburg. Since he served in the militia with a Lunenburg regiment before the war, he must have been well aware that the town had the largest deep-sea fishing fleet in Nova Scotia. But in fact it’s appropriate that his Bluenose fishermen sail out of Gloucester, for the people of Judique had had far more contact with the Gloucester fleet than with the mainlanders. As well, wages were higher there and, as Johnnie Angus noted on his way to the shack locker, the “Gloucester boats were famous for good feeding.” More important than comfort and financial reward, perhaps, was the fact that there was more room to advance. By the late nineteenth century the Gloucester fleet was made up of many nationalities, whereas in Lunenburg the majority of the fishermen and most of the skippers came from the surrounding county. There were Newfoundlanders in the Lunenburg fleet, but very few men from Cape Breton. As a small example, of the more than 130 men who died in the six Lunenburg vessels that foundered in the August gales of 1926 and 1927, there were only five men from Cape Breton, and four of them were Acadians from Chéticamp, not Highland Scots.
Chute clearly had great admiration for the Bluenose skipper. As he wrote in his Blackwood’s article, “the Nova Scotian captains represented, in a rare degree, the ideal union of strength and intelligence. In their bodies was the iron of the pioneer stock, while their minds were sedulously cultivated. This cultivation of the mind was the key to their rapid promotion. No seamen ever got their master’s papers earlier than they.” The hero of Chute’s book, Captain Jock MacPhee, seems remarkably similar to a real-life skipper from Cape Breton, Captain John M. MacInnis, a man who was identified with Gloucester for nearly seventy years. Born in 1867, grandson of one of the original settlers, MacInnis went to Gloucester at the age of seventeen. He eventually crewed there with his uncle, handlining and trawling, and in 1892 he began his long career as skipper. It was said that books could be written about his exploits, and it was doubtful “a tougher, more rugged man ever sailed the North Atlantic.” There was “nothing fancy” about him. His fame was gained by his courageousness and knowledge and his ability to lead his fellow men. Though he died in Gloucester, he was buried at St. Anne’s in Cape Breton.
One real-life event reflected in Chute’s novel is the story of Howard Blackburn of Port Medway, who at eighteen left his South Shore town for a life of fishing out of Gloucester. In 1883 he and his dorymate went astray from their schooner and were stranded far from land on the Grand Banks. Left alone when his dorymate perished, Blackburn continued to row, his gloveless hands frozen to the oars. On the fifth day he made it to the Newfoundland coast. In the novel, Uncle Jock tells Johnnie Angus that he was once caught with a dead d
orymate on the Grand Bank over 200 miles off Newfoundland and saved himself by holding his bare hands to the oars to freeze so that he could still hold on to the oars no matter what else happened. Blackburn lost all his fingers and much else, but apparently Uncle Jock did not.
It’s not possible to know where Chute got his inspiration and his ideas for the novel. Certainly his knowledge of banks fishing, from underrunning to flying sets to races among the fishing vessels, is wide and accurate. The phrase “both canny and fendy” may have been taken from a line in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley. The sentence “I’ll bet there’s more Gloucester fishermen buried underneath these waters than there is in green groves back in Gloucester” seems to parallel lines in Harry Hewitt’s history of the town of Lunenburg: “Not all the sons of Lunenburg who have run their course on earth lie beneath the green sod of the old cemetery in the home-town. Many there be who sleep their last sleep full many a fathom deep.” The well known writer of tales about fishermen from Gloucester, J. B. Connolly, published a book of short stories in 1907 called The Crested Seas. With his interest in Gloucester it seems likely that Chute would have known of this book, and it’s curious that he chose to use the same title.
Given that they were published in the same year, 1928, and that both novels are concerned with the business of fishing in Nova Scotia, it’s tempting to compare The Crested Seas with Frank Parker Day’s Rockbound. Whereas most of the action in Chute’s book takes place on the Banks, Day writes about the inshore fishery off the island of Ironbound in Mahone Bay. Both authors are writing about fairly isolated communities with a strong ethnic and linguistic background — in Day’s case, the Germans of Lunenburg County. In both novels there are primal competitive hatreds lurking close to the surface. One real-life tragic event seems to have caught the attention of both authors. Day’s hero, David Jung, does most of his fishing by himself from his own dory, but in one grand episode he takes an opportunity to sail to the Banks on the Lunenburg vessel Sylvia Westner. Caught in a fierce storm fishing too close to Sable Island’s treacherous sand bars, the schooner is wrecked. The dramatic final episode of Chute’s The Crested Seas pretty clearly recalls the same event. Day’s account is based closely on a report in the Halifax Herald about the loss in August 1926 of the Sylvia Mosher, and Chute also likely drew on the newspaper coverage of the day. Since both books were published in 1928, and therefore written some time earlier, it’s probable that neither Chute nor Day knew at the time of writing about the even more horrific event the following year, August 1927, when four more Lunenburg vessels foundered off Sable along with the Gloucester schooner Columbia.
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