Chute, in fact, is none too precise about the time in which his tale takes place. Most of the action at sea occurs in winter. But the year in which the novel is set could be almost any time from the last half of the nineteenth century up to the 1920s. The schooners seem to be from the great days of the Age of Sail in the late nineteenth century, when the North American Banks fishery was at its peak. In 1888 there were 339 vessels in the Gloucester fleet, but by the middle of the first decade of the new century the fleet had declined to fewer than fifty vessels. There’s no mention in Chute’s novel of the arrival of new technology in the form of trawlers or auxiliary engines on the sailing vessels. But Riley’s pool room and rum shop in Canso, a joint which made a killing by selling smuggled liquor to sailors and fishermen, suggests a later date: the Prohibition era of the 1920s.
It’s important to note The Crested Seas was first serialized in Boy’s Life, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, from November 1927 until April 1928, and then published as a book that year, copyrighted by the Boy Scouts as well as by the publisher, J. H. Sears & Company of New York. Founded by Robert Baden-Powell in England in 1907, the Scouts quickly spread to other parts of the Commonwealth. The American organization was founded as part of the international movement in 1910 “to teach patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred values,” and the first issue of Boy’s Life appeared on January 1, 1911. The paper was similar in style and content to the much older Boy’s Own Paper in Britain, whose purpose was to encourage young people to read and to instill Christian morals during their formative years. The British Empire was promoted as the highest achievement of civilization. In British popular culture, improbable and daring adventures were often described as “real Boy’s Own stuff,” referring to the heroic content of the magazine’s stories.
The Crested Seas fits the genre closely. Johnnie Angus and Louis, “bronco-busters and rough-riders of the deep,” face one exciting and daring adventure after another. Over the course of the book, the boy becomes a man. Sailing masters, crew, the way of life itself are highly romanticized. Despite the accuracy of Chute’s depiction of seafaring life, there are plenty of improbable events. The twelve-year-old Johnnie Angus leaps ashore through a raging sea from a ship wrecked on the rocks, and thereby rescues his mother. The sixteen-year-old boy is knocked overboard and survives at least three times in ice-cold winter waters. It’s not very probable that the captain would twice hand the wheel to crew members, once to the cook and then to Black Louis, leaving behind his schooner and heading off in a dory himself, with most unfortunate consequences. Captains did not generally do that sort of thing.
The Boy’s Own formula can also be seen by the strictly masculine domain of Chute’s world. Jock MacPhee’s wife makes a fleeting appearance behind a window as she watches her husband depart, and Johnnie Angus’s mother, who sings sweetly the runes of the Western Isles, is shipwrecked at the beginning of the book and vows never to go on the sea again. Both women wait at home, alone — for the men in their families cannot resist the call of the sea. Not surprisingly, given the youth of the narrator and the intended audience, there’s no flirtation with the opposite sex, unlike in Rockbound with the lusty Gershom Born and Fanny, the potato girl, who sleeps in the loft with the fishermen. Chute’s story fits better with the young man in Surrey who wrote, in 1955, to the Boy’s Own Paper: “I would like to see an article on how to get a girl, and when you’ve got her, how to keep and please her.” The editor replied, not very helpfully: “We will bear the suggestion for an article on how to keep a girl friend in mind! In the meantime there is an article on keeping Golden Hamsters on pages 34 and 35 of this issue.”
There is plenty of passion in The Crested Seas and it has to do with love of the sea and the fisherman’s way of life and the rivalries and jealousies that take place between opposing personalities. Most important is the “tradition of battling Highland blood.” It was natural for a MacPhee to mix it up with a Campbell, for there had been many “bonnie scraps” in the old country. At MacNairs Cove in the Gut of Canso, where “the feuds of the fishing fleets were settled,” the Campbells enrage the MacEacherens by asking what part of Ireland they come from, calling them Galway Micks and bog trotters. But the main antagonism is between the rival Bluenose skippers on their Gloucester schooners. Throughout the book, treacherous Black Dan Campbell, prideful, a braggart, with his reputation as a “man-killer,” confronts and challenges Foul Weather Jock MacPhee, a “fish-killer,” three-time highline skipper of the Gloucester fleet, a dour, reticent, unromantic man who gives no hint of the fires that sleep within. He is cautious, staying in port in rough weather, calling in the dories at the first sign of a bad storm. It’s said of him that “he’s careful wi’ the lives o’ men.” Black Dan, on his sleek schooner Dundee, a sail-dragger, carries as much sail as he can get away with, and takes big chances. The final duel would occur in the fatal bend of Sable Island, graveyard of the Atlantic, in a nor’easter that leapt upon them “with all the vicious stealth of a crouching tiger.”
Captain Jock MacPhee does not say that revenge is a dish best served cold, but he would have been sympathetic to the sentiment. He waits, calmly and patiently, for the right time and the right place, and for the right way to go about it. As he says in the last line of the book: “How many times must I be tellin’ ye, Johnnie Angus, that mercy is a strong man’s vengeance?”
Early in The Crested Seas Johnnie Angus declares that for his family “the sea was a sort of battle ground, where in a peaceful age, fighting Highland blood still found its opportunity to conquer.” The sea is many things in the novel, from Old Friend to Old Enemy. It was the Blessed Mary’s Treasury, providing the men with a living, and for Johnnie Angus it was “the pathway to adventure.” But more often it’s described as “something appalling,” an “overwhelming monster.” Almost alone in a dory, “adrift on a sea that swept to eternity,” Johnnie Angus feels that “In that moment there came to me an appalling sense of the hate and might of the sea, such as could come only in a tiny dory . . . Never before had a mere man seemed to me to be so puny, so ineffectual.”
Though written for the young, The Crested Seas is a ripping yarn full of action throughout, fine entertainment for all ages, a chance to go to sea vicariously in an age when the graceful schooners no longer exist and experience once again the timeless struggle of man against the sea.
— Gerald Hallowell
CHAPTER I
Outward Bound
A clear, blue zesty morn with white- caps dancing down the bay; a snoring nor’-easter thumming out its loud, high music in the shrouds.
“Grand sailin’ weather,” observed my Father. “Couldn’t possibly have had a better slant for the run through the Straits.”
We were bound to the southward, to see my uncle, Captain Jock MacPhee of the Gloucester fishing fleet, whose schooner, the Airlie, off the Middle Ground, was just putting in for a new supply of ice and bait.
For some time, Mother had been saving a bolt of homespun for a sister in the States, and this seemed like a good chance to get it across. When a message came from the Maritime Fish Company announcing that the Airlie had been sighted beating in off Whitehead, it was decided that we should embark for Canso without delay.
I was overjoyed at the prospect of meeting again my Uncle Jock, who had already on three separate years been the high-line skipper out of Gloucester.
As my Father often remarked, “It takes a man both canny and fendy to win the title of High-liner.”
Most of the men-folk in my family had been lost at sea. Of the MacPhees there remained only my Father, Neil, and his elder brother, Jock. Father was a home-loving body and stood by the old place. But Jock, as we say in the Gaelic, “took the world for his pillow,” remaining for years an exile from his Mother and his mountains.
The one and only time I saw my Uncle Jock was at Mass within the high white walls of Stella Maris.
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sp; I had heard so many tales about him by the fireside, that I was prepared to see a living hero, but he certainly did not look very romantic that Sabbath morning, a gray wisp of a man, shrunken and gnarled, like an oak that had been riven by the blast. The dourness and reticence of his exterior gave no hint of the fires that slept within.
When he rose up in his place in the family pew, I was surprised to notice that he towered above my Father. Here indeed was a personality of contradictions, appearing small yet really large, a lion passing as a lamb, Jock Mac- Phee always kept everybody guessing, and so it was not surprising that, at first glimpse, he was far beyond a small boy’s comprehension.
I was far more attracted on that occasion by a stranger of dashing manner, who came down the middle aisle late, so that more than one pretty girl had to notice him over the top of her missal. With his commanding figure, his flashing black eye, and his great beak of a nose, he might have stepped right out of the storybooks as one of the grand foray leaders.
Looking at this gallant stranger, and wondering about him, made me forget all about Uncle Jock, and then after Mass, I found out that the stranger’s name was Black Dan Campbell, and my enthusiasm for him suddenly waned. You see, the MacPhees have always been on the opposite side from the Campbells.
Whilst we were standing around with the horses there was a lot of talk about two sons of the parish that were back home from Gloucester. Some of the youngsters were talking bravely about Black Dan, when Malcolm MacLellan, the schoolmaster, cut in:
“Black Dan Campbell has everything in the showcase, but Jock MacPhee keeps all his goods in the back shop.”
There was something very strange about my Uncle Jock; he had been a bad man once, an awful fighter, and an awful sail-dragger, then something happened out on the Banks one night, a mystery of two men washed ashore in a dory on the Sable Island bars. One of them, with his face as black as his boots, was buried in the Sable Island cemetery. The other, the survivor of that dory, was my uncle, Jock MacPhee, but a vastly different person from the fighting, carousing, blaspheming Jock who used to paint the Gloucester foreshore pink. It was a silent Jock who came ashore, a baffling person who evermore remained an enigma, even to his closest cronies at the Master Mariners’ Association.
In the churchyard that morning, my uncle surprised everyone by coming over to a group of us lads and momentarily at least forgetting his almost painful reticence.
After asking me many lively questions about myself, he finally remarked:
“Ye must come to sea with me, some day, Johnny Angus, and I’ll be makin’ a high-line skipper out o’ ye.”
The memory of that promise was ever with me, and that is why I was So rejoiced that at last I was on my way again to meet my uncle ; perhaps this time he would really take me with him. Of course, I was careful not to express this fond hope aloud, on account of my Mother.
CHAPTER II
We Put To Sea
There was a long delay in sailing thatmorning, as one of our crew was missing.
Father intended to go without him, but it was blowing hard and promised to be a stiff day outside, so Mother pleaded with him not to risk it undermanned.
Whilst we were still discussing this problem, who should come down to the end of the wharf but Black Dan Campbell, the high-stepping skipper from Gloucester, back home for a spell.
Seeing our hesitation at casting off, Black Dan inquired: “What’s holdin’ ye?”
“One o’ me lads ain’t shown up,” answered my Father.
“No sign of him alongshore?”
“Nay, I’ve been in all the joints ; looks as if he’s skipped at the last minute.”
“Where ye bound?”
“To Canso.”
“Come to think of it, I got some business down there with Whitman’s; I’ll go with ye.”
“All right, come along,” sang out my Father.
“Just wait till I pick up some papers in the office at the head o’ the wharf.”
With Black Dan gone hastily on his errand, Mother surprised me by entering upon a sort of lament
“I don’t like it. Don’t like it at all. Sorry you asked him to come.”
“Why, he’s supposed to be one of our best sail-handlers, smartest fellow ye could ask fer in a boat, be worth two or three o’ the ordinary pier-head jumps that we might pick up.”
“I know all that, but I don’t like the idea of your taking him, all the same. He’s a captain, and more than one captain aboard the same vessel isn’t good. Then to make things worse, he’s one o’ the Black Campbells,”
“Fiddlesticks!”
“Well, you know, Neil, his family and ours never pulled together, and what’s more, they say that there’s bad blood between him and your brother Jock.”
“Bah, Jock won’t have any time down in Canso to bother wi’ this guy; he’ll be too busy attendin’ to his ain crew.”
“Don’t fool yourself, Jock may be the kind to mind his ain bisiness; but that’s not the style o’ Black Dan—besides“
Here, Mother suddenly was forced to cut short her warnings as Captain Campbell reappeared with his papers.
Father satisfied himself by muttering: “Ye’re always full o’ evil imaginings, Mary.”
“Wait and see,” was her rejoinder.
In the next instant, unconscious of our talk, Black Dan cast off, and, gathering way, our vessel pushed her nose out into the bay.
Whatever gloomy thoughts were in my Mother’s mind were soon swept away by the zest of that autumn morn. It was good just to be alive on such a day. And how could one be more alive than with the main sheet paid off before a brisk nor’easter?
On our left towered Judique Mountain, wave- lashed along its base, cloud-capped upon its summit. Across on our right was the Nova Scotian coastline, low and dark, closing in toward the narrow straits, the artery of commerce between the Atlantic and the Gulf.
With a leading wind we went ramping along in fine style, past Cape Jack, and then into the calmer waters of the strait, a narrow deep channel, thirteen miles through, completely landlocked. This bright and winding pathway of the sea afforded ever changing scenes as we doubled a cape, or pierced behind the secrets of a guardian foreland.
Suddenly, upon our vista of surprises appeared Cape Porpucine, rising like a great pyramid, its dark wooded surface broken here and there with scars of ugly granite.
“I don’t know,” my Mother always said, “but I never look at yon cape that it does not give me a feeling like an evil spirit on the Black Shore.”
Beyond the foreboding shadow of Porpucine, there on the left, MacNairs Cove swam into view, a deep estuary conveniently carved out by nature as a ships’ basin in the midst of the narrow seas.
I had visited MacNairs on several occasions, but this was the first time that I had passed the accustomed haven. As we swept by, my heart began to swell with roving pride.
All the time the wind was steadily rising, sounding its music in our shrouds, tuning all alike to the sheer joy of resistless onward motion. Everywhere the indigo blue of the channel was broken by plumed whitecaps sparkling in the clear translucent air.
Tearing along wing and wing through the straits, with everything drawing except the jib, we sped away before the wind at a tremendous clip. The weather looked wild, but as yet no one anticipated what was coming.
Two hours after passing MacNairs we shot out of the protecting channel into Chedabucto Bay, where we encountered a nasty sea upon our port quarter, causing our vessel to roll like a drunken sailor.
By this time the weather was looking wilder than ever, and with the wind off-shore, Father called out:
“Dinna ye think that we’d better be takin’ the summer kites off her now, Cap’n Dan?”
“What’s the use, no good slowin’ up if we don’t have to.�
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“Dinna like the look o’ them tops’ls.”
“Bah, when the gulls can’t fly to wind’ard, I’ll still keep hangin’ on.”
“Looks overhatted,” murmured my Father, to which Cap’n Dan replied:
“Trouble wi’ you fellers that stick around home, Neil, is that ye never learn how to crack on the dimty. Ye ought to see some of us fellers out o’ Gloucester; there’s where they carry on, let a vessel roll down till the wind blows right over the top o’ her canvas. Down in Judique, ye are too much like old wimmen.”
Ordinarily my Father would have gone ahead on his own, but there was a sort of seniority assumed by our men that had sailed the fine Yankee schooners, and of course Black Dan was not at all backward in assuming that same seniority.
Accordingly we hung on to our flying kites, while Black Dan sang out exultantly:
“Now the auld lass has got a bone in her teeth.”
Sometimes in the fierce squalls we went over so far that my heart was in my mouth, while the water came boiling and foaming clean up to the hatches.
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