The Deadly Sea

by Jim Wellman

  Rosborough wooden vessels under construction

  at A. F. Theriault’s Shipyard in Meteghan, Nova Scotia

  Clearly, Doug immensely enjoyed his new friend, who, by Doug’s own description, was captivating as he told endless spellbinding tales. Among other accomplishments, a young Richard Black sailed with Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd on several of the more famous admiral’s Antarctic expeditions. Doug took great pride in building for Admiral Black the private vessel of his dreams.

  Doug Rosborough was a hard worker and every vessel he designed was a work of art, built with integrity and great craftsmanship. Although a couple of unscrupulous buyers stiffed him on final payments, it was never because of shoddy work. It was because they were shysters of the first order who took advantage of an honest man who did most contracts based on nothing more than a handshake.

  A line in his book discussed what he came to know as the difference between Canadians and Americans. He said when things went wrong, Canadians asked how to fix the problem. Americans asked: “Who do we blame and sue?”

  But still, most of Doug’s business was done for clients south of the border and the vast majority were good to deal with.

  Rosborough’s business peaked around 1970. In 1973, he had fifteen boats under construction in five yards. Life was good. But dark clouds were building on the wooden boat horizon with the promise of strong headwinds.

  In the 1980s, fibreglass was suddenly the rage. Because fibre was lighter, durable, and less expensive than wood, fishermen, government agencies, and other clients were switching. Fortunately, Bob Rosborough had been working with his father long enough to know the company well. Bob adapted easily to the new-age demand. He had a keen sense of business and, because he worked at sea with the Bedford Institute of Oceanography for several years, he was well-equipped to lead the company on a new tack.

  For Doug, steeped in the culture of wood and sail all those years, adapting was not so easy. The thought that no one wanted wooden boats anymore was difficult to accept. In 1990, he was forced to come to terms with an uncertain future. His life of adventure and swashbuckling friends had suddenly gone quiet. To add to his confusion, his thirty-five-year marriage ended at the same time.

  “It was all mystifying to me. I couldn’t understand, the bottom had dropped out of my world—it was the dark night of my soul and I didn’t know what to do,” he wrote.

  Doug retreated to the family cottage in the woods at Lake Charlotte, where he lived for a couple of years. He ultimately figured things out and lived a happier life in retirement with his endless memories, photos, ships plans, and stories.

  Rosborough Boats continues as a strong and distinctive boatbuilding company under Bob’s leadership and with the able assistance of another Rosborough, Bob’s son Heaton.

  Doug still has plenty of reason to be proud.

  Chapter 9

  Hodges Cove Black Christmas

  Christmas 1976 was shaping up to be the usual season of holiday merriment for the small Trinity Bay community of Hodges Cove, located about a two-hour drive northwest of St. John’s.

  In fact, for the family of twenty-one-year-old Willis Thomas, it was going to be an extra special Christmas. Willis had been working in Labrador City for the previous four years and this was going to be his first Christmas home since he started working up north.

  But there was another reason for celebration that year—Willis was also home to become engaged. The wedding was to take place a month later. His fiancée was three months pregnant, with their baby expected to arrive in late spring 1977.

  In an interview with CBC’s Land and Sea program, Willis’s sister, Patsy, said the whole family was excited about having her brother home, and with the engagement and upcoming wedding planning, this would be a Christmas like none other.

  Patsy was right—it would be a Christmas like no other. But not the joyous occasion she had expected.

  Willis’s dad, Cyril Thomas, loved a game of cards, and on Thursday night, December 23, several men gathered at the Thomas household for a chat and a few hands of cards. Willis was one of them. His friend Hedley Drover was another, along with Hedley’s good friend Wes “Willis” Peddle.

  Late in the evening, Willis decided to open a bottle of rum to offer a drink to his father and friends.

  “It’s handy enough to Christmas to have a little drink now, boys. You never know if we’ll ever get the chance to have another one together again,” Willis said.

  While sipping their drinks, Hedley mentioned that he might “go across the Arm to Mooring Cove” and check his cod net the next morning. Wes suggested that he would probably join him and perhaps they could also have a look at Wes’s herring net while they were out there. Willis, who was always there to lend a helping hand, said that he’d like to go with his friends, and he invited them to go in his small speedboat.

  When Wes Peddle looked out his window on Christmas Eve morning, he changed his mind about going out in boat that day. It was a grey, overcast, damp morning with fairly strong winds and occasional drizzle. He assumed that Hedley wouldn’t bother checking on his cod net because it would not be comfortable in a small sixteen-foot open boat. Wes told his wife, Audrey, that he would go in the woods and cut some firewood instead.

  Unlike Wes, forty-five-year-old Hedley Drover was not deterred by the weather conditions that morning.

  Hedley Drover

  Christmas was traditionally a time of community visiting in rural Newfoundland communities, and no visit would be complete unless the host offered a snack to his or her guests. Not only that, several of Hedley’s nine children were still living at home, and with a family to feed every day, along with expected company during the Christmas holiday season, a few dozen codfish fillets in the freezer would make things a lot nicer for the season’s festivities at the Drover household.

  Still, Hedley didn’t appear to be in a hurry to leave Hodges Cove to go to his net that Christmas Eve morning. His son Dennis remembers Hedley splitting firewood and bringing it in the house to dry.

  Willis Thomas

  Dennis was a typical eleven-year-old boy who loved a game of hockey. He recalls that he was rounding up hockey sticks and other things to have a game of street hockey with his buddies on the wharf not far from their house. Like all children his age, Dennis was full of wonderment and excitement about the anticipated Christmas presents that would be under the tree the next morning. Perhaps there might be a piece of hockey equipment or, if he was really lucky, the Mastermind game he’d asked Santa for that year.

  But that Christmas morning would not be a time for opening gifts in the Drover household.

  When Hedley finished chopping wood, he contacted his young friend Willis Thomas to see if Willis’s offer to join him in checking his cod nets still stood. Willis agreed and again suggested they could go in his little speedboat. The two men later met at the beach, and after deciding that the wind and seas were still not too bad, the two men prepared to go across Southwest Arm to haul Hedley’s two gillnets at Mooring Cove Point. After all, it was only a mile across the Arm and they would be back home again in an hour.

  Like Willis Thomas, Cal “Calvin” Drover also worked in Labrador City in 1976 and he, too, was home in Hodges Cove to spend Christmas with his dad, Hedley, and mom, Beulah, along with several siblings and other family members.

  Cal remembers being on the beach when his dad and Willis climbed into the small boat. In fact, Willis tried coaxing Cal into joining them.

  “He was saying, ‘Come on, Cal, we won’t be long,’ but I didn’t feel like going and said I’d probably go in the woods and get some wood for Christmas,” Cal recalled.

  “Nah, come on, we’ll be back in a little while, and then tonight we’ll have a few drinks,” Willis implored.

  But Cal had his mind made up. He wasn’t going out in bo
at that morning.

  “Okay then, if you’re not comin’, then shove us off, will you,” Hedley said to his son.

  Cal obliged and pushed the small boat away from the beach and looked at his father as the two men set out to haul the net.

  Cal would be the last person to see to his dad and Willis alive.

  Back in Hodges Cove, everything was proceeding as any other Christmas Eve. Women were baking cookies and treats and putting the last touches on the household decorations for the holiday season. Men were working on getting firewood and putting up the last strings of outdoor Christmas lights.

  By midday, several hours after Willis and Hedley said they would be back home, the winds had significantly increased and concerns about the two men started to grow. Hedley’s wife, Beulah, kept glancing out her pantry window to see if there was any sign of a speedboat coming in the small harbour.

  Her anxiety increasing with every passing minute, Beulah went to the Thomas residence to see if they had heard from Willis. Willis’s mother, Ethel Thomas, said she hadn’t heard anything from her son and mentioned that she, too, was getting worried. Both women then decided to contact other people to see if anyone knew anything about Willis and Hedley’s whereabouts. One of them was Peddle.

  Wes didn’t share the women’s fear at first.

  When he came home from the woods about noon, his wife, Audrey, mentioned that Hedley and Willis had gone out in boat and were overdue. Wes knew Hedley very well and suggested that his friend probably went to nearby Hatchet Cove after hauling his nets and was likely enjoying a Christmas Eve drink with friends there.

  Dennis Drover

  By early afternoon, Beulah couldn’t look out the window any longer. She had to do something. She called and asked Wes if he would consider going across the Arm to see if there was any sign of her husband and Willis. It was windy and seas were getting rough, but Wes said he would take a look.

  Wes Peddle contacted his friend Walter Drover and told him what was going on. Walter said he would go with Wes, and a few minutes later the two men ventured out from Hodges Cove in Walt’s boat to search for Willis and Hedley.

  The morning showers had turned into a steady rainfall accompanied by a strong southeasterly wind, so “Uncle” Walt, as he was known to Wes and most others, decided to go to a nearby community to top up his fuel tank in case they ran into conditions that would mean taking longer than expected to get back home.

  Coming out of Hatchet Cove, they narrowly escaped being added to the list of missing persons themselves that afternoon.

  “We nearly capsized,” Wes says, explaining that a couple of large waves nearly tossed their boat bow over stern.

  Uncle Walt was back aft on the motor, so Wes quickly moved forward, from where he was sitting in the middle of the boat, to the front to provide more weight in the bow. That would help stabilize the vessel until Walt could manoeuvre the speedboat to a better angle against the seas and wind. What Wes calls “a bit of a fright” was enough to convince the two men that it was too dangerous to continue searching for their two friends, so they decided to guide the boat, cautiously, through the rough seas back to Hodges Cove.

  With Wes and Uncle Walt’s arrival back home, fears for the two missing men heightened. Uncle Walt’s boat was a sturdy eighteen-foot speedboat with a twenty-horsepower engine, and if that one almost capsized, how could a smaller, sixteen-foot punt speedboat survive in those conditions?

  Hodges Cove’s black Christmas started that evening—literally. While an entire community waited and worried, hardly anyone felt festive enough to turn on Christmas lights. The small Trinity Bay town looked like any other dreary night in winter, not the normally brightly lit and happy place on Christmas Eve.

  Dennis Drover still gets emotional when he talks about the events of Christmas 1976.

  At eleven years of age, he was old enough to understand from the sombre and anxious conversations of the adults that something was terribly wrong. Although thirty-six years have passed, tears still well up when Dennis recalls when the younger Drover children were preparing for bed that night. What was supposed to be a night of wide-eyed excitement, waiting for morning’s first light to see what Santa Claus would bring, had turned into a sickening feeling that was all-consuming for Dennis.

  His younger sister Lisa, who was just nine, asked Dennis if he thought their dad and Willis were going to be all right. It was Christmas Eve and Dennis wanted to say something positive to calm his little sister’s fears, but even though he tried, the proper words were hard to find because his mind was in such turmoil that talking about his dad was almost impossible.

  “I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live,” Dennis says softly, his voice trembling with raw emotion.

  At dawn on Christmas morning, nearly every man in Hodges Cove was on the beach preparing to untie his boat and search for Hedley and Willis. Among them were Wes and Uncle Walt. The winds had abated considerably overnight and the rain had stopped. The cresting seas had also subsided, but there was still a fairly large sea swell running after the bad weather on Christmas Eve.

  “It was a fair day,” Wes summed it up.

  Just as he and Walt were about to leave Hodges Cove, Cyril Stringer stopped by to ask if he could join them.

  “Uncle Walt asked Cyril if he was sure about that, because Cyril was Willis Thomas’s first cousin as well as a close friend, and Uncle Walt worried that, if the worst happened, Cyril might be affected or something,” Wes remembers.

  But Cyril insisted that he would be fine no matter what and that he really wanted to help.

  Boats of various sizes and descriptions—speedboats, longliners, and pleasure craft—were soon steaming across Southwest Arm on Christmas morning. While everyone on the boats and back home in Hodges Cove homes prayed that Hedley Drover and Willis Thomas would be found alive and well, there was a pall of dread hanging over them.

  “We went across the Arm to the Hatchet Cove area first and then worked our way back down the shore from there,” Wes explains. “When we got down a bit farther, someone called out from another boat that there was a half-sunk speedboat stuck in a crevice in the rocks. So Uncle Walt got our boat as close to the rocks as he could—there was a big swell—and I jumped and Cyril jumped and we ran down around the rocks to where the boat was, and when we got down a bit closer I could see this black thing lying in the bottom of the boat.”

  At first Wes was convinced that the “black thing” was a body, but as he slowly walked closer he realized that it was Willis’s black Mercury outboard motor. There was no sign of Willis or Hedley.

  With this new development, Uncle Walt, Wes, and Cyril got together with several of the men in the other boats and discussed what to do next. Wes and Cyril made several observations that proved relevant to what might have happened to Hedley and Willis. Those observations provided guidance for the steps to follow.

  The first observation was that the men had time to remove the engine from the boat’s counter and place it on the bottom of the small speedboat. That told them it wasn’t a hard collision against the rocks. Secondly, the boat was intact but for one exception. A piece of the boat’s planking toward the bow had been punctured. Also, the cap belonging to the gas can was still in the boat, but the tank itself was nowhere to be seen. For seasoned fishermen and men who practically grew up on the water in Newfoundland, that second observation offered a glimmer of hope in their initial homespun investigation.

  In the days when life jackets were hardly ever found on board small boats, the searchers knew that an empty gas tank was sometimes used as a flotation device when vessels sank. Hedley could swim and Willis was an excellent swimmer, so Uncle Walt and the others determined that if the two men managed to get out of the boat and away from the slippery freezing rocks alive, and then cling to the empty gas can for buoyancy, it just might be possible they made i
t to a beach and safety.

  Somewhat encouraged by this development, and knowing that Hedley, particularly, was a very experienced woodsman, the searchers dared to hope that the two missing men had made it to shore and had walked into the woods. Hedley would have known that there was a road not far beyond their location that could take him toward Hatchet Cove not far away.

  With all those factors in mind, the men decided that they would go back to Hodges Cove and contact the RCMP to see if there was a tracking dog available to conduct a land search. The others would stay in the vicinity of where Willis’s boat was found and continue to search the shoreline.

  As Wes Peddle and Uncle Walt Drover headed back to Hodges Cove to contact the RCMP, other boats continued searching in the vicinity of Mooring Cove on Christmas Day where Willis’s little speedboat was found half-submerged.

  When Wes and Uncle Walt arrived back in their community, they contacted the RCMP with an update on finding Willis’s punt. During the conversation, Wes explained that because both Hedley and Willis could swim, it was possible they had made it to shore and tried walking to safety. Hedley was an experienced hunter and woodsman, and if he made it to shore, Wes and Uncle Walt reasoned that the two would have a good chance at surviving, even in winter. Wes asked the officer if he would consider getting a tracking dog and searching the area of woods in the vicinity where the boat was found.

  The officer agreed and said he’d be along shortly. Approximately a half-hour later, Wes met the policeman on the beach in Hodges Cove and continued to discuss strategy for a search.