by Jim Wellman
Janice got in the ambulance with her husband as he was transported to hospital in nearby Carbonear. In an attempt to gather as much detail as possible on just how serious Randell’s injuries were, the ambulance attendant asked him simple questions to analyze his responses. “They were asking him when his birthday was, where he was from, and so on,” Janice recalls. He couldn’t answer some questions, although he did recognize Janice’s voice and spoke her name when she asked if he knew who she was.
Brain injury was just part of the damage done to the big fisherman that day. As Janice describes it in layman’s terms, they later learned that Randell had “four bleeds in the brain, his jaw was broken, he had cuts and bruises all over, and he later would develop serious lung problems.” She added that her husband suffered a seizure while on the way to the Carbonear hospital. It was also later determined that he’d already had a seizure when he was lying on the wharf waiting for the ambulance to arrive.
After stabilizing Randell by inducing a coma, it didn’t take long before the medical team at the Carbonear hospital determined that he needed very specialized attention and he needed it as quickly as possible. When Janice was told that her husband had to be taken by ambulance to hospital in St. John’s, she couldn’t get a clear understanding from them of just how serious Randell’s condition was. They were guarded in their comments, but she had an uneasy feeling that they were worried her husband might not make it. One of the medical staff at the Carbonear hospital was a family friend who advised Janice to contact her son Shawn, who was in Grand Falls at the time, and tell him to join the rest of the family and be near Randell as soon as he could make it. Janice took that as a signal that Randell was in danger of dying.
All the while this was happening, Robin was very distressed, wondering if he did the right thing when he rolled his father from his back to his side after he had been knocked to the wharf. Robin had a fundamental knowledge of first aid, and along with his intuition he decided, against the advice of others on the wharf that day, that his father needed to be on his side rather than on his back. As it turns out, the doctors told Robin later that he did the right thing and that, in fact, he probably saved his father’s life by doing so.
Randell survived the trip to St. John’s hospital, where he would start a long journey back to life. He was taken to the intensive care unit of the Health Sciences Centre where, because of the damage to his brain, he was kept in a coma and on life-support for three months.
The late summer and fall of 2010 presented many challenges for the Drovers. Janice commuted from Upper Island Cove to the hospital in St. John’s every day and went back home at night. She bought a new car and was racking up approximately 10,000 to 11,000 kilometres a month. She closely watched every single development as her husband went through various treatments, including his dependency on ventilators for more than two months and a tracheotomy when he finally regained consciousness. She was there when he developed lung problems. She was there when he suffered liver illness related to his injuries. She waited as doctors drilled a hole through his skull to relieve fluid and pressure on his brain. She was there when he developed pneumonia and watched as he was given insulin although he had never been a diabetic. And she was there that day when he first moved a finger—and then a leg—and then, finally, a smile—the first indication of an emotion. Those were all intense moments in the life of the Drover family.
Janice says there were times that were more challenging than others, especially when there appeared to be progress only to be frustrated with setbacks. She recalls one of those trials when he seemed to be doing fairly well and then suddenly he suffered more memory loss and, as Janice described it, “was talking mostly nonsense all the time.”
December was a good month. After going from intensive care to a special care unit, Randell was later transferred to the Miller Centre on December 13, where he started physiotherapy treatments, and within days he started to improve significantly.
Randell Drover is still on the road to recovery. There are still many problems, including financial issues now that he is not able to fish. But the sixty-two-year-old fishing captain and his wife and family have demonstrated uncommon strength and determination in their battle so far that they will continue to beat the odds.
It is still not known whether Randell will recover to a level where he will be able to fish or captain a vessel again. It was too close for comfort and there were many days when life itself was just a breath away for Randell Drover, but Friday the thirteenth, 2010, was not his final voyage.
Blazing Her Own Trails: Sabrina Whyatt Is No Ordinary Fisherman
Sabrina Whyatt has made a habit of taking the road least travelled. In fact, the native of St. Carol’s, located next door to St. Anthony on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula, has been blazing her own trails ever since she finished high school. So far, her resumé includes: television news reporter; newspaper owner and publisher; TV reality show host; songwriter; and country music rocker.
So, why are we talking about Sabrina Whyatt in a book about fisheries people? Well, because she has also been a fisherman for nearly twenty years and currently owns a sixty-five-foot crab and shrimp vessel and multiple enterprises. She’s also a fishing captain, holding a Class IV Master’s ticket. With the exception of the newspaper, she still works at several of those endeavours.
At age twenty-five, Sabrina had the nerve to publish a newspaper with a difference. Called Off the Rock, her paper was aimed at expat Newfoundlanders living in mainland Canada and the US. With meagre resources and no investors other than her parents, the odds of running a successful newspaper from St. Carol’s was a long shot at best. Eventually the paper folded, but the experience made her more determined than ever to be a success, no matter how non-traditional the challenge.
It was during her time with Off the Rock when her father sat her down for a chat one day. Willis Whyatt was a fishing skipper and an owner in a family enterprise. “I was strapped for cash and Dad asked if I’d think about going fishing with him and the crew as a deckhand,” she explains. “Fishing had never been in the cards for me—nothing that I ever considered—but he was serious about it, and it was in the late 1990s when crab was like gold, so I decided to give it a try.”
To her surprise, Sabrina really liked the life of a fisherman. She doesn’t refer to herself as a fisher, fisher person, or even a fisherwoman. She says she’s very comfortable with the universal designation of “fisherman.”
Sabrina Whyatt the fisherman, on the deck of her crab vessel
(Jim Wellman photo)
Female deckhands on crab and shrimp boats were uncommon in the 1990s, and when CBC TV heard about Sabrina, they travelled to the Northern Peninsula to do a television documentary about her. That, in turn, caught the eye of the management folks at NTV and she was offered a job there as a television reporter, especially to cover fisheries news. She accepted the offer, but only on the condition that she could take unpaid leave during crab season to go back home and fish.
From the day she stepped aboard the family’s longliner, Sabrina learned that success meant taking chances and developing nerves of steel—simply because it is a matter of survival in the fishing industry. Fishing enterprise owners take business gambles every other week because no two seasons are alike and setbacks are as common as fluctuating winds and seas.
After observing her dad and his crew of brothers and other family members, Sabrina grew more aware of the business world and she also learned that fishing and owning a fishing enterprise is not just a job, it’s about marine culture and a way of life like no other. And that’s why she couldn’t sleep one night after her dad announced his intention to retire and sell the business. “I was lying there thinking that fishing and boats is what he was about all his life and he can’t just let all that go—it’s just wrong,” she says, growing a little emotional at the memory of that sleepless night. So, Sabrina dec
ided to once again launch herself into her boldest and most frightening challenge ever. She was determined to buy the family fishing business.
Owning a fishing vessel and enterprise is not simply a matter of raising money and hiring staff. Sabrina had to be a Core status fisherman, and to be the head of the enterprise she also needed a captain’s ticket. The ticket was the easy part. She went to school at the highly acclaimed Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland and earned her Class IV Master’s certificate. Raising money to buy the business was not easy, but she managed. “It was a lot of money for a young woman to raise, but with a little bit here and a little bit there, we did it.”
Gaining Core status was more difficult. Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) regulations state that to be a Core fisherman one must earn at least seventy-five per cent of his/her income from fishing. Sabrina was pursuing other career challenges at the time and didn’t want to quit her job and go on employment insurance after the season was over, so she fought the system with appeals. It was a tough struggle, but she eventually made it and became the proud owner of a fishing enterprise. Today Sabrina owns the Lady Kenda, a sixty-five-foot crabber and shrimper. And despite an extremely busy life developing varied career paths, she stops everything in the spring and goes crab fishing. Although she owns the vessel and enterprise, Sabrina works as a deckhand and leaves the wheelhouse responsibilities to her cousin Glen.
Music has been a significant part of Sabrina’s life since her days as a member of a small band when she was a teenager. So, it was not surprising that about a year ago the business person in her said it was time to make music more than just fun, and she started yet another business. In November, 2011, Sabrina launched her first album, called That’s Me. One song from the album, titled “All Over Again,” made the American Adult Contemporary Top 40 music charts. But the thing she says she does best and likes most is songwriting. Now working on her second album, Sabrina writes her own songs. “It just comes naturally to me” she says, adding that she considers herself a better songwriter than singer. Most of her songs evolve from personal experiences—even from fishing. One tune on her album, called “C’mon Boys,” was written on the deck of her fishing boat and was inspired by the rhythm of rope and cable running through the crab hauler.
Sabrina Whyatt the singer, on stage in St. Anthony
(Photo courtesy of Sabrina Whyatt)
Her new album also features a song that is a tribute to the late Kirk Noel from St. Anthony. Kirk was a long-time friend and her teen band member who died six years ago in a helicopter crash near Canso, Nova Scotia, while on a training mission with the Coast Guard.
Sabrina is also featured in an NTV docu-series called Sabrina Whyatt: Blazing Trails, consisting of five thirty-minute programs that aired in the fall of 2012.
* * *
Trailblazer is an appropriate descriptive for Sabrina Whyatt. There’s not much about this thirty-nine-year-old woman that would lead you to think she grew up in a small Newfoundland outport fishing community and still fishes there every summer. A world traveller, Sabrina has meditated in India and climbed mountains in Africa and, oh, did I mention Willie? Willie (as in Willie Nelson) is Sabrina’s pet pig who shares her upscale family home in the east end of St. John’s. A little possessive of his owner, Willie is not shy about aggressively grunting his disapproval if one occupies too much of Sabrina’s time. Can’t blame him for that, actually—Sabrina Whyatt easily engages people in conversation in such a fashion that time passes all too quickly.
Lockeport’s Heartbreak
A fishing enterprise is often a family business. Usually, the enterprise owner is also the captain of the vessel and the crew often consists of his or her son or brother along with in-laws and other family members. That’s why tragedies at sea are often a terrible loss to an entire family. Compounding the survivors’ grief in many cases is the fact that fishermen lost at sea are often never found. Without the definitive physical evidence that comes with the retrieval of a body, the grieving process is never complete—there can be no closure for some. Those left behind often imagine or fantasize that their loved ones made it to safety on a small island somewhere and that eventually they will be rescued and return home.
Fishing communities in Atlantic Canada are mostly small towns that dot the length of our coastlines. Because their industry is the most dangerous on earth, fishing families share a common sense of the risks and in turn they share a special bond. That’s why we often hear that a community is made up of “tightly knit” people who come together as a single family unit in troubled times.
The people of Lockeport, Nova Scotia, know all about troubled times.
In March, 1961, the small, picturesque community of Lockeport was stunned when several fishing vessels got caught in a vicious storm on the Emerald Bank. Three longliners were lost and seventeen men perished—sixty-nine Lockeport children were left without fathers and sixteen wives were suddenly widows. Only Gar Tibbo, from Newfoundland, was not married. That was fifty-two years ago, but the people of Lockeport have not forgotten what one writer called “The Storm that Broke Lockeport’s Heart.”
Left: Captain Mitch Taylor and wife
(Photo courtesy of Linda Chetwynd)
Right: Captain Emmanuel Currie
(Photo courtesy of Bonnie Currie Williams)
In the community of about 1,000 people, every single person was directly affected. If it wasn’t a relative, they lost a neighbour, a close friend, or a co-worker. Nobody escaped the pain and suffering of tremendous loss. And, as is usual in small towns, the sorrow is carried forward when the children of those lost grow older and connect in various ways, including marriage. Bonnie (Currie) Williams was just two when she lost her dad, Captain Emmanuel Currie. Bonnie is married to Harvey Williams, who lost his brother-in-law, Freeman Poole. Linda (Taylor) Chetwynd was nine when her dad, Captain Mitchell “Mitch” Taylor, was lost in that storm. Her uncle, Mitch’s brother, Captain Lawrence Taylor, was also lost on a different boat that day. Linda’s husband, John Chetwynd, also lost his dad, Arnold Chetwynd, who was a crew member on one of the ill-fated vessels.
The Fishery
The winter fishery had not been good for southern Nova Scotia fishermen in 1961. Catch rates were low and bad weather compounded the problem, as storms kept fishing boats tied up for days that they would normally have been at sea. March temperatures were below normal in 1961, and icing was an added worry for captains who had the responsibility of deciding whether to leave port or sit tight. Riding out high seas and winds in summer is one thing, but when freezing spray causes a three- or four-inch buildup of ice on a boat’s riggings and superstructure, the safety of the vessel and the crew becomes a very sombre matter. Icing causes a shift in the vessel’s centre of gravity, which, in turn, has a huge impact on the vessel’s stability and seriously contributes to the boat’s vulnerability, even in moderate winds and seas.
Saturday, March 18, was a fairly typical March day as far as the weather was concerned, and although Lockeport fishermen traditionally spent the weekends with their families, the captains and crew members of the fleet were keenly aware of their need for cash. One trip that would fill the fish hold was all they needed to get enough money to pay some of the bills that had piled up after a long winter. The banks were also waiting for the enterprise owners to make a mortgage payment on their vessels.
No one knows who was the first to suggest that it might be a good idea to forget about the usual weekend-off tradition and go fishing that weekend, but it’s a safe bet that a couple of the skippers and crew members started discussing it on Friday, March 17, because by Saturday morning several captains had escalated the conversation to “where” would be the best area to go fishing rather than “if” they would untie. By ten o’clock on Saturday morning, three longliners in Lockeport were baiting their tubs of trawl hooks and loading groceries,
ice, and fuel.
Fishing captains are sometimes secretive about where they go on fishing trips because they are competitive and would prefer to keep a good fishing ground to themselves for as long as possible. However, at certain times of the year, and especially if the weather forecast is a little concerning, they like to stay fairly close to each other in the event that one of the boats gets in trouble. It’s a fairly safe bet that Captain Mitchell Taylor and Captain Lawrence Taylor would have discussed where to go at that time of year because, even though they were competitive at times, they were also brothers, and as the old saying goes, blood is thicker than water.
In the 1950s and 1960s, an area called Emerald Bank was known to be a rich fishing ground for haddock, halibut, cusk, and cod, especially in spring. However, Emerald Bank is approximately 110 miles [200 kilometres] southeast of Lockeport and is a risky trip for the standard fifty-three-foot longliners, the most popular size in the area fleet in those years, especially in the cold and stormy month of March. Gordon Taylor, father of captains Mitchell and Lawrence Taylor, was reported as saying, “It’s all right with a seventy-five to eighty-footer because you have something solid under you if a storm comes, but it’s no place for smaller boats.”
However, the weather was not bad that Saturday and the forecast didn’t call for seriously deteriorating conditions over the next few days, so the decision was made. It was a go.
The Trip
Just after lunchtime on Saturday, March 18, the longliners Muriel Eileen, the Marjorie Beryl, and the Gertrude and Ronald, each carrying five- and six-man crews, were steaming out from Lockeport harbour, heading southeast to Emerald Bank. A few hours later, a larger vessel, the eighty-one-foot schooner Felix and Florence Hickey, followed the three smaller boats out to sea, also headed to Emerald.