Sea Folk

by Jim Wellman

  At about the same time as those four vessels were leaving Lockeport, two more Lockeport-based longliners were departing other Nova Scotia ports. The Jimmy and Sisters, under the command of Captain Emmanuel Currie, left Halifax and the Pat and Judy left Liverpool. Both fifty-three-foot longliners were also heading southeast to Emerald Bank.

  The trips from the various Nova Scotia ports were relatively uneventful on Saturday. It was a little bit colder than usual and skies were grey, but winds were moderate and seas were relatively calm, so most of the fishing vessels covered the 110- to 115-mile steam at regular speed and began arriving on the Banks early Sunday morning. The one exception was the Gertrude and Ronald. Fate would determine a different destiny for the crew of that Lockeport longliner. After a few hours at sea, the vessel experienced engine trouble and was forced to return to port. What was initially considered a stroke of bad luck turned out to be the best luck that crew ever had.

  As is often the case in stories as dramatic as the tragedy that occurred on Emerald Bank that spring, there is a sidebar story of how fate can alter the course of history that leaves a family forever wondering “why” and “what if.”

  Bill Enslow was a young man in 1961, but he was a good worker, and when he approached the skipper for a berth on the Jimmy and Sisters, Captain Emmanuel Currie accepted. A little while later, Bill was talking to his dad, Burns Enslow, and told him that he was lucky enough to have secured a trip on the Jimmy and Sisters, the newest vessel in the fleet. As the father and son chatted, Burns asked Bill if he’d consider switching vessels. The elder Enslow was slated to sail on the schooner Felix and Florence Hickey, but Emmanuel Currie was known as one of Lockeporte’s highliner skippers and his crew would undoubtedly share in a larger payday than those on the schooner. Bill was well aware that his father had a large family of twelve children to care for, so he readily agreed to change places with his dad. Burns’s wife, Ruth Enslow, remembers her husband being happy with their son for allowing him the opportunity. “When he [Burns] left that morning, he kissed all the children and me and said he’d see us in a few days—and that was the last thing he ever said to us,” Ruth recalls.

  Various family members have vivid memories of the Lockeport longliners leaving port that day. Julia Currie said her husband, Emmanuel, phoned from Halifax in the morning to say that he was leaving soon and that he’d be gone for about a week. Shortly after that call, he was steaming out from Halifax harbour on the vessel named for his children, Jimmy, aged four, and his sisters, Joanne, ten, Lilly Ann, five, and Yvonne (Bonnie), two.

  Allan Stewart, aged twenty-two at the time, can remember watching his dad, Edward Stewart, on board the Marjorie Beryl on Saturday morning. Allan and his younger brother went to the harbour to see the boat off and, in fact, when Captain Mitch Taylor said they were ready to go, Allan let go the bow and stern lines of the fifty-three-foot longliner. He can clearly remember where each of the crew was standing and working as their boat pulled away from the wharf. “My father was on the deck, Neil Williams was in the dory, Jimmy Shankel was on the bow, and I could see Alfred Anderson and Jimmy Harlow there, too.” He also remembers seeing the Muriel Eileen, captained by Mitch’s brother, Lawrence Taylor, pulling out from a nearby wharf known as the fish dock, heading toward the open seas just ahead of the Marjorie Beryl. Dozens of Lockeport men, women, and children have similar memories of the last time they saw or talked to their loved ones on March 18, 1961.

  Although there is not much written about events on Sunday and Monday, March 19 and 20, it appears that all the vessels set their trawls and were experiencing good fishing—most for halibut and some for haddock. Everyone was happy that finally, after a long, hard winter, they would soon have some much-needed cash once they were back in port and collected their pay.

  In the 1950s and 1960s, most fishing captains and several crew members in Lockeport had radios with shortwave bands that were capable of receiving voice transmissions via VHF sets on board vessels at sea. Wives in particular would listen attentively at certain times of the day that had been pre-arranged with their husbands, to hear the latest news from the fishing grounds. It was a one-way communication—the women could hear their husbands but could not transmit messages. Only the fish plants and a few others had technology to carry on a two-way conversation.

  Julia Currie says that even though the appointed “message” schedules were crucial, the women usually had the radio on at all times when their men were at sea. Julia heard a brief exchange between her husband and Mitch Taylor on Monday. Emmanuel said he had done some work on the radar and that things were okay. Mitch asked if Emmanuel had heard from Lawrence recently. Emmanuel replied that he had not. Julia says there didn’t seem to be any anxiety in the men’s voices, so she assumed that everything was fine up to that hour.

  Things might have been fine on Monday, but the following day, Tuesday, March 21, the first day of spring, all hell broke loose on the Emerald Bank. The weather turned extremely bad as strong winds and high seas started to wreak havoc for both small and large vessels fishing there.

  Back in Lockeport the weather was fine, but one of the first indications that things were getting grim on Emerald came when some people, including Edward Stewart’s wife, heard a transmission from the Marjorie Beryl that it was stormy. That was about 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday. Mrs. Stewart said that she heard Captain Mitch Taylor talking to an unidentified vessel. “He [Captain Taylor] said, ‘I’m heading into the nor’east to try and save my dories.’” Later that afternoon, at approximately three-thirty, Emmanuel Currie was heard talking to Mitch Taylor. Captain Currie said, “We’re here and there’s nothing we can do about it—we’ve just got to stay,” a reference to the fact that there is no place to seek shelter when you are caught in a storm 110 miles from land.

  In a small town word of trouble travels fast, and by suppertime on Tuesday evening, families of crew members and everyone else in Lockeport and surrounding areas were glued to their radios waiting and hoping for a reason to believe that things were going to turn out okay. But except for static, the radios were mostly quiet.

  For most of the 1,000 anxious souls of Lockeport, the night of March 21, 1961, would be the longest night of their lives.

  It was customary for captains of vessels fishing offshore to make shortwave radio contact with their wives and families back home in Lockeport to give updates on the day’s activities. Most of the Lockeport captains made their calls at five o’clock every afternoon. Though it was a one-way transmission and was heard by hundreds of people, but it was extremely comforting to the families to hear their men at sea assure them that everything was fine. At 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 21, 1961, women in Lockeport, surrounded by adult family members, were huddled near their radios listening for a message, but the only thing they could hear was the hiss of radio static. They were especially worried that evening because several Lockeport people had heard transmissions earlier indicating that a sudden storm had struck the Emerald Bank and the boats were trying their best to “ride it out.”

  Many wives tried to be philosophical and convinced themselves that their husbands had been caught out in storms before and survived and this would be no different. But, as the darkness fell and there was still no word from the three Lockeport-based longliners, an uneasy quiet settled over the small Nova Scotian town. There was nothing they could do but wait, hope, and pray.

  On Wednesday morning, one person listening to the shortwave radio frequency was Alfred Anderson’s wife. Mrs. Anderson says she was disheartened when she heard two captains of large vessels talking about the storm. “That was a rough night,” one captain said. “I wonder how the little fellows made out?” There was also mention of seventy-knot winds and extremely rough seas. Mrs. Anderson’s husband was a crew member on one of the “little fellows.” Mrs. Anderson said that listening to the two large-boat captains expressing their concern about the smaller vessels was when she became al
armed.

  As tension spread through Lockeport and surrounding towns, Captain Lawrence Taylor’s wife couldn’t bear just sitting in the house and waiting for news. She jumped into her vehicle and drove to the Lockeport dock. She was clearly in a state of high anxiety as she tried to find out some word about the fleet. A veteran fisherman tried to console her: “I don’t know what you’re worried about. Mitch and Lawrence have been through bad storms before,” he said in reference to her husband’s brother, Captain Mitch Taylor.

  Julia Currie had the same kind of well-intended assurances. Although she had heard her husband, Emmanuel Currie, on the radio Tuesday telling Captain Mitch Taylor that he needed repairs to his radar, Julia was confident that everything was fine. Fishing vessels were constantly in need of some repair, she reasoned. Even later, when word spread that something might have gone terribly wrong with some of the fleet, one of her husband’s friends told Julia not to worry because Emmanuel had the newest vessel in the fleet and that it would take a hard storm to damage the Jimmy and Sisters.

  About noon on Wednesday, word arrived that the Felix and Florence Hickey had issued a mayday. That news was worrisome indeed. If this vessel, the largest in the fleet, was in danger, what about the smaller longliners? However, at that point there was no way of finding out.

  Word also reached Lockeport that the Royal Canadian Air Force was organizing the largest search and rescue mission ever known in the area. At the same time, a search and rescue operation was coordinated that would involve several navy ships in the area. While that was comforting on one level, it also raised anxiety to a new height on another. Why was such a large search and rescue effort necessary?

  By four o’clock Wednesday afternoon the reasons for the large SAR operation started to become apparent and hope began to fade. The fishing vessel Adventure II, which had joined the at-sea search, radioed a sombre transmission: “We’ve found the wreckage of the Muriel Eileen,” the captain said. “The vessel is awash, her deckhouse is gone, and there is no sign of life.”

  The Muriel Eileen carried a five-man crew: Captain Lawrence Taylor; George Hamilton; Murray Lovelace; Freeman Poole; and Arnold Chetwynd. All were married and, among them, were fathers of eighteen children.

  The grim reports continued to filter in from the Emerald Bank on Thursday morning. A little after 9:00 a.m. the navy destroyer HMCS Haida reported she had picked up a deckhouse. At 9:35 a.m. the RCAF Canso radioed that it had spotted a brown, oblong object tossing in the mountainous sea. It’s still not certain what that object was, but it was all part of the mounting evidence that there would be more awful news to come.

  And come it did.

  A search vessel found a buoy and a few pieces of wreckage from the Jimmy and Sisters, but there was no sign of Captain Emmanuel Currie or his crew. Along with Captain Currie were Harry Decker, Burns Enslow, Wesley Israel, William Northover, and Gar Tibbo. With the newest and sturdiest of the longliner fleet gone, it was becoming obvious that the Marjorie Beryl was also a victim of the March 21 storm. Captain Mitch Taylor and his five-man crew of Edward Stewart, Neil Williams, James Shankel, Alfred Anderson, and James Harlow were added to the victims list, bringing the total to seventeen men who perished at sea that dreadful day. No bodies were ever found. Lockeport and several surrounding villages suddenly had sixteen new widows and sixty-nine children were without fathers.

  Without a single survivor, no one can be certain of what exactly happened to cause the sinking of the three fifty-three-foot longliners that day. However, the crew of the schooner Felix and Florence Hickey tell of one gigantic wave that caused a lot of damage to their vessel. They and their ship managed to make it through, but not without some anxious moments. Captain Murray MacKenzie said he heard the mountainous wave coming before it struck his schooner. In other disasters at sea, survivors have likened the roaring sound of an oncoming rogue wave to that of a freight train barrelling down on you. They described it as an eerie, roaring noise that also seemed to vibrate the entire ocean. Captain MacKenzie was in the wheelhouse of the Felix and Florence Hickey at the time, and he later described how the seventy-five-foot schooner rode up the huge wave sideways and then slid back on a couple of occasions before eventually settling down in more normal seas, albeit in stormy and dangerous conditions. At one point the vessel was listed so far to the port side that Captain MacKenzie was unable to stand on the floor and instead found himself standing on the side of the wheelhouse. Cyril Scott, a crewman on the schooner, was thrown from his bunk and landed on top of his shipmate in a bunk on the other side of the sleeping quarters. Fortunately, the Hickey managed to get through without loss of life.

  The shock of what happened on March 21, 1961, stunned Lockeport, and to this day, fifty years later, the town still remembers the tragedy.

  Despite an intensive air and sea search, there was not a trace of a single crew member on board the longliners Jimmy and Sisters, Marjorie Beryl, and Muriel Eileen. The fourth Lockeport-based vessel, Felix and Florence Hickey, survived the terrible storm but took a terrible beating. Two other longliners, the Pat and Judy and the David Pauline, both out of Liverpool, limped back to port, afloat but severely damaged by seas that, among other things, had knocked out all the windows in their wheelhouses.

  Coping

  Lockeport was a town in shock and overcome with grief with the loss of the town’s highliner fishing crews. Mitch Taylor’s daughter, Linda Chetwynd, can remember men standing on the wharf with tears streaming down their faces—“Men you’d never think would cry,” she says.

  Emmanuel Currie’s children (Jimmy and sisters) taken around the time of their father’s tragedy

  (Photo courtesy of Bonnie Currie Williams)

  Reverend Alex Farquhar will never forget one of the most heart-rending moments of his life, when he was standing alongside Gordon Taylor, father of captains Mitch and Lawrence Taylor. Mr. Taylor was a veteran fisherman who knew the Emerald Bank well. “He was beside himself,” said Reverend Farquhar. “He couldn’t accept that his sons were lost. I remember him standing outside the house looking out over the ocean saying over and over, ‘If only they would let me go out there, I could find them, I know where they are.’”

  Bonnie Williams was only two years old when she lost her father, Emmanuel Currie, captain of the Jimmy and Sisters. She used to daydream that her father would return to her and her family as they struggled to make ends meet. “We had this hope that they were rescued on an island somewhere and it was only a matter of time before they came home to us.”

  When fishermen are lost at sea, life for the families is almost always harshly affected financially. Most fishermen live in small rural communities where job opportunities, especially for women, are rare. For women left with several children to care for, mere survival was almost impossible. The government paid a widow’s allowance, but it was a pittance and nowhere near enough to support a family.

  Bonnie’s mother was forced to give up her home and move her family back to her parents’ home. Linda’s mom was able to get a job but faced a daunting new world of managing the household, paying bills, and supporting her family on her own. The widows/mothers were true heroes, says Linda. “They did whatever they had to do to feed their families and survive themselves—it was very hard.”

  Years ago, people thought the best way to protect children from the sorrow and sadness of losing their fathers and other loved ones at sea was to invoke a cone of silence of sorts. Children were never included in, or even able to listen to, any conversation about their dad’s accident. Adults in the community would never talk about it if children were near. Supposedly they believed that silence was a shield from the painful truth.

  Clark Taylor remembers how his mom tried to protect his family from the pain of losing his dad, Mitch Taylor. In an interview for a memorial project, he said the children were not allowed to attend the memorial services for the lost men. He als
o remembers how his mother carried out transactions like selling his father’s fishing equipment in such a secretive manner that he didn’t even realize it was gone till years later.

  In my nearly fifteen years of writing Final Voyages stories, we’ve heard from many people who were children when their dads were lost at sea. Most have the same story. They say they were shielded from hearing about their father to an extent that, at times, they wondered if he ever really existed. Children in the community were told not to say anything to reference the tragedy if a family member was around. In Lockeport’s case, this was only possible to a certain extent because there were so many children suddenly without fathers they didn’t feel the same isolation as some others. Clark Taylor says he thinks that was because half the school class had lost their dads in the Lockeport tragedy.

  Families of fishermen whose bodies were never found often talk about how difficult it is to find closure. Without the tangible evidence of a final resting place for their loved one, some never find peace of mind. Bonnie Williams still goes to a beach and looks out over the ocean when she needs a quiet time to reflect about her father.

  The Quilt

  Laurie Swim’s “Lost at Sea” quilt commemorating the Lockeport tragedy of 1961 (Photo courtesy of Laurie Swim)

  Some of Lockeport’s families found great comfort and at least some degree of closure via a quilt in artist Laurie Swim’s “Lost at Sea Project” in 2000. Laurie grew up in Lockeport and was twelve at the time of the accident. She remembers the tragedy well, and when she was asked to produce a commemorative quilt that would go on permanent display in Lockeport, she did so with a lot of personal emotion attached to her task. The end result was a beautiful, large fabric mural that portrays images of each of the seventeen men around the borders of the quilt, with the vessels in the middle section. The quilt hangs in the town’s Crescent Beach Centre on public display every summer.