by Jim Wellman
Chris regained consciousness while Lisa was working on Leslie, and although he was not able to stand, he was trying to pull himself across the deck to the wheelhouse of his vessel. As soon as Leslie was breathing, Lisa ran to the wheelhouse and issued a mayday.
From that moment, events took a turn for the better. An emergency shore-based technician patched Lisa’s call through to a doctor, and he guided her through the next medical steps to take. “It’s funny, but suddenly it seemed like everyone we needed was there,” Lisa recalls. A search and rescue helicopter was dispatched, and a cargo vessel, the Algoscotia, which was in the vicinity, headed straight toward the Rebel’s Pride. The captain of the Algoscotia informed the rescue coordinating people that his ship had medical oxygen on board. The Algoscotia then launched a fast rescue craft (FRC), with Chief Mate Duncan Roberts and Third Engineer David Evely speeding toward the fishing vessel. When Duncan and David boarded Rebel’s Pride, the online doctor advised them in administering oxygen to Chris, Leslie, Denis, and Michael. Shortly after Duncan and David had provided oxygen to the victims, a rescue helicopter was on the scene and lowered a SARTECH basket to the deck of Rebel’s Pride. All four crew members were airlifted up to the Cormorant, two by stretcher and two by harness. Less than an hour later, all four were in a St. John’s hospital.
Following the evacuation of the four Rebel’s Pride crew members, David and Duncan boarded their FRC and proceeded to the Princess Shaneen, a fishing vessel that had heard the mayday and was standing by a short distance away to see if they could assist the distressed crew.
Rebel’s Pride is a large vessel, and although Lisa and Robbie were experienced deckhands, steaming a vessel that size to port in St. John’s was beyond their level of expertise. Captain Bill Dawe of the Princess Shaneen left his vessel in the hands of his mate and crew and was transported to Rebel’s Pride in the FRC. Bill, a veteran skipper, took charge of the stricken vessel and headed for port in St. John’s. Early Thursday morning, Captain Bill Dawe, Lisa, and Robbie, along with Duncan and David from the Algoscotia, were approaching St. John’s harbour. Even though he was an experienced captain, Bill was a little concerned about docking Rebel’s Pride. It was a very large boat with different handling systems, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to worry about that. Surprisingly, Captain Chris Peddle had made a remarkable recovery during the six or seven hours it took to steam his vessel to port, and he was released from hospital late that night. He was picked up by the Zodiac and was more than happy to relieve Bill, to dock his vessel in St. John’s.
Docking in St. John’s ended the immediate trauma of a harrowing experience that, without the heroics of several people, especially Lisa Heffern and Robbie Royal, would have marked the final voyages for Chris Peddle and Leslie Peddle. Lisa and Robbie were presented with a Gold Medal Lifesaving Award from St. John Ambulance for their demonstration of bravery.
Note: As in many stories, there is a sad sidebar to the conclusion of this one. A couple of years after the Rebel’s Pride incident, Robbie Royal was killed in an ATV accident near his home in Job’s Cove, Trinity Bay, NL.
Former Newfoundland and Labrador Lieutenant-Governor Edward Roberts, Leslie Peddle, Lisa Heffern, and Chris Peddle at Government House in St. John’s during a ceremony to honour Leslie and Lisa, along with Robbie Royal, for their acts of bravery in saving two lives, including Chris Peddle (Submitted photo)
The Herring Choker
Herring never make a left turn.
That is just one of the little gems of fish trivia that you would learn if you sit down for a cup of tea with John Roy Hackett. The retired herring seiner captain from Half Way Point in the Bay of Islands, on Newfoundland’s west coast, loves to talk about his days on the water and his observances of herring behaviour and other biological data.
“That’s right,” he explains, “we don’t know why, but for some reason, unlike other species, when herring makes a turn, they never turn left—they only turn clockwise.”
Spending an hour with John Roy Hackett is an hour well spent. Like many men who have spent decades fishing, he has stories galore.
Captain Hackett grew up on Woods Island, just out the bay from Half Way Point, where his grandfather settled around 1900. Several Fortune Bay families pulled up roots in the English Harbour East and Terrenceville areas in the late 1890s and early 1900s because the herring fishery had failed for several years. Some of the highliners searched for fish elsewhere and discovered large stocks of herring on the west coast, especially in the Bay of Islands. Soon afterwards, popular fishing family names like Hackett, McCarthy, and Hickey made the move from Fortune Bay in search of a better life. Three Hackett brothers were among those who settled on Woods Islands at the dawn of the twentieth century. Almost overnight, the picturesque island was home base to some of the best “herring chokers” in the business.
John Roy Hackett looks at a book about fishing ships in Atlantic Canada (Jim Wellman photo)
John Roy has mixed emotions about his days on Woods Island. It was a fine place to live, but he was just fifteen when his father and mother died within a few months of each other. His only sibling, a sister, died when he was in his twenties, and with no family left on the island, he moved to Corner Brook, where he continued to hone his fishing and mariner’s skills.
It was during those early years when it became obvious that John Roy Hackett was not destined to spend his fishing career as a crewman. He started deep-sea sailing in his twenties, spending several years in the Arctic and also on a survey vessel doing chart work, updating existing charts for the government.
But the call of fishing was still with John, and sometime when John was in his early thirties, Joe Barry, owner of Barry’s Fisheries in Curling, asked him to take charge of a fifty-seven-foot vessel. “I didn’t have a certificate at the time, but I had fished with Kirk [Anderson] and knew my way around pretty good. So anyway, we had a good fall fishery that year, and the next year I got another break. Joe’s brother, Fred Barry, operated a plant in the Magdalene Islands and they had a brand new sixty-two-foot dragger—a real nice boat—and they asked me if I would take charge of that one. So that’s what I did, and I’d fish over there in the summer, dragging, and come back home to Newfoundland and fish herring in the fall. So that’s how I crept up the ladder.”
John Roy continued creeping higher and higher up that ladder, and one day a company owner from British Columbia approached him and made an offer that moved him another few rungs. “He had a big 105-foot boat with a great big sixty-fathom seine on her. He wanted me to go as skipper with him. I did, we but didn’t do all that well because that big seine was too deep and it was always getting torn up, getting snagged on the bottom. I wanted him to take out a few leafs, but he wouldn’t do it, and so we kept getting tangled.”
At the time John was skipper on the big seiner, the government implemented a grandfathering policy of sorts for captains like him. The policy said that skippers who had been in command of a vessel over 100 tons would be issued a “Service Ticket” and they were thereby qualified to continue operating that class of vessel indefinitely. New entrants would be required to pass certification studies to qualify as captain. But John Roy wasn’t satisfied with the Service Ticket designation and decided he wanted a proper ticket—one that he would have to study for, and attend school like the younger candidates had to do.
John laughs when he recounts his adult school days. “My instructor was an old CSI fella, a great big man about six and a half feet and 300 pounds. I was over in New Brunswick at the time. He’d drill the information into me. I had to get eighty-six per cent to pass, so it was a tough go of it, you know. Anyway, exam time came and off I went down to the trades school. Well, sir, it was just like being on the ocean: there were buoys, lights, and everything in that room—it was just like you were at sea. Anyway, my examiner was French and he talked real fast and I couldn’t understand much of
what he was saying. I failed—I got fifty-six per cent, not eighty-six. So I went back and told my instructor and he didn’t like that—‘How come?’ he said. ‘I’m asking you the same questions that he did, and you know the answers,’ so that’s when I told him about the language problem. Anyway, I studied for another two weeks and went back. This time, sir, I got a young woman—the sweetest and the prettiest girl I’d ever seen in all my life—she asked me the questions and I had the answers. I got ninety-four per cent.”
There was yet another career move for John Roy. Ship’s captain was fine and he never had any particular ambition to go any further, but one day someone made him an offer that came with his biggest challenge—vessel ownership.
The 1960s saw the emergence of a herring seiner fleet from British Columbia in Atlantic Canadian waters. One of the vessels in that fleet was a real eye-catcher. The sleek, white Silver Dolphin was a beautiful vessel and apparently a good fishing ship as well. John often thought that he’d love to “get my hands on her,” but he figured it was just a fantasy. Then one day the Dolphin went up for sale and several people figured that John and the sleek white seiner were a perfect match. When a couple of people approached him about it, John decided to check it out. “I didn’t know anything about business and never had a clue where to start,” he said. “But then I asked one fella what to do—I said to him that if someone could explain how it worked, I might think about it—after all, I figured I wasn’t all that stupid, you know.” Eventually, the company National Sea Products entered the picture and co-signed with John on a $300,000 deal with an eight-year term, and the Silver Dolphin was under his command and his ownership. Six years later, two years ahead of contract deadline, the loan was paid and he was a free agent.
It was a partnership that lasted till John Roy was sixty. Some health issues and a changing herring fishery led him to make a difficult decision. After some soul-searching he decided to sell the Dolphin to the Barry Group in Corner Brook.
John Roy Hackett still keeps a close eye on the herring fishery. The stock is still strong on the west coast, something he feels that he and his generation of captains can take some credit for. “We always believed that we should avoid nursery fishing—fishing while herring were spawning—we’d preach it,” he says passionately. Today’s younger herring fishermen don’t see it that way, according to John Roy. “They class us older fellas as stupid for thinking the way we do,” he says, shaking his head. Asked whether the smaller-boat young fisherman could do much damage, he nods affirmatively. “Oh yes, for sure,” he says. “You see, herring is a fish that likes to hug the land, especially in spawning time, on sandy bottom that is abundant in kelp. The spawn sticks to the kelp. That’s when it is easy to catch them because they are bunched together close, but we avoided it to protect future growth.”
John Roy Hackett won’t lose his passion for the fishery until herring make left turns.
The Silver Dolphin (no longer silver colour) in port at Curling/Corner Brook
Painting for Safety at Sea
A Nova Scotia painter uses art to help create a culture of safety in memory of her fisherman husband.
By Jon Tattrie
Photos by Mike Dembeck
It’s easy to see how Heather Crout fell in love with Scott Clarke. Looking up from under a brown shag of hair and a bushy moustache, his relaxed grin shows why she called him her goofy Newfie. Crout exhales, sets the framed photograph down. The picture was taken in the fall of 2009, three days before her husband died.
Crout’s voice is steady, her face composed, belying the turmoil beneath the calm surface as she talks about Clarke. He was from a traditional Newfoundland fishing family and was on boats from the age of four. He moved to Oyster Pond, Nova Scotia, seeking work in 1994 after the cod fishery collapsed. The small fishing community on the outskirts of eastern HRM quickly warmed to his gregarious charm and penchant for practical jokes. Crout worked at a local café and caught Clarke’s eye. Crout’s husband, Ronnie, had died of cancer at age forty-one a few months before and she wasn’t looking to start again. Clarke courted her for three years before she agreed to marry him.
They moved into Crout’s rambling 120-year-old home and renovated the garage into an art studio. She can see the ocean when she picks up her brushes.
“I was the first love of Scott’s life. He absolutely adored me,” she remembers, smiling.
After working as a roofer for a few years for a steadier paycheque, he returned to the ocean.
“He absolutely loved it,” his widow says. “In August, just before he died, he was sitting in the wing chair in the living room. He says, ‘You know what, Heather? I think it’s good that you pushed me into going over to the plant, because I’ve got to where I’m feeling really peaceful.’”
Artist Heather Crout painted ten watercolours, or “babies for her husband,” as she calls them, in memory of her husband, Scott Clarke, who accidentally drowned while herring fishing.
One of the amateur astronomer’s favourite spots was lying on his back in a fishing boat off the coast of Sable Island on the night watch, gazing at the vast universe overhead.
“It just blows your mind. The stars go on forever and forever and forever,” Crout says.
The framed photo of Clarke was taken aboard the herring fishing boat on which he took his last trip. Clarke and the other fishermen went into Fisherman’s Cove in Eastern Passage to prepare for the job. He called his wife at 11:00 p.m. to say he wouldn’t be home because they were going out for one more load.
“That was the last time I heard from him,” she says. “They were eating pizza and talking. He said, ‘I probably won’t see you until tomorrow night. Love ya.’ And that was it.”
No one knows what happened that night. The best that Crout can piece together is that the owner of the boat went into the cabin while Clarke worked on the deck. She says the owner thought he heard Clarke call out, but when he went to check on him, he was gone. He summoned the other fishing boats and the Coast Guard and they frantically searched the water.
Crout raced to Halifax to watch the search from the shore. “We could see the helicopters and the Coast Guard and all the ships. It was like a mini city,” she says. “Scott was not ready to go. He was too young. He was just thirty-nine. I just thought he could swim.”
She stops to sip her coffee and regains her composure.
“Scott knew what he was doing out there. He never took unnecessary chances,” she says, but he wasn’t wearing a life jacket. Hardly any of the fishermen did. The old ones were bulky and uncomfortable and the workable new ones cost too much. The fishermen trusted their luck would hold. In 2008, nine people died in Nova Scotia’s fishing industry. In 2009, eight died, including Clarke. Six died in 2010.
By daylight, it was clear Clarke was gone. They figure he got tangled in the nets as they went into the water. He probably kicked off his boots and tried to swim free, but the vast, cold ocean overwhelmed him. All they found were his cap and boots.
Crout sailed to the spot where he went overboard on the anniversary of his death in September. Hurricane Igor was blowing past, stirring up the water. She made a wooden dory and filled it with flowers and messages for Clarke. The little boat disappeared as they returned to shore.
A memorial was raised in Newfoundland. Clarke didn’t have any children to carry on his name, and it broke Crout’s heart to think he would have no legacy in Nova Scotia. She went to her studio and started painting. “I thought, these are going to be his children.”
The first was Sunrise at Old Bonaventure, a watercolour of his birth village on the east coast of Newfoundland. More followed, depicting Clarke’s life on the water. The last shows the sun setting over fishermen at Eastern Passage. You can see Clarke preparing the boat for his final trip.
Near the anniversary of Clarke’s death, she started to sell each painting
for $400 and used the money from each sale to buy a $400 workable life vest with Clarke’s name written inside. The paintings quickly sold out.
Crout donated the first vest to the man who was on the boat with Clarke and the second to a young local fisherman. It was her way of giving back to the community that grieved with her.
“This is a new tradition for these younger guys,” she says. “Maybe [their] families won’t have to go through what I’ve gone through.”
Tommy Harper, a workplace consultant with the Workers’ Compensation Board, says fishing deaths tend to come from rural areas and devastate whole communities. The most effective way to prevent those deaths is a cultural shift to where personal flotation devices are automatically worn. He calls Crout a “safety champion” who can drive that change. That’s part of the reason the board bought one of Crout’s ten paintings.
“What she set out to do is very noble, and it’s a great cause. You can wear them and you can work,” he says of the workable life vests.
Crout will present a workable life vest to one fisherman a year for the next eight years. Then she’ll paint more babies for her lost husband and buy another vest. She wants to buy forty-two vests, one for each fisherman in Clarke’s fleet.
“Every time they pick up one of those vests, they’ll remember what happened to Scott and how everyone here misses him. How I had to go through a lot. No family wants to go through that,” she says quietly.