Sea Folk

by Jim Wellman

  After twenty or thirty minutes hanging on to the propeller, Roy realized he was becoming extremely cold and losing strength. To make matters worse, fog was rolling in and it became darker.

  “I could see the lights of Codroy, but they were getting dimmer and then they looked blurry, and then I felt like I was getting warmer and I knew what that meant—that’s when I knew hypothermia was setting in. So I said to myself, ‘No, if I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go down with a fight.’”

  Summoning every ounce of strength left in his body, Roy gave it one last attempt.

  “I put my foot on the motor—on the prop—and pushed and slid myself up over the bottom of the boat, and then I pinched the keel between my knees and hung on.”

  Roy was out of the water, but he was far from out of danger. The combination of the freezing water and his weakened condition caused severe leg cramps while kneeling on the bottom of the small boat, and he knew he couldn’t hold on very long while suffering so much pain. But Roy Fowlow is no quitter, and once again he found a way to survive, at least for another while.

  He noticed a piece of rope floating nearby. The rope was attached to one side of the boat, so he thought if he could grab the rope he might be able to pull himself to a standing position and, hopefully, the pain would subside. Furthermore, he knew that if anyone was searching for him, they would likely have a better chance to see him if he was higher above the surface.

  The plan worked. Using the rope to steady his footing, Roy was finally standing and now feeling better about his chances of survival—the cramps had eased and he even felt an occasional tinge of energy returning to his soaked body. In fact, he felt well enough that he decided to try and upright the boat. He even had a plan for what he would do if he were successful.

  “I thought if I could get her upright I would take the bonnet off the engine and use it as a bailer to dump the water out of the boat—that way I could be floating in a dry boat,” he said. Amazingly, his plan almost worked. Holding on to the rope, he backed down toward the gunwales on the opposite side from where the rope was attached, leaned out from the bottom until his body was almost parallel to the ocean, and tried to pull the boat up. He almost made it. “She came up real close, to the point where I could grab the gunwales and pull her the rest of the way and climb in—but it wasn’t quite far enough—so close but yet so far away,” Roy recalls.

  Meanwhile, as he stood on the slippery bottom of his overturned speedboat, word was spreading throughout the town of Codroy that Roy was overdue. When the fog rolled in and daylight grew dim, his family knew something was seriously wrong. Several speedboat owners left the harbour to look for him, but though some of them came very near, not one came close enough to see him through the thick fog and darkness.

  “I could hear the speedboats coming out, I could tell they were going down along the shoreline, and then they would turn away and circle out around me and go back in again—so close but yet so far away yet again,” Roy says.

  But even after those heart-rending disappointments, Roy never gave up. He was determined to fight to his last breath.

  As longliners were returning to Codroy from their day fishing, captains and crews were all asked if they had seen any sign of Roy’s boat at any time that day.

  Billy Gould from Port aux Choix was fishing with his dad, Raymond Gould, on the sixty-five-foot Oderin that spring, and they were among several boats that intended to overnight in Codroy. Billy remembers his father talking to several other skippers about a search, when someone said they thought they could hear a man calling for help not far from the harbour entrance.

  Billy says his father and the other longliner captains were all totally prepared to search for the missing lobsterman, but there were concerns that, if Roy’s small boat was partly submerged and/or if he was in the water, searching from a large boat might be too dangerous in the darkness. It would be better if a smaller boat went out, because a big sixty-five-footer might not see anything until it was too late and could possibly run over Roy. Also, the wake from a sixty-five-foot vessel could wash a person from the relative safety of a mostly submerged boat.

  On the other hand, the big advantage of a longliner search was radar capability. The longliner crew might pick up a radar image of a man in the water and cautiously proceed from there.

  One of the fishing captains returning to Codroy on the evening of May 8, 1987, was Will Decker from Rocky Harbour. Will was a friend of Roy Fowlow, and when he heard that Roy was missing, Will decided that regardless of what anyone else was doing, he was definitely going to search for his friend, knowing that anyone out in those weather conditions would probably not make it through the night.

  Will was owner of the thirty-five-foot longliner Glendale. He didn’t bother to dock when he heard the conversations on VHF Radio; he knew what he had to do.

  Back at sea, Roy’s predicament was growing more serious. His boat was slowly sinking farther underwater. For most of the afternoon and evening, most of the boat’s bottom was above the surface, but by 9:00 p.m. the stern section was submerged and he only had about three feet toward the stem of the boat left to stand on.

  At first Roy couldn’t understand why that was happening, but despite having been in the freezing water for several hours and then standing on the bottom of a mostly submerged small boat for several more, Roy’s cognitive capability was still functioning amazingly well. It was not comforting, but he realized that he was a victim of a rising tide.

  “I realized that I was in an area where the water was about ten fathoms deep and I knew that my buoy lines were also about ten fathoms. I figured that when the lobster traps fell out, some of the lines got snagged on the motor or somewhere, and as the tide rose the weight of the traps started pulling her down. I figured that one more hour would be all that I had left before she’d be gone under altogether.”

  As daunting as the realization was that his boat was slowly but surely disappearing beneath the surface and that daylight was still eight hours away, Roy never gave up. He directed his thoughts to ways of making it through the night, knowing that at first light on Saturday morning there would be a dozen or more boats out looking for him.

  Roy says all kinds of thoughts starting running through his mind while holding on to the small string of rope and struggling to remain standing on the tiny piece of slippery fibreglass boat that was still above the surface. One of those thoughts gave him reason to believe that he wouldn’t die that night. Ironically, it was a thought born of great sadness, but somehow uplifting for him in his darkest hour.

  Three months previously, Roy and his son were among several fishing crews from Codroy participating in the search for survivors or bodies after the fishing vessel Myers III sank with five men on board. Four brothers, Joe, Clarence, Dave, and Jim Myers from Bartlett’s Harbour, along with a family friend, Ewan Hynes from Reef’s Harbour, died when their vessel went down in a vicious winter storm on January 24, 1987. Roy and his son found one of the two bodies recovered from that tragedy, and as odd as it may seem, now that Roy found himself near death, he sensed an element of comfort from his memory of that terrible event.

  As a veteran fisherman, Roy knew that closure for a grieving family is never complete when men have been lost at sea without a trace. He knew that finding Clarence Myers’s body, just as officials were about to call off the search, was a blessing of sorts to the Myers family.

  Now that he was facing incredibly tough odds in almost the exact location where the Myers III sank, Roy felt that his fate would have to be different.

  “The thought that we did something good for the Myers family would mean that nothing bad was going to happen to me,” Roy says, explaining that many strange thoughts cross your mind in times like that. But somehow, believing that fate could not be so cruel as to take him like the five men on the Myers III gave Roy one more boost to hang on.

  And hang
on he did, till almost 11:30 p.m.

  Finally, with just enough of his boat remaining above water to stand on, Roy heard a vessel approaching through the fog. He could tell by the sound that it was a longliner and not a speedboat. All kinds of thoughts and fears ran through his mind. Was it really a boat or was he hallucinating? If it was a boat, would the crew be able to come close enough to see him through the thick fog and darkness, or would this be a heartbreak of another would-be rescuer coming close but pass on by? The only thing he could do was to shout as loud as he could and hope someone heard him.

  Someone did—and a few minutes later, Captain Will Decker and the crew of the Glendale pulled slowly alongside. Captain Decker said he had picked up a small image on radar that looked like it could have been a person, and he cautiously headed toward it. The image had disappeared off the screen, but Will eased back to a very slow speed and kept pushing in the same direction.

  As the thirty-five-foot longliner pulled close to Roy, Will was worried that his friend would be so excited that he would jump too soon and wind up in the water. But despite seven hours in freezing water and cold air without flotation or survival gear, Roy’s mind and body were still functioning perfectly.

  “I made sure when I jumped I was going to have something to hold on to,” Roy says. When the Glendale inched close enough, Roy made a leap and, with the precision of a fine-tuned athlete, one of his feet landed squarely in the rubber tire bumper hanging over the side of the longliner and he grabbed the gunwales. Two of the Glendale’s crew members then got a good grip on Roy’s arms and pulled him over the side of the Glendale to safety. Roy’s long and scary ordeal was over.

  It is difficult to explain why Roy Fowlow didn’t die that day. Given the water and air temperatures and his lack of survival gear, most people would have succumbed to hypothermia within an hour or less, but not Roy. His obvious excellent physical condition and his common-sense approach to survival, combined with a whole lot of good luck, meant that Roy Fowlow was not yet ready for his final voyage.

  Alive to Tell the Tale

  The third week of May, 2000, was a good shrimp fishing week for the crew of the L J Kennedy.

  Captain Skip Caines and his crew, from Port aux Choix on Newfoundland’s northwest coast, were fishing shrimp off the northeast coast of the island and southern Labrador. For that week their home port was Quirpon, on the very tip of Newfoundland, not far from St. Anthony.

  May 24 is the Victoria Day holiday weekend for many people, but for the crew of the L J Kennedy there was no time for luxuries such as long weekends that spring. Shrimp fishing was good that week, and by Wednesday, May 24, they had landed two trips totalling approximately 100,000 pounds.

  On Wednesday morning the L J Kennedy was fishing about 180 miles northeast of St. Anthony and things were going fine. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the weather or seas and the crew were preparing for the last tow of the day.

  Crew member Billy Gould, from Port aux Choix, was working at the stern of the sixty-five-foot shrimp vessel while his friend Colin Dobbin was working the levers and hydraulics. Another crew member, Alf Gould, Jr., was looking on, standing near the door to the galley and wheelhouse. The guys had just taken back a tow, and as Colin worked the levers rolling the net from the stern roller over the back of the vessel, Billy was working at the back of the vessel near the roller, trying to get the footgear out over the stern. Shrimp nets are very large and heavy. From his position about twenty feet toward the front, Colin could see that Billy was having a little trouble with the weight of the footgear and nets that had piled up at the stern. Colin decided to stop reeling the net off the roller and went back to help Billy with the gear. Shortly afterwards, thirty-six-year-old Billy Gould was in deep trouble.

  L J Kennedy (Photo courtesy of Billy Gould)

  The way Billy remembers it, Alf was still standing near the doorway watching what was going on, but for some reason he decided to go over and start working the levers controlling the net roller. Whatever happened, instead of letting more of the net out, as Billy and Colin had been working on, Alf pushed the lever that hauls back the net—the opposite of what Billy and Colin were trying to accomplish.

  When the net was hauling back over the roller, Billy suddenly felt himself being dragged along with it. It happened quickly, and Billy is still not certain of just exactly what part of his rubber clothes got snagged in the net, but the next thing he remembers, he was wound up nearly at the top of the large roller. “I wasn’t wound around in the net—something on my rubber clothes got hitched or something.” Colin recognized what Alf had done wrong and ran to reverse the roller direction to reel the net out rather than pulling it back in. Fortunately, he managed to change the course of the net just in time to prevent Billy from being totally wrapped around the roller, which could have been fatal. As the net once again started rolling toward the stern, Billy, still snagged, was dragged back to the deck and safety.

  After Billy was untangled, he knew he was injured because he felt numbness and tingling in his arms, but after the skipper and the others checked him out, everyone, including Billy, decided he was in fairly good condition and that there didn’t seem to be a need for immediate medical attention. After some discussion they decided that, because they only needed one more tow to complete the trip, they would continue fishing and head back to port after that. From Quirpon, Billy hitched a ride home on a tractor-trailer that was heading to Port aux Choix with a load of shrimp for the plant there.

  When Billy got back home in Port aux Choix, the numbness and tingling sensation was still prevalent in his arms and had now progressed to his back, so he went to the hospital in nearby Port Saunders to get checked out. The Port Saunders doctor ordered Billy to stop working immediately and referred him to a medical specialist in Corner Brook. The diagnosis in Corner Brook was “spinal stenosis.” Spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal column that causes pressure on the spinal cord, or narrowing of the openings (called neural foramina) where spinal nerves leave the spinal column. One of the causes of spinal stenosis is an injury that causes pressure on the nerve roots or on the spinal cord itself.

  Billy was given medication and painkillers and was sent home, but it wasn’t long before he recognized that his condition was worsening—slowly but surely. The pain grew progressively worse over time, but something else was occurring—his legs started quivering at times and eventually grew worse, to become more like involuntary contractions or muscle spasms. By 2004, life was miserable for Billy. Pain was constant and his condition was growing so bad that it was nearly impossible to have any semblance of a normal life.

  In the spring of 2004, Billy was given the most difficult decision that he has ever had to make. His doctors told him that he could try surgery that would help ease the pain and stop the spasms, but there would be a price to pay for the degree of comfort. Surgery could possibly leave his legs partially or totally paralyzed, and there was no promise that the pain would be totally eradicated—just diminished. By Billy’s reasoning, the thought of living with his ever-deteriorating condition was worse than not being able to walk, so he made the decision to have the surgery.

  The doctors were right. Billy lost the ability to walk, and although they told him he might never recover, he stubbornly decided that he would give it his best shot. After months of what he describes as “dragging himself around with a walker,” he started to build strength and eventually managed to learn to walk with the assistance of a walker, and then a cane. He forced himself to the limits until he could walk a couple of miles at a time.

  Life continued like that for Billy Gould from 2004 to 2009, but after five years, the pain once again became unbearable, and in 2010 he was back on the operating table once more.

  Today, Billy Gould is still in intermittent pain—some days are worse than others—but he gets by and keeps busy with a photo collection of fishing vessels. He i
s walking now with a cane and thankful that, even though on May 24, 2000, he made his final voyage in the fishing industry, he didn’t make his final voyage in life.

  They Never Had a Chance

  Victor Brannen, Jr. was busy all through the month of March in 1974 working on his fishing vessel Colville Bay. The thirty-five-year-old fishing captain from Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia, bought the former herring carrier and refitted it for the longline cod fishery.

  After working on the fifty-eight-foot vessel for about a month, a wheelhouse was built on the aft section and additional superstructure was built toward the front, the place where the longlines and other gear would be stowed. At the end of March, Victor rounded up a crew and set April 3 as their first sailing date. One of his crew was Bruce Goreham, who was supposed to be working on a fishing boat in British Columbia at that time. Around the middle of March, Bruce had been rescued from a fishing vessel that sank off New England, and his planned flight to BC on March 22 had to be postponed because of events following that sinking. Victor’s younger brother Nathan was also a crew member with Bruce on that ill-fated trip, and so he too signed on with Victor to fish on board the Colville Bay’s maiden voyage as a longliner.

  On Tuesday, April 2, Victor listened to the radio forecasts and sea state information, and as everything seemed appropriate, he contacted his crew and confirmed that they would sail the next morning. Victor and his six crew members were all young men, ranging in age from twenty-two to thirty-five. They were all good fishermen and friends who lived within a mile radius of one another in Woods Harbour.

  The plan was to take a five-day trip to fish cod on German Bank, about twenty-five to thirty miles southwest of Yarmouth. Victor said they would fish for five days and land their catch at Westport on Brier Island, located at the mouth of St. Mary’s Bay, bordering on the Bay of Fundy. The plant manager on Brier Island expected the Colville Bay on Tuesday morning, April 8.