Sea Folk

by Jim Wellman

  Victor’s brother Edward Brannen had made ship-to-shore contact with the Colville Bay on the first two days at sea. Up until Thursday night, April 4, everything was fine. A thunder and lightning storm passed through the region on Thursday night, but none of the vessels in the area reported damage, so Edward figured that lightning might have knocked out the radio system on his brother’s vessel and didn’t feel it was necessary to take any action. After all, there were no maydays reported and no other vessels in the area reported seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary.

  However, on Tuesday, April 8, the same day that the Colville Bay was scheduled to arrive at Brier Island, someone reported finding wreckage on the back side of the island. A trawl tub, a hatch cover, and a few charred remnants of a wooden vessel were thought to belong to the Colville Bay. The burnt wood suggested that fire might have been the cause of sinking. Because there had been no mayday or any form of communication indicating the vessel was in any kind of distress, it was also believed that the fire must have started quickly. Most fishermen recognized that sign as an on-board explosion.

  Nothing much else was found until a year or so later, when a scallop dragger out of Digby got its drags snagged in something big and heavy in an area where there were no charted obstructions on the bottom. It was the Colville Bay.

  An investigation showed the vessel had been burned extensively all the way to the waterline on the port side, and although the starboard side was intact, the deck had also been severely burned. The underside of a ladder/steps leading to the wheelhouse from the deck was also burned, adding more evidence to the investigator’s suspicion that an explosion had taken place.

  Several sets of oil clothes were found in the area of the gear storage compartment at the front of the vessel. After a year in the ocean there were no body remains as such, but Bruce Goreham’s brother Ethren remembers that some pieces of clothing found tangled in the longlines on deck told the story of who at least one or two of the men were. A belt with “Keep on Truckin’” on the buckle along with a Kodiak shirt provided clues. Ethren said his brother Bruce owned a Kodiak shirt, and so did Burton King, but Bruce’s Kodiak shirt was at home in Woods Harbour, so they knew the recovered shirt in the fishing gear belonged to Burton.

  Ethren has his own theory on what happened. He recalls that when the men were working on the refit, they encountered a problem with a gas-engine charger. The charger had a small leak in one of the fittings, and although it was considered something that needed fixing, it wasn’t thought to be a serious issue.

  Ethren says that if that leak had not been fixed, it is possible that after two days at sea, gas fumes might have built up in the bilge area. “And if there was a spark, she would have blown.” Ethren says that he talked to the fishermen who found the Colville Bay, and all of them agreed that it must have been a big explosion with a force strong enough to blast the men on deck into the fishing gear stowage area up forward. It is also generally thought that the blast probably killed all hands instantly and that they died before the vessel submerged. “It is my feeling that anyone back aft never had a chance at all—the explosion probably blew the wheelhouse right off the boat—there was nothing left of it,” Ethren says.

  Colville Bay Memorial in Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia

  (Jim Wellman photo)

  There were other rumours circulated shortly after the loss of the Colville Bay. There were streaks of green paint on the hull one of the Yarmouth ferries to Bar Harbor, Maine. The colour was similar to the colour of parts of the stricken vessel, and that raised suspicions. As in every unsolved mystery, people speculate and often a very basic detail as minor as a piece of paint on a ship can get exaggerated and ultimately lead to conclusions that become accepted by many people as absolute truth, and these become urban legends. And so it goes that in southwest Nova Scotia in the months following the loss of the Colville Bay, many people thought the fishing vessel was cut down at sea. Crew members of the ferry did report that the ship struck something, but the location was not near where the Colville Bay would have been. It is possible that a collision at sea could have occurred, but the Colville Bay was relatively intact on the ocean floor, and most people agree that if the fifty-eight-foot boat had been rammed by a ship the size of the Yarmouth ferry, the fishing boat would have looked different than it had.

  The only thing that is absolutely certain is that sixteen children in Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia, were left without fathers, and residents of a close-knit fishing community were in shock for months, mourning the loss of family and close friends. Captain Victor Brannen, age thirty-five, his twenty-two-year-old brother Nathan Brannen, along with Brenton King, thirty-one, Larry Goreham, thirty-five, Allison Goreham, also thirty-five, Bruce Goreham, twenty-seven, and Andrew Nickerson, twenty-four, all perished when the fishing vessel Colville Bay made its final voyage in April, 1974.

  Veteran Seiner Dies in Freak Accident

  Wednesday, January 9, 1980, was a fairly typical winter’s day in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, especially for three or four herring seiner crews from Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Michael “Mike” McCarthy on board the Lady Patricia and Mike’s son Captain Les McCarthy on the seiner Canada 100 had docked for the night, as had Captain John Roy Hackett and his crew on board the Silver Dolphin. Les says there may have been one or two others in port that night, but today, thirty-two years later, he’s not certain.

  The Bay of Islands seiner fleet fished herring in all Atlantic Canadian waters, and on this trip they were in North Sydney waiting for appropriate weather conditions to head out to Chebucto Bay, off southeastern Nova Scotia. The forecast called for good weather conditions on Thursday morning, so most of the young Newfoundland crew members from the seiners were ashore enjoying an evening of rest and relaxation before having to head out to sea for several days.

  Captain Mike McCarthy docked the Lady Patricia at what was then called the Government Wharf. Fishermen and mariners today know that wharf as the Osprey Wharf in North Sydney. His son Les McCarthy was docked nearby in the area known as Newfoundland Island, near the CN (now Marine Atlantic) dock.

  On Wednesday evening, when the various captains decided that the weather forecast looked promising enough to leave port by daylight the next morning, sixty-three-year-old Mike McCarthy called his son Les on board the Canada 100 to say that he would walk over for a visit while they waited out the evening. Father and son sat in the galley and chatted about the events of the day and discussed plans and strategies for seining over the next several days in Chebucto Bay.

  Les McCarthy, son of Captain Mike McCarthy, standing in front of the seiner Ocean Leader in Corner Brook, NL

  (Jim Wellman photo)

  “We sipped on a couple of drinks while we were chatting, but the plan was to leave port at daylight, so there was no heavy drinking going on,” Les recalls.

  About ten o’clock that night, Mike decided it was time he should head back to his boat to get a good night’s sleep, because Thursday would be a long and busy day. Les remembers that he was a little concerned about his dad getting on board the Lady Patricia that night, although Mike practically grew up on boats and knew the marine environment like it was an extension of his own body. But still, at age thirty-four, Les had fished for twenty years and was already a very seasoned captain and knew a lot about nearly every wharf in most Atlantic Canadian ports.

  “The Government Wharf in North Sydney was generally used by vessels much larger than herring seiners and the wharf fenders were large, and kept smaller and lighter boats a fair distance away from the actual wharf,” he explains. The wharf is also higher than most fishing wharves, making it a little tricky for boarding without proper gangways. Les had also noted that there was a light snowfall that evening and the temperature was well below freezing.

  Weighing all these factors, Les suggested that his dad should stay on board the Canada 100 and walk over to the L
ady Patricia in the morning. But Mike declined the invitation, saying he would be just fine, and left to walk to his vessel.

  Thursday morning dawned a fairly nice January day—certainly a good day to travel from North Sydney to the fishing grounds of Chebucto Bay, about a five- or six-hour steam to the southwest.

  Les and the crew of the Canada 100 untied about 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. and headed out.

  “On the way out I noticed that Dad’s boat hadn’t left yet, and I thought that was a little bit strange because he’s usually the first one gone,” Les says.

  But still, Les didn’t think too much about it until a short while later.

  “We were just at the Low Point Fairway light when I got a call on the ship’s radio that I should turn around and come back to North Sydney right away . . . they didn’t tell me why, but I knew something was wrong,” Les says.

  Seiner Canada 100, once commanded by Captain Les McCarthy

  (Jim Wellman photo)

  Arriving back in port, Les was met at the dock by his father’s brother Nick McCarthy and Nick’s son Ches, who were both crew members on the Lady Patricia with Mike. His uncle said that when the crew got up Thursday morning, there was no sign of Mike. After a very brief search for their captain, someone spotted Mike’s body in the water between the wharf and the seiner.

  Les thinks it is fairly obvious what happened. He says when his father was trying to get from the wharf to the boat on Wednesday night, he slipped on the snowy and icy wharf and fell.

  “Apparently he hit his head of the wharf or the side of the boat during the fall and did considerable damage, so we don’t know if he called out or if he tried to pull himself up or whatever,” Les says.

  Whether his dad could call for help or not is likely a moot point, according to Les. He says there probably wasn’t anyone on the wharf at that time of night, and with the combined noise that is typical of ships’ generators running and dock noises, anyone on board the Lady Patricia would not likely have heard anything anyway, if, in fact, there was anyone on board the Lady Patricia at that hour on Wednesday night.

  On the other hand, there is evidence that Mike was conscious at some point after falling. He managed to get one of his arms up over a spring line connected from the vessel to the wharf, and that kept his head and shoulders above water. Whether that was an attempt to pull himself all the way up or a last-ditch effort to make sure his body would be found is unknown.

  The autopsy report said that Captain Mike died of exposure, not drowning, indicating that if he did go totally underwater, he managed to pull himself up and stay above the surface for some time.

  Captain Mike McCarthy was a well-known and respected herring seiner captain who had fifty years’ experience at sea, but one small slip that ended in tragedy marked his final voyage on January 9, 1980.

  Almost Ninety, Still Going Strong

  “We’ve been married Seventy-one years.”

  That’s how Fred Barrett introduced me to his wife, Rhoda, a smart-looking woman who was more interested in checking on her freshly baked partridgeberry and apple pies than counting the number of years she’d been a wife.

  Greeting me in the kitchen of their cozy, saltbox-style home, which he built with his own hands sixty-seven years ago in Old Perlican, Newfoundland, Fred looks and moves like a man thirty years his junior. He stands tall and straight, has a wonderful complexion, only wears glasses to read, and has never taken a medication for any ailment or condition till last year. He turns ninety in a couple of months.

  “I worked hard all my life,” he says, adding that he believes the measure of a good person is often apparent in his or her work ethic. “Hard work never killed anyone—I worked like a dog and never had a pain—nowadays, fellas sits around half the time and gets a bad back.” In response to a comment by Cody Rogers, a teenager from Old Perlican, that Fred “could outwork a twenty-year-old,” he laughs and says, “I could have last year.”

  Fred Barrett still works hard. He is owner of a forty-five-foot crab vessel that he bought ten years ago when he was almost eighty. “They all said I was crazy—buying a boat at that age,” he says. “But that don’t bother me—what’s wrong with a fella getting a new boat when he’s seventy or eighty? I had her about a year and put in a brand new 400-horsepower Caterpillar engine—cost $100,000,” he laughs.

  His new boat is Fred’s second vessel purchase since he became an “old-age pensioner.” He bought a new longliner from Otto Yates boatyard in Springdale when he was in his late sixties. He has owned outright or was part owner with his brothers in a half-dozen boats and enterprises in his seventy-plus years in the fishing business. And listening to Fred talk about his most recent purchase, it is obvious the name Barrett’s Pride is appropriate. “I like boats and she’s a real good boat,” he says, smiling proudly.

  Other than a few stints at picking apples in Nova Scotia when he was a young man, a year or so as a carpenter in St. John’s, and working in Argentia during the construction phase of the U.S. Navy base in the 1940s, Fred has fished since he was a boy in the 1930s. He remembers working at spreading fish in his teenage years for a salary of $1 a day. Even jobs in the larger centres didn’t pay much. “When I worked in St. John’s I was making thirty-five cents an hour—then when I went to Argentia, I got fifty cents an hour.” Fred says he never understood why he was making so little while the Americans working alongside him were making double his salary for doing exactly the same job. Fred thought he could do just as well in a boat as he could do working on construction jobs, especially when fish were plentiful. “There was lots of cod and turbot in those days,” Fred says, adding that the only way fishermen could survive was through high-volume fisheries. “There was no money in it—they’d pay you one or two cents a pound—we’d have ten gillnets and we’d catch as much as 10,000 pounds of turbot.” To make ends meet, Fred’s generation owned vegetable gardens, cows and goats, picked berries, killed animals in the fall, salted fish, and lived almost entirely off the land and sea. Men and women never stopped working, except sometimes on Sundays. “We almost never went to the store for anything,” he says. Fred still has a goat in his yard.

  Fred doesn’t mind criticizing those who he thinks are lazy or who abuse the social systems, but he is also generous with his praise of people who work hard and help themselves. Many Newfoundland fishermen find it difficult to find a good word to say about fish processors, but Fred highly respects Pat and Maurice Quinlan, the brothers who built a very large and successful fish company in his area. Part of that respect is in keeping with his philosophy that people who work hard should be recognized. “Them fellas [Pat and Maurice] worked seven days and seven nights a week when they were getting that company on the go. And you can say what you like about Pat Quinlan, but he always treated us good. And look at the jobs they are providing around here in the plants and for fishermen.” Maurice has passed on, but Pat Quinlan still has a very “hands-on” role in the daily operation of the company.

  Fred doesn’t go to sea these days. He decided that he wasn’t as steady on his feet in rough seas as he was when he was seventy-five or seventy-six, so he decided to become a shore skipper and be there to greet the boat when she arrived in port from a fishing trip and have things ready on that end. His grandson Wayne Barrett is the captain on the Barrett’s Pride while two other grandsons and two non-relatives make up the remainder of the crew complement. Fred is always there to clean up the fish containers and do other odd jobs every time the vessel is in port, no matter what time of the day or night. Family members have often tried to convince Fred that he should take it a little easier. They fear he is inclined to work harder than is good for his health.

  Fred Barrett standing in front of

  Barrett’s Pride (Photo courtesy of Cody Rogers)

  After seventy-some years observing the ebbs and tides of the various fish species in Trinity an
d Conception bays, Fred Barrett has a lot of first-hand knowledge about the state of the resource and, unlike many younger fishermen, he is not pessimistic. He thinks there are more codfish than fish scientists believe, and he also thinks there is a fairly healthy turbot stock in the bay. As for crab: “The boys are having a good year this year,” he says. “And at $2 a pound, you can make a half-decent go of it.” While he has hopes for the resource, he doesn’t have a lot of faith in the governments and bureaucrats that manage the resources, saying he thinks they are out of touch with reality.

  When Fred is not talking about boats and fishing, he talks about his family. He and Rhoda have two daughters and a son as well as many grandchildren. Their son Charlie Barrett is also a well-known fisherman in that area. There is hardly a wall in the Barrett home that is not filled with photos of children and grandchildren. Several family members drop by to visit every day, and on weekends nearly all the family living in Old Perlican will drop by. Charlie says that on Saturdays his mom, Rhoda, makes five gallons of soup, and dozens of her raisin buns disappear.

  People like Skipper Fred Barrett are an inspiration and excellent role models for young men and women who would like a future in the fishing industry. We wish him and Rhoda many more years of days filled with pies and raisin buns.

  A Strange Coincidence of Fate