Most of the houses were unlocked, and we just looked for one that had some dry wood in the porch or in the woodshed. We had some matches (we both liked a smoke).
“Now look there,” I said. “That’s a pretty nice place, and the woodshed has lots of wood.”
“Okay,” Bert said.
With a few armfuls of wood we entered the house and started up a big fire in the kitchen stove. It wasn’t long before it was sheer comfort in that house and we began drying out.
“You know, I’ve seen this weather before and I would not be surprised if this stuff lifted later this afternoon and we could make a dash for Mary’s Harbour,” said Bert.
“Well, it sure doesn’t look like it now,” I replied. “But with the weather, who knows?”
Bert rummaged around the pantry and found a couple of cans of Vienna sausage. We opened them and gulped the down. We had some smokes left, so we both sat at the kitchen table drawing on them and slowly took stock of our situation.
“Boy, that was quite a mistake I made there,” Bert said. “I have not made many like that in my day. I could have sworn we would hit the tickle, but we must have moved along faster than I thought. The fog makes things tricky, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, Bert me son, ’tis tricky all right, but I’m glad the wind dropped, otherwise that little bump on the shore back there would have been a big problem. The gaff and a late reverse in the engine would not have been enough.”
“Dammit,” said Bert.
“Bert boy,” I began with some reluctance, “I guess one of these days you’ll have to get a compass.”
Bert snickered. “It wasn’t that we didn’t have a compass—we didn’t time it right. That’s all.”
I realized this was a bad time to raise such things. Bert had been plying the coast for years, and he had a good record, so I abruptly dropped it. “Yeah, you’re right; it was the timing.”
It was now around midday, and we thought if the weather was to change it would be in the next few hours, so we just busied ourselves splitting some wood in the woodshed and entering some other houses to see if there was any canned food about. We found a can of bully beef and a small can of beans. Not bad.
As we walked down to the stagehead together, Bert said, “Have you ever been in this situation before? I don’t suppose you have.”
“No, Bert. I haven’t. Although last year in Green Bay we struck some bad weather, but it wasn’t an open boat and we had a more powerful engine.”
“Well, welcome to the Labrador Coast,” Bert replied.
We got down and checked the boat at the stage and looked out the bay.
“There seems to be some light,” Bert announced. The snow had almost stopped. “My son, give it another hour and we’ll be able to see all the way out the bay. The wind’s coming round to western—good sign.”
And, yes, it seemed to be clearing.
“Let’s go up to the house and have that bully beef and beans. Then we can come down and take another look,” I interjected.
“Yes, let’s do that,” Bert said.
On our way to the house, Bert seemed a little worried.
“You got a bit of a frown there,” I remarked.
“Just thinking, the missus would expect us home by now. I expect she will be checking with Battle Harbour and Cape Charles . . .”
There was a radio telephone available for use by the general public in each of the communities. It was always in some person’s home, but the public could request its use.
“Yeah, I dare say Cape Charles has let everyone know we left there this morning,” I rejoined.
We opened our bully beef and beans, found a bent-up saucepan good enough to heat the food, and found a few old forks in a drawer. Boy, it wasn’t a bad lunch at all.
“How much gas do we have, Bert?”
“We’re all right. We’ve got a half-tank and another full one,” Bert responded. He looked out the kitchen window. “Yes, my son, she’s clearing up, just look.”
We went out on the bridge and noticed what was happening. The bright sky was now more in evidence, the snow had completely stopped, and we could sense a new front passing through with cool air from the west.
“Let’s get the boat ready,” Bert said, showing a new burst of energy. Down to the stage we went and got ready to leave.
“I wonder if I should see if we can find some more canned food to take with us, Bert,” I asked.
“Yeah. Go up and check a few more houses. I’ll get everything ready. I’ll get the rain gear out. At least it will keep us warmer going out the bay.”
By the time I untied the painter from the stagehead, you could see halfway out the bay.
“Did you find any more canned stuff?” Bert shouted as we steamed away from the stage.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t find a tin. I guess we were lucky in finding the sausages, beef, and beans.”
Although the clearing was well under way, we still stuck fairly close to shore as we steamed along the north side. Was it ever good to see land again! In the fog, the land seemed so different, and loomed, seeming larger than it really was as it came into view. A westerly breeze of ten miles per hour was bringing the clearing, and we were a happy couple as we chugged along.
When we reached the tickle we smiled at how easy it all seemed now. How could one miss it? We made the turn to the north through the tickle and into St. Lewis Bay.
We had no sooner turned west in the bay when I heard Bert’s shout. “Look to the starboard, quick!” Flying past was a small flock of ducks. Bert jumped from the tiller and grabbed the shotgun. I leaped back to control the tiller and slow the engine.
Gunshots rang out.
Bert was known up and down the shore as a good shot. Well, given that he had to move very quickly, and the boat was still moving, I figured it would be impossible to knock down a bird.
“Swing her around,” he shouted. “Swing her around, move the boat to the port, swiftly!” I followed his instructions, and there floating in the water were two dead ducks. Bert passed me the gaff and I leaned over the boat and hauled the birds to the boat.
“Won’t need any canned stuff now. What a shot, Skipper!” I shouted.
A sly grin crossed Bert’s face. “But I only got two.”
“Only two. It’s a miracle to me we got any,” I stammered.
I turned the boat around and headed back in the bay. Bert came back by the tiller.
“Bert, what about the missus and the others back in Mary’s Har—”
“Ah! They’re all right. We’ll be home in a few hours for sure, and they know we’ll be birding and sealing as we come in the bay. I figure they have us in some cove until it cleared up.”
“Remember I was telling you about the bay seals? Well, the ice has just gone,” I said.
“Slow her down—stop her and let us float for a spell. We have to make this a good trip after all our troubles today,” Bert exclaimed. “There should be some beaters in the bay. Looks like a good price this year. Now, you have to look very closely—the seals are swimming just below the water. Sometimes you will only see their snout. I’ll get in the middle of the boat—that’s where she is most steady—and get my gun ready.”
“Off to the starboard, two o’clock,” I shouted. Bert steadied and shot. Blood spurted. I grabbed the gaff, sculled toward the blood, grabbed the seal before it submerged in the water, then hauled it in the boat.
“To the port, ten o’clock,” Bert shouted. I lunged toward the tiller and repositioned the boat.
More gunshots. More blood and our second beater. We were floating out the bay with the westerly wind, and away from Mary’s Harbour.
“Another five minutes,” Bert said, “and we will start the motor.”
We scanned the water.
“Dammit,” growled Bert. “Can’t see anymore.”
“Well, we got something, and I never saw a shot like that before, Bert. That was fantastic!”
Bert grinned. “Well, I used
to be a good shot, but this past year or so I’ve slipped a little. Not enough seals and I haven’t practised like I used to. Years ago we would get out in the harbour and throw these spin tops in the water and see who could hit them.”
We started steaming in the bay. We could see a few boats out from Indian Harbour looking for beaters. We passed by and waved.
Everybody older than ten in a community knew a boat when it came over the horizon toward the harbour—it was either because of the design or colour of the boat or, when in hearing range, the sound of the engine. So as we approached Mary’s Harbour and as our identity became known, we could see people moving toward the wharf to greet us.
Someone called out as we approached. “Are you fellas all right?”
“We’re just fine,” I shouted from the bow.
And someone else asked, “Are there any beaters in the bay?”
I CANNOT FORG ET CROQUE, ontheFrenchShore, thewind and the ice, Ben Fillier, and other interesting people.
It was well past midday. Saturday, I think, perhaps two o’clock. We thought we would leave Croque, having been there for four days because of lousy weather—wind, rain, and slop snow. It was spring, and anything was possible. And the ice was just off the coast, shifting its location with every new draft of wind.
Everyone had an opinion concerning the wind and ice. Would we get a good nor’easter and drive the ice tight to the rocks like this past week? Skipper George thought so. And some of the younger guys said there wasn’t going to be much to it; the wind would veer around to the west and in a few hours there would be nothing left of it. And the last Almanac predicted an early spring.
I wanted to move on. So did Ben, the owner and operator of the boat I had rented and now a good friend. We were getting close to wearing out our welcome. Not that we didn’t like the place. We did, what with the homebrew and moonshine. But being a welfare officer, even a temporary one like me (some called my position a relieving officer), you can stay too long, and people being people, they could— yes, would—cook up new ways to see what else they could get from this young gaffer sent down from St. John’s for the spring and summer.
As I said, I enjoyed the place, and through my work meeting people and visiting their homes, it was a short few days.
This is a part of the French Shore, a part of the Newfoundland coast to which the French had a right to fish right up to the Anglo-French Convention of 1904. In Croque, there was a French cemetery, and during this time (1964) a French frigate would visit every year or so and care for the graves. It was a well-protected harbour a good ways in from the coast. I remember entering the arm (an elongated body of water) heading in a northwesterly direction for several miles; it looked as if there was just a dead end up ahead, when suddenly the arm turned abruptly to the southeast and we entered a tickle. On ahead there was Croque, tucked away from the lashing sea and tireless wind of the coast. Ben smiled at me for not noticing there would be an opening, since only a few days earlier I was recounting to him my time on the Labrador Coast the previous year and how you couldn’t tell sometimes that there would be a cove just around this head or that point of land. I was fooled again!
Given its seclusion it was hard to tell from Croque harbour just what was happening “on the outside.” So, with our impatience leading us on, we decided to leave and have a look for ourselves to determine what our chances were of getting around Windy Point and back home to Englee by nightfall. Off we went in our forty-foot boat, which had been our home now for almost two weeks.
“What do you think?” Ben shouted from the wheelhouse as I was reeling up the painter on the bow of the boat.
“It’s hard to say. We’re too far in from the coast. The boys who were out yesterday said the ice was off to the Grey Islands and seemed to be moving farther off.”
“Yes,” said Ben. “We will know soon enough.”
Ben knew this well. He was born and bred on this shore, and this was the usual situation every April and May. He had seen it all before, for over forty years now. But he liked it no better now than when, as a boy one mid-May, he was with his uncle and almost drowned off Hooping Harbour, just south of Englee.
We moseyed out the harbour and around the point to the arm. It was overcast with the temperature hovering around freezing. We were both in the wheelhouse scanning the horizon.
“Bit of a breeze, Ben boy,” I said as we completed the turn around Harbour Point.
“Yeah, I think so. Hard to tell its direction. It’s coming from all over,” Ben replied.
We were now heading across the arm to Windy Point and then to open ocean. As we crossed the arm, we began to see the open sea and the Grey Islands.
“The ice is just off the Grey Islands, Ben,” I shouted over the noise of the engine. “Do you see it?”
“Yes, you’re right. That’s about five or six miles, I figure. But which way is it headed now?”
That was the real question, because the way the wind was shifting around, there was no way to tell about the ice.
“What are we going to do, Ben?” I asked as we began to move around Windy Point and then to open ocean. “Will we go on or will we go back to Croque?”
“Well, we don’t have to go all the way to Englee if we hit trouble. We can put in to Conche, can’t we?”
“Yes, boy, we can do that, and that’s only a little over half the steam to Englee.”
So around the point we went, and headed south to Conche, a course that seemed possible.
There are stories on top of stories about the sea and the weather. Newfoundlanders have all heard of them. Our history is clogged with this or that disaster, from the seal fishery to the Banks fishery and a lot of harrowing experiences in between. Every family can tell a story of a loved one of some generation who felt the tragic ferocity and unpredictability of the North Atlantic. It helped make a hardy people and at one time a self-reliant people. My own grandfather was master watch on the SS Greenland when disaster struck, and saw only thirty-seven of eighty-five men survive a furious winter storm on the ice floes in 1898.
Fifteen minutes past Windy Point we felt the wind rising. I stuck my head out the wheelhouse. “Ben, boy, I think it’s starting to come up, and I think it’s coming from the northeast. She’s settled around to the northeast, boy.”
“Shit, can’t be true!” Ben shouted. “What luck! Take the wheel and let me have a look.”
Ben got out on deck and held onto the door of the wheelhouse, sniffed the biting air, and peered out toward the Grey Islands.
“You’re right. A good wind has come up and right this way. The ice will move like lightning now.” Scattering wet snow began howling around us. As the wind increased, our progress slowed. And the race was on. Could we get inside Fox Head, the headland before Conche, before the ice?
We were punching broadside to the waves. We tried to zigzag and shoot straight into the waves, then coast in and repeat, but the wind was making that difficult.
With the boat heaving, I asked Ben, “You told me about the time with your uncle. Have you been out in many storms in recent times?”
“No, boy, I have not. We’ve had a few good years of just a little ice and no storm winds. But it looks like we’re getting back to an old-fashioned spring. Christ, look!” he shouted suddenly, looking out on deck. “I think we’re losing the water barrel! Can you get out there and fasten it down?”
“I can try,” I shouted back.
I opened the wheelhouse door. With the wind coming broadside, the only way I could possibly survive on the now slippery deck was to crawl. On all fours, I ventured outside, the wind slamming the door shut behind me. Jesus, it was getting cold, and the water on the deck was forming tiny pebbles of ice. The boat heaved dangerously.
The water barrel was fastened to the outside wall of the wheelhouse by ring bolts. Straps of leather were wrapped around the barrel and then fastened to the ringbolts. I was to try to tighten the leather so that the barrel was closer to the bolts, thus reducing t
he shaking of the barrel with the rocking of the boat.
It was too slippery to stay in a crawling position, so I quickly found myself on my stomach shimmying gingerly, army-like, toward the barrel. With a little timing and the appropriate rocking of the boat, I was able to reach my arm toward the leather strap and clasp my hand on it. But with such a motion of the boat, my body flung across the deck, with my feet almost dangling over the gunnels. I grabbed the other strap with my left hand, hauling my legs from the edge, and with my chin banging against the barrel, I looked up to see if I could tighten the straps.
Ben, realizing my precarious position through the half-misty wheelhouse window, opened the door and howled to me, “For Christ’s sake, get out of there!” The rest was drowned by nature’s ferocity.
I was in deep trouble. Somehow I had to shimmy back to the wheelhouse door. Forget the bloody barrel—it’s not like we would have died of thirst. Why did we take such chances over a friggin’ old barrel? We can’t lose anything regardless of risk, was our motto. How silly!
I had to pick my chance. Get my body ready, look to see the movement of the waves and wind and how it would affect the boat, and slide back to the starboard and the door when there was the least movement. But what would I grab hold of when I let go of the barrel straps? There was nothing.
Moving my face away from the barrel, I glanced out to sea. There were bits of ice not a mile from the boat, and as I looked farther out toward the Grey Islands, there was only white to see.
Ben opened the wheelhouse door and threw a heavy rope around the corner of the wheelhouse toward me. He was holding on to the other end of the rope with one hand and trying to steer with the other, with the door swinging frantically back and forth. There wasn’t much time for me to make a move. Ben couldn’t stay long in his position, nor could I hold mine for more than a few minutes. As the boat heaved, I lunged back toward the rope, gliding on the icy deck, grasping the rope with my left hand and then with my right. Ben hauled on the rope and I swung around the wheelhouse with my legs hanging out over the boat. He kept hauling on the rope to pull me closer and I kept clasping the rope. With both hands now, Ben pulled as the boat crashed aimlessly against the ice-laden waves. I was near the edge of the door, and with one desperate attempt I hauled on the rope and succeeded in getting my right hand on the raised step under the door. I was almost there. With one more haul from Ben, I was dragged over the step into the wheelhouse.
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