by Gary Collins
The schooner was living up to her name. Water sprites, or water fairies, were creatures of legend, human females who could breathe air or water. The decks of this very real Water Sprite went under water as much as they lifted above it tonight.
Some of the seas seemed to reach the height of her mainmast. Some broke over the tossing bow of the little schooner and flushed their divided weight along the sixty-five-foot length of her deck. At such times only the strong rope around his back kept John at his weary station. He had often heard stories about captains being tied to their helm, but he always thought they were a bit exaggerated. Swashbuckling talk. But it was neither. Here was the only way for a man to hold his footing under these conditions. It would only take one spin of a deserted wheel to heel the schooner away before the gale.
With each lifting roller, its top blowing froth before it, the Water Sprite lurched skyward. After each sudden lift she pitched violently downward again to make a jolting, wrenching contact that drove the seas apart and flung them away from her determined bows as if she were speeding ahead. In reality, the schooner was loosing ground. Each wave was bearing her backward.
Their lack of progress didn’t give John Bishop much cause for concern. As bad as it was, his schooner was weathering. This storm, like the others, couldn’t last much longer, he figured. It was the dread of having his young daughter below the storm-washed decks that filled him with fear.
He didn’t know how far they were from land. It could be as many as 100 miles, he supposed. He had no way of knowing. The binnacle light was out again. There wasn’t much point in trying to keep the oil wick going. It didn’t matter much what the compass showed, anyway. They were at the mercy of hurricane-force winds out of the northwest.
Skipper Bishop was soaked to the skin. His threadbare oilskins were only a fragile barrier between the freezing spray and his weary, soaked body. His eyes burned with the sting of cold salt water. His soggy woollen mitts only smeared his face when he tried to wipe his eyes. Added to his misery were the cold blasts of Arctic air. They froze his wet woollen cuffs and numbed his hands. The rigging was starting to ice up. The bulwarks were getting bigger. Slush was beginning to form along the decks and clog the scuppers.
No one else was on deck. Bishop had ordered all hands below to the safety of the forecastle. He thought he caught the brief smell of woodsmoke. He knew they were short on kindling, though they had a good supply of coal left. He longed for a cup of hot tea. He figured he could drink it scalding hot right now. The sudden faint smell of smoke from the forecastle funnel encouraged him just as if it had come from the warm kitchen of his home in Wesleyville.
* * *
John Bishop’s house in Wesleyville was cozy and warm, with a bright light despite the late hour. The oil lamp placed in the centre of the cleared kitchen table cast a pleasant glow. The stove pinged its heat while on the hob a full, spotless kettle faintly sang.
John’s wife walked to the black window as she had been doing for the last three nights. Spreading the white lace curtains and cupping her hands against her round face, she peered outside. The light from the window didn’t reach far. It shone on a narrow gravel path meandering close to the house. Beside the path a long, low, narrow growth of faded green bushes swayed and bent with the wind. She expected any minute to see them uprooted and torn away by the terrible gale. Only one other faint light shone from her neighbour’s upstairs window. She shifted her gaze toward the nearby ocean. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there, just out past the rocky landwash. It had always been there. Blue and friendly, sweet-scented and endless. Restless and ever-changing, dangerous and constantly luring men with its mystery.
She longed for a light to appear mid-window high, where she knew the sea to be. The darkness seemed to stare back at her from the interminable ocean, a mocking, all-encompassing void. She turned from the window with a sigh. She knew she wouldn’t see a light. John wouldn’t be crossing Bonavista Bay on a night such as this one. Still, she knew she would return again and again and stare till her eyes ached.
Strange, she couldn’t remember the exact date John had left. She knew it was around the first of November, and now it was early December. Her mind was frazzled with worry. Not that she hadn’t waited and worried for her John before this. It was a common thing, not only for her but for many wives around this place. Almost everyone made his living from the sea. She knew of several captains of vessels from this community as well as from the nearby settlements.
This time, though, her two children had gone along with their father. She hadn’t minded her son going so much. He was a man now—she still called him her boy—and wanted nothing more than the way of the schooners. He could have no better teacher than his own father, she knew. But her young daughter, Hazel, caused her much worry.
Hazel, who played near the sea along with the village boys. She seemed fearless when around the slippery shoreline. She was fastest at the game of daring and running away from crashing waves on the landwash. Not that Hazel was the tomboy type. She was a girl, all right, was her Hazel. She loved pretty things and did her young-girl chores without complaint, but she had a love for the ocean that set her apart from the other girls.
Hazel had pleaded with both her parents to go on this trip with her father to St. John’s. John had relented first, of course, but he could seldom deny Hazel any request. Finally, with her husband pleading almost as much as her daughter, she had reluctantly agreed.
From this same window she had watched the Water Sprite sail away till she was hull down in the blue sea. She remembered seeing the faded tips of the brown sails against a clear sky as the fish-laden schooner disappeared south.
* * *
A light from the opened forecastle companionway startled John. A shout accompanied the sudden light.
“Are you a’right, John? Do you want me to spell ya?” It was George Windsor’s voice.
“Not yet, George. ’Ow is everything below? Is Hazel a’right? Not sick, is she?” John yelled back.
“We’re doing pretty good. The kettle’s boiled again. Hazel done it. No worries about—”
Another wave crashed over the forward deck. George’s words were swept away and for a moment the welcoming light was blurred from Bishop’s sight. When he could see it clearly again, John ordered the shutter closed. He knew water had doused down the forecastle that time. There came another hasty, faint reply from Windsor that John didn’t hear and the light disappeared again. But it had cheered him. There had been no fear in Windsor’s voice. His daughter had actually made tea! A fierce pride swelled his resolve, not unlike Wordsworth’s captain of the Hesperus who had lashed his daughter to the mast hoping to save her young life. Bishop tightened the ropes that held him. His daughter, son, and crew were safe below. They would beat this storm, by God.
For two more hours John Bishop endured the onslaught of wind and wave, and then, as the wind veered farther north, the temperature dropped and it snowed. His arms ached with the strain of keeping the schooner just a point or two off the wind. It was as close as he could keep her.
The rigging thrummed and whined as the wind tore through it. From high above the deck came a banshee wail from the naked topmasts. Only the foremast carried any canvas. Bishop had ordered the mainsail down and secured to the main boom the night before. Looking at it now, he thought it looked like a long, frozen white shroud. The foresail was double-reefed, with just enough cloth remaining to keep the gale off the port bow as she was borne stern first out into the deep Atlantic.
* * *
The grey dawn came without any let-up in the wind, and what came with it was the awesome sight of its fury. When the Water Sprite rose on the immense swells, her bow lifted and almost sprang free of the water as her entire length showed through, looking as if she would break in two before she was released from the watery heights, only to wallow again in the deep troughs as she d
ropped behind every wave. Endless grey seas, almost all of them breaking and foaming, rolled toward the schooner. Scuds of snow sheened diagonally, pelting the tops of high waves and shallow grey valleys alike, and over it all the dirge of a storm at sea howled all the while.
Seabirds swam and battered away from the schooner as she approached them. Sweet-tasting turrs and bright-billed puffins and guillemots appeared in flocks upon the tormented waters. Twice John watched as several of them flew from a wave top and landed on the foredeck before the sluicing seas carried them over the sides. They appeared to be tired. Bishop wondered if the birds had also been driven from the land by the gale. There were a couple of guns aboard, and though the birds would provide them with a source of meat, he knew it was impossible to hunt them.
They had run a strong line the length of the schooner when the storm hit them on Friday. George Windsor made his way along the frozen line now to relieve his captain, who gave him a few shouted instructions before he left for a badly needed rest. The wind noise was a pressing thing. Shouting was the only way to be heard above it. Bishop swayed sideways all the way, straining against the life-saving rope. Several times his tired feet slipped and his knees buckled, but he hung on. When he finally opened the sliding door of the forecastle, the warmth from below rushed up to meet him.
Hazel’s bright face was looking up as he descended the ladder. Her father had been prepared to bolster her spirits, to assure her they would be all right, but it wasn’t necessary. The young girl was not afraid. More than that, she embraced her father, wet clothes and all, and with a cheery voice told him his tea was ready. It was as if he had just stepped below from a sunny summer deck.
“There’s warm, dry mitts ready fer you, Pop. Hot tea, too, though ’tis not in the cup till you’re ready. You’ll have to hold it in your hand. We can’t keep a thing on the table!”
John Bishop looked at his daughter as if he were seeing her for the first time. He hadn’t realized her strength. Except for short trips around the islands near their home, she had never been at sea before. And what a sea it was! Here below the forward deck there was a constant thrust of movement. Homemade woollen socks and mitts, shirts, and even heavy breeks were draped over a line of spun yarn fastened to the timbered ceiling, directly over the slow-burning stove. With each roll and toss of the schooner, the line of smelly woollen clothing swayed like a summer clothesline.
Hazel helped her father remove his drenched outer clothing. She took some of the dry materials from the line and replaced them with his wet ones. It wasn’t until he held his hands directly over the stove that Bishop realized how numb they were. The heat made the tips of his fingers sting.
John Bishop sat on his bunk and drank hot tea given to him by his daughter. Others of his crew sat in the swaying quarters smoking short-stemmed pipes, the smoke hanging and drifting above their heads. Two of the men hung on to the foremast, or, as they called it, the pawl post, which grew out of the floor and disappeared through the low ceiling. They talked for a while about the high seas, the snow, the cold, and the unrelenting wind. There was some concern about the lack of food in the forecastle lockers.
“Don’t worry about the grub, boys. Dere’s plenty of stores in the after hold. As soon as dere’s a lun in the wind, we’ll go below and get some. No one will go hungry aboard the Water Sprite while I’m master,” John assured everyone.
Bishop leaned back on the bunk and, ignoring the pitch and roll of his vessel, closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe they had left the safety of St. John’s harbour two full days ago.
* * *
They had had a fine time along from Wesleyville. The day they left, the wind was moderate from the north and a point or two east. It bore the loaded schooner briskly south on a mostly starboard tack. The weather being fair, Bishop decided to lay a straight course outside Cape Bonavista. By midday they had put that cape astern and passed the halfway point across the maw of Trinity Bay. His daughter spent most of the time on deck delighting in the feel of the frolicking schooner below her feet. She had heard countless stories about the island called Baccalieu and persuaded her doting father to sail close enough for a good view of the island. South past Cape St. Francis they sailed without incident, and with shortened sail they entered St. John’s harbour just as the city lights were coming on.
As long as he lived, he would not forget the look in Hazel’s eyes when they drifted silent as an evening shadow into that sheltered bowl, its rim all aglitter with light. Hazel had never seen the marvels of electricity before. She was overwhelmed by it all. Her father saw the city through his daughter’s eyes then. He had never really looked at it as she did. He shared in the child’s wonder.
Over the next few days, Bishop was busy dealing with the fish merchants. It rained one day, which delayed the off-loading of his schooner. The merchants would not take fish out of the schooner holds while it was raining.
He was disappointed with the final take-it-or-leave-it price he got, but he shook the soft white hand of the merchant to seal the deal. He didn’t understand how a stock market crash somewhere in the United States could result in low prices for fish. There had been no “money crash” last year that he knew of, but the prices had not been good then, either.
His schooner was off-loaded and provisioned with foodstuffs for some of the businesses in Wesleyville and surrounding areas. He had waited along with several other schooners for suitable weather to sail north to home. While they waited, his crew stitched sail and did minor schooner repairs where needed. Even his daughter, who was fascinated with the old city and had accompanied her father everywhere she could around the old streets, wanted to go home. She couldn’t wait to tell her friends about all she had seen.
They had been ready since Monday night. Friday morning, John Bishop slid back the overhead forecastle shutter and stepped out on deck. Dawn had not yet entered the narrow harbour entrance most seamen called “the Notch.” His weather glass had dropped just a bit when he had checked before climbing on deck. The winds were strong from the southeast, he figured as he looked at the overcast sky. It was difficult to tell, here in this rock-walled harbour, where the winds came drifting down from the cliffs seemingly without pattern. He decided to wait before sailing. A fair southeast wind would be good for sailing north, but a strong wind would make for heavy weathering.
The day progressed and the wind had not increased much. In fact, in discussing the matter with his crew, some felt it wasn’t blowing as hard as it had that morning.
Ten other schooners were ready to leave for points north that day. They were all waiting for a good time along. John Bishop knew all of them. All but two of them were from the north side of Bonavista Bay.
The Water Sprite was tied fast to the port side of the schooner Janie E. Blackwood, which was fastened to Bowring’s wharf on the north side of St. John’s harbour. Like the Water Sprite, the Janie was a two-masted schooner. Master of the Janie Blackwood was Charles Rogers, and everyone who knew him simply called him Skipper Charlie. He and John Bishop were good friends.
During the day they talked back and forth between their two vessels. By late afternoon the wind seemed to have dropped a bit and seemed to be coming more from the south than southeast. They both figured they could make safe harbour as far north as Bonavista in Bonavista Bay, or at least to Catalina in Trinity Bay, in a few hours.
And so it was that the smallest and the oldest of the schooners waiting to head north was the first schooner from Bonavista Bay to slip her lines free from the Janie Blackwood and slowly drift out into midstream. Hauling her sails aloft just ahead of the Water Sprite was the schooner Jennie Florence from Hillview, Trinity Bay. She was the first of the northern fleet of schooners to leave the harbour on November 29.
Skipper Charlie in the Janie Blackwood immediately cast off and followed his friend out the harbour. Dusk was falling down from the little castle on Signal Hill high abo
ve them. The lights had started to come on along the waterfront. Young Hazel, who was on deck of the Water Sprite, kept looking behind, never tiring of the sight of the seaport city.
Side by side, the two schooners made their way out through the Notch on the evening tide, the Water Sprite on the Fort Amherst side of the old harbour, and on her port side the bigger Janie Blackwood. The Trinity Bay schooner out in front was already away from the harbour and heading north with all her sails drawing.
By the time they had reached the first long, dark swell of the open Atlantic, both schooners had hauled their sails aloft. A watcher standing near the lighthouse on the Fort Amherst side heard a shouted, “Tighten the sheet to the clew of the fores’l!” He wasn’t sure which schooner the order came from. And then both schooners, heading north, disappeared into the hurried gloaming.
Sugar Loaf Head is just a few miles north of the entrance to St. John’s harbour. The only warning that the weather was about to change came with a sudden blast of wind down from that high headland. The mainsail fluttered a bit with the shift in wind direction when the Water Sprite was a mile or so off shore. The Janie Blackwood was astern and stood farther to sea. The Water Sprite crew could still see her masthead light.
Bishop sent his daughter below with a voice she knew not to argue against. Nathan Gaulton walked quickly astern to the wheel. He had just come from below.
“The glass jest dropped wonderful quick, Skipper. I don’t like the looks of it.” Nathan was not a man to panic, but his voice showed concern.
Bishop gave him the wheel, wended his way forward like a drunken sailor, and disappeared below. He was back on deck in a few minutes and staggered astern to commandeer the helm again.
“You’re right, Nat. The glass jest went farder down. Dere’s a storm of wind comin’. Might even be from the nar’west, be my reckonin’.”