Bowring Brothers Limited had a stock of new hats and coats. This store and others on Water Street had been built with money earned by sealers and merchants. While their men were on the icefields women often pranced in front of their bedroom mirrors imagining themselves in bright spring hats, their children in spring coats and new shoes. This year, during the March storm, windows facing the St. John’s waterfront were filled with worried faces. Women were petrified with fears they’d be wearing the widow’s veil, their children fatherless. When the ghostly sweep of violent wind had heightened with ice in its teeth the frosting panes flexed and rattled. The families could no longer see out; they pushed hot breath against the glass making an opening to look for signs of a ship battling its way to port.
Merchants in their well-heated St. John’s homes gazed on the sea, eager to inspect and count furs and oil. They would weigh the fat, measure the furs, and think of the lucre the lot would bring. They began to pace the floor, an unease setting in. There was no way a ship could make its way through the seething mouth of The Narrows in this weather.
After the storm had abated Lawrence Bigby, a merchant, sat in his heavy mahogany chair. He papped on his pipe and leaned on his massive desk facing the window framing St. John’s harbour. He squinted through a trail of pipe smoke hoping to see a speck of the Southern Cross sailing through The Narrows. Now the ship was two days overdue. He expected that Captain Clarke had sniffed out the weather and had put in to some harbour. He could not think the ship was lost, all the pelts gone, while a voracious market waited. Customers were already gathering, waiting impatiently for seal flippers. He’d have his share. He could taste the flippers now, the way the cook prepared them in gravy and pastry. He would salt a barrelful for the summer.
His thoughts shifted to the sealers. He knew some of the families. If anything happened to the men they’d be looking for a settlement. Still, nothing could replace the loss of a sealer. He sighed and turned away from the window. He’d stop courting the worst before his mind slipped into a grunge. He settled in his comfortable chair and reached for a glass of port. It was the only spirit he’d let haunt him.
News came confirming rumours that more than fifty sealers from the SS Newfoundland had frozen to death on the icefields. The 568-ton wooden ship built in 1872 had left St. John’s midnight on the ninth of March cutting through thick ice to make her way out through The Narrows to Wesleyville. She sailed from that port March 14 for her voyage to the ice. Shocking details of the disaster coming out of St. John’s seeped into homes along the shore shrouding the residents in its fog. Families numbed by fear gathered, some at the Manuel’s railway station, others at the Foxtrap post office.
Subsequent news was more horrifying. Seventy-seven sealers had frozen to death and one sealer was on his deathbed. Eleven sealers were maimed for life all while trying to jump across loose pans of ice in a snowstorm. Some of the SS Newfoundland’s sealers had been inadvertently left on the ice for fifty-three hours and had wandered around lost, suffering cruelty beyond words before they froze to death, toppling where they stood, lifeless sealers piling up on each other. Others had wandered aimlessly in the blinding snowstorm, stepping off ice pans into the black sea. A few sealers had built gazes of ice for shelter against the icy blow only to have southwest winds veer to northwest leaving the resourceful men defenceless and weak. Through snow falling thick as fog some sealers managed to kill a seal and smear its warm blood on their face and hands to lessen frostbite. Others cut flagpoles into shavings with sculping knives. Using tow ropes and gaffs they lit a fire, adding seal fat.
“Waylaid by trouble, this year’s hunt is, and there can be no good end to it,” a farmer said as he stood on the St. John’s waterfront. “I pity the mother and father with one son on the SS Newfoundland and a son and father on the Southern Cross.”
Another bystander assured him, “Captain Clarke can bring his sealers home. He survived before when his ship was driven out to sea and his lifeboats were dragged off the deck and into the boiling waters. No worries about him. He’ll be home. He may have been born in Paradise, Newfoundland, but he’s not goin’ to the other paradise yet, not with a wife and daughter waiting at home.”
“We’ll see what Ethel got to say about her father when she grows up,” the farmer replied. “She won’t think him such a great captain if she learns that he pulled out in a storm and sank the lot of poor sealers.”
A sharp voice called, “For God’s sake, man, give it up! The poor child is eight and there’s no word on the ship’s fate and no proof of Captain Clarke’s misadventure.”
They didn’t know that on the night of the storm Ethel’s uncle, Harold Perrin, a good Salvation Army man, had gone outside and stayed a spell. When he came back in he spoke what he believed to be the truth: “Whoever is out on the water in this weather will never be heard from ag’in.”
“Pappa is out there,” Ethel had called from where she was leaning on a rail at the top of the stairs. “What is Uncle Harold sayin’?”
“Shush!” her mother said. “Your uncle’s talkin’ about no one in particular. Back to bed now before the bully boos takes you.”
Reports were read out to people gathered at several post and telegraph offices around the bays that a wireless operator in Saint Pierre had wired St. John’s with the message that a three-masted black sealing steamer with a yellow funnel had been seen crossing Cape Ray in the Cabot Strait and continuing on past Saint Pierre and Miquelon, going southeast. It was thought to be Baine Johnston’s Southern Cross.
Captain Thomas J. Connors of the SS Portia also reported seeing the Southern Cross pass his ship about five miles west-southwest of Cape Pine on the southern end of the Avalon Peninsula. He claimed that he and his chief officer were on the bridge sizing up the course of the wind when they saw the big ship looming out of the snow and going about five knots. The barque was heavily laden and rolling into the swells. The captain said that the seas were high and visibility was nearly zero. The SS Portia blew her whistle making sure the vessel kept her distance. The Southern Cross responded and sailed on. Despite the blizzard the ship kept going on to Cape Race. Captain Connors took his mail and passenger ship into the shelter of St. Mary’s Bay, where a lee shore provided shelter from wind and swells. He believed it wasn’t safe to round Cape Race and risk the shoals off Cape Pine.
After reports that the Southern Cross had been sighted not far from St. John’s, Maggie waited believing she would see Jamie soon. She smiled remembering a moonlit night when he had walked her home. They’d stopped outside and Jamie’s long, slender fingers, golden tufts springing on their backs, had reached to cup her face. He blew the hair off her forehead, his breath sweet and warm against her eyelids. She reached up and kissed his lids. Then he slid his lips over her earlobe. It was the kind of intimacy she’d never forget, an intimacy that may have gone further if the door to her aunt’s house hadn’t opened. Jamie slipped away into the night.
She smiled, remembering. My earlobe! I never thought a man would want my earlobe, though it was pleasant enough.
That night she pulled the bedclothes over her ears and burrowed deep down inside herself, stilling all thoughts of doom that might threaten her peace of mind. She slept well, the best she’d sleep for a long time.
38
Elizabeth had her hands in her bread pan when the door was pushed opened and Nathan Petten, a Pick Eyes fisherman, stood in the porch, his face tinctured in shock. “Have you heard the news?” he asked.
Elizabeth’s hands flew into the air scattering bits of dough. Her voice came out like a thin thread. “And what might that be?”
“There’s bad news about the SS Newfoundland. She’s on her way home with some of her sealers frozen ter death. They’d been left stranded on the icefields for more than two nights. I got the news from Brigus. Oh the state of affairs there and whereabouts. I was wonderin’ about your brother.”
> William had not sent news to Elizabeth that her brother had gone to the ice for fear she was delicate again. He didn’t want her worrying about her brother while she was expecting a child. Elizabeth knew it anyway. Tucked in her apron pocket beside a bag of peppermint knobs was a letter she had received from Maggie the day before.
Dear Elizabeth,
Jamie is not home from the sealing voyage. The boat is overdue. I tell myself not to worry. The possibility of him not coming home is a thought too unbearable. I spend time with your father when I can. When fear comes over him he stretches out on the settle staring. I wish I could put worry aside. Olivia is home from Boston. Likely you didn’t know she had gone. Did I tell you? It was only for a few months. She is still the beauty among us. Not many people bother with her. The women at the Quilting Bee believes she was mean for going off to Boston, leaving Zachary. There is still no news on the whereabouts of little Lily, poor Laura’s little girl. Timothy will be beside himself, losing Laura and Lily. Hopefully by the time you read this letter Jamie and the other men will be home and we’ll be laughing all our fears out the door. It’s just not possible that he and your cousins won’t come home.
Forever your friend, Maggie.
Elizabeth had laid down the letter. For sure they’d all be home.
“We’ll get more news later,” Nathan was saying. “I’m relieved to know your brother wasn’t on the SS Newfoundland. No one from Port de Grave was on that schooner or the Southern Cross. But there are relatives.” He shook his head. “There’s so many rumours. We never know the truth without the evidence. I’ll be back if there’s more news,” he promised.
“So do,” Elizabeth answered.
After Nathan left she stood at the window, her face clouded. Until now she had never imagined that her brother could be lost. She planned on going to her brother and Maggie’s wedding.
Jacob passed Nathan going down the path. He stopped with his news and Jacob hurried home, his face heavy. He pulled Elizabeth into his arms and she settled against him. After a while she raised her head to look at him. “Surely the Southern Cross wasn’t out on the ocean in the March storm. Jamie must be on his way home.”
Jacob held her a little tighter. “We have no reason to think otherwise.”
Elizabeth wanted to believe him. She went outside and listened to the ocean run against the land. Its heavy breath stirred through its massive belly. Far out, sky and bay seemed to hold a communal breath. She knew that beyond the bay white mouths, formed by ice pans, were yawning and gnashing like jaws opening to gulp sealers making one misstep.
Jacob thought, Nathan need’n have come with news to make Elizabeth heartsick. Grief can wait another day. Once it comes it got a long life.
* * * * *
39
On the fourth of April the iron sky cast its gloom over the St. John’s harbour entrance while the sea squeezed in through, spitting against the piebald cliffs. On the rugged, bald head of Signal Hill glimmers of sunlight shone through fog.
A sea of relatives and neighbours hurried down side roads into main streets connected to the waterfront at King’s Beach and Harvey’s premises, facing The Narrows, its open mouth blowing a polar breath in over the land. On they came, grim-faced men in long, dark greatcoats and quiff hats and others in sealskin coats and hats. Some wore shabby coats and pants, their white, weathered faces under flat, round caps peaks shading fearful eyes. Women, too, some in veiled black hats, stayed back behind the men, a flicker of hope in their solemn eyes, hope that it was not their son or husband who was dead. Others gripped the hands of their children as they waited in silence. They stood rigid in the damp, grey air, stunned people, hope and fear flowing and ebbing like ocean tides as they cast grave looks toward the ocean with its hostile temperament. Hands were clenched at their sides or lifted to their face as the SS Bellaventure, under Captain Robert Randall, her Red Ensign at half-mast, steamed in, cutting through the boiling waters of The Narrows.
As the schooner got closer young men climbed poles, wrapped their arms around them, and held steady, their long coats hanging like black flags. The thoughts of everyone who had a relative on the SS Newfoundland were the same: Who are the survivors? Who are the dead? Relief filled the minds of some onlookers: I’m glad my son . . . my husband . . . my father . . . my uncle is on the Southern Cross.
The crowds moved closer as the schooner docked at Harvey’s waterfront premises amidst the gloom of the falling night. There were cries of relief as loved ones caught sight of sealers leaning against the ship’s rails; others, frostbitten and injured, leaned on another sealer or on a gaff. A survivor lying on a stretcher lifted his hand.
The sight of three layers of canvas-covered corpses, stiff as dried fish ready for market, laid on the fore hatch in the well of the ship, cast a long shadow over the faces of those watching the gruesome scene. Men wept uncontrollably. A mother screamed when a tarpaulin over a frozen sealer slipped and she saw it was her son, frosted brows and ice-fringed lashes around pitiful open eyes burned by the glare of the sun on ice, his mouth wide open, his reaching fingers in a frozen pose. Cries of despair rose louder as the marble faces of the frozen dead came in view and were recognized. A son and his father lay with their arms wrapped around each other. Sealers who had struggled across acres of ragged ice, and survived, their blistered faces grainted with blood and oil, left the schooner, limbs drawn up, crippled with nerve pain. Others had swollen limbs blackened by frostbite. Their faces mirrored broken spirits. Instead of caring for their families, their families would have to care for them. Still, laughter and weeping mingled when mothers and wives saw a loved one walk off the schooner. Women at home caring for babies and the elderly hurried to prepare hot meals for the survivors as best they could from a sparse larder.
Ambulance corps, city physicians, Drs. Mcpherson and Campbell, and nurses rushed to take the injured sealers to hospital. Brigade boys saluted and citizens lifted their hats while a cortege of stretcher-bearers passed by with the dead sealers.
The SS Newfoundland, carrying a crew of 189, had lost seventy-eight sealers out of 132 men left stranded on an icefield for two days and two nights. Some of them were undernourished before they left for the voyage and under-nurtured during their hard days of relentless labour.
One old captain, a black cap shading his weary eyes, muttered to an onlooker standing beside him, “Ah, me boy, ’tis a wonder anyone survived on ice pans in open water, the relentless claw of ice-laced winds, threatenin’ seas, hunger and sleeplessness, their hearts beatin’ while every other part of ’em was turnin’ ter ice.”
The onlooker didn’t turn. His gaze was steady, his words convincing: “It’s a testament to the will of the Newfoundland sealers. They’ve proved to be iron men in wooden ships.”
40
News of the SS Newfoundland’s tragedy spread fast and a foreboding fell over communities like a black pall. Along the shore, in every household missing a man gone on the sealing schooners, hope for the Southern Cross was tenuous, suspended as if on a thin, tight wire ready to loosen in any direction by the least bit of news. Tearing at the minds of people waiting for the late Southern Cross was the fear that evidence of her loss would remain buried in the deep waters of the Atlantic.
“Don’t you be maisin’ yourself with worry,” Joe told William as he sat on the step of his shed whittling a boat model. “The SS Kyle and two other boats, the Fiona and an American patrol vessel, the Seneca, are gone to search for the Southern Cross. Other ships are keeping a keen eye. If something untoward had happened there’d be signs on the water and somethin’ would have rocked ashore.”
That night William left his house and sat in his barn talking to his tired old horse. “You’re likely all I can depend on. Me wagon’s idle in winter and me sleigh idle in summer but you’re there to take me anywhere through all seasons.”
The horse bent her head and nu
zzled his hand. He moved away, curled up under a horsehair blanket, and fell asleep. He dreamed that Jamie was on the Southern Cross in a violent storm and that the buoyancy that had begun on the return voyage had evaporated as sealers curled against each other, seasick from the stench of blubber and blood and the rolling of the ship as she thrashed about. He tried to shut his eyes against the scene but it carried on. The ship groaned, split, its sealers screaming, falling. A net of icy water spread over bodies floating like dead fish, Jamie’s face a shocking sight.
William was awakened by his own voice calling Jamie. He lay shivering in the darkness crying without shame.
On Monday the notice of steamer arrivals was posted on the outside door of the Foxtrap post office. The SS Southern Cross was not among them. Maggie was tending to a bowl of soaked hard bread and salt fish when her uncle came home and told her that on Saturday the Daily News had listed the names of all the men on the Southern Cross.
“Not to say they’re dead,” he added.
Maggie’s heart lurched like a ship on surly seas. She tried to hold it steady as hope dipped and rose on each wave. Please, God, let Jamie be safely stowed, the ship sheltered in a harbour, maybe staying there to make repairs.
That night dreams grabbed her. She swam through oceans, her feet nibbled at by little fish. A whale swallowed her, then spat her out in water thick as cold molasses. A lifebuoy of morning light drifted near. She grabbed it and swam to shore—relieved to be awake.
There was no safety there. The Southern Cross seemed as distant as the star bearing its name.
Words from the Song of Solomon she’d read in her mother’s Bible galloped through her mind: My lover is gone and I don’t know where to find him.
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