Thursday's Storm

by Darrell Duke

  “Me poor heart is broke,” Bernadette hears her mother cry again.

  Lize moves slowly from the kitchen into the damp hallway. On her way upstairs, weakness overtakes her. She grabs the dark brown rail post, allowing her body to swing, almost lifelessly, in a semicircle until she’s planked down on the second step of the stairs.

  “Laura will be home tomorrow or the next day, Gus,” she says, looking into the eyes of her dead son behind the rounded glass of the large oval frame on the wall.

  For a moment she feels his hand on her shoulder; or perhaps it’s Jack, really home to wake her from this. She looks to her side, but no one looks back at her. Gus’s lost gaze offers no comfort. How sick he was on the last of it.

  So handsome, she always thought him, imagining the lovely girl he’d marry and the beautiful grandchildren they’d give her; young ones to play with Angela’s crowd; the only grandchildren she has in her life, here in Fox Harbour. The ones in the States, she’ll never see or know. She cries again.

  “Poor Jack.”

  She stares at the wall, her tired wrists hanging over the edges of her swollen knees. A cold weight fills the cradle of her arms. It’s Lizzie’s body, a feeling that’s come and gone for the past dozen years since the little girl died.

  The next day the priest comes to Lize’s door. He knocks three times and enters.

  “Bern’dette!” Lize bawls out.

  Bernadette says no, she’s not coming down, she’s sick and tired.

  “Pity ya bad,” Lize says, giving the priest a fake smile, and Bernadette is standing in the doorway to the hall in no time.

  Lize looks up from the table, tosses her head, and nods to the daybed for Bernadette to sit.

  Lize fumbles with the kettle on the stove.

  “I knows why yer here, Father, an’ you’re welcome to a mug of tay, an’ nothing else.”

  epilogue

  In the days following the storm, once word of the Annie Healy’s dismal fate seemed final, Father Adrian Dee spent a couple of days in Fox Harbour trying to convince the widows of the crew they were unable to properly care for their children in the absence of their fathers and to give up at least some of them.

  “They’ll be much better off at Mount Cashel and Belvedere,” he said in relation to new homes for the children at the orphanages run by the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy in St. John’s.

  Most of the widows said no thank you, they’d find a way to manage on their own.

  Mary Jane Sampson put her foot down when the priest suggested she let three of her boys go.

  “I’ll take ’em right off your hands to Mount Cashel . . .” he said reassuringly, as if he’d be doing her a great favour.

  “No, sir! ’Deed ye won’t! If I can rear five, I can rear eight,” she affirmed.

  The priest did convince one of the widows to see things the way of the Church. Bridge King, with her husband lost and a new baby to rear, decided it was best to send her two oldest sons to Mount Cashel.

  With the boundless help of midwife Mart Mullins, Bridge gave birth to her last child, James (Jimmy), named for his father, on Monday, August 29, 1927.

  The people of Fox Harbour built a new home for Bridge King and her family so they could be closer to the community. Bridge never remarried. She died in 1983 at the age of eighty-five. Jim King, Jr., lived in that house until his death in 2011. He was eighty-three.

  Mart (Martha King) Mullins continued delivering babies until into her seventies. She died in 1951 at the age of eighty-four. Her cousin and best friend, Roselle Foley, died in 1951. She was eighty.

  The rest of Mary Jane Sampson’s birthdays marked the anniversary of Charlie’s death. After five years of gloom, the priest finally convinced her to “get out of darkness,” and to the great relief of her children, she raised the blinds in her home. Mary Jane never remarried. She died in 1960 at the age of seventy-eight. All of her children have since died.

  After one year, Ellen Kelly raised her blinds. Fifteen years later, in 1942, she married former Annie Healy crew member Maurice “Mon” McCue, who’d been too sick to make what became the schooner’s final trip. Ellen died in 1972 at the age of eighty. Mon McCue died in 1965, three weeks shy of his ninetieth birthday.

  It was tradition for widows especially and also their children to dress in black to symbolize constant mourning for deceased loved ones. Young Liz Kelly, better known in later years as Mrs. Beth Maher, hated the colour black for the rest of her life. She died in 2007 at the age of ninety-two.

  John Kelly’s home remains standing in Fox Harbour, the only original house from the story.

  Following the loss of her husband, Captain John, and her son, Michael, Bridget Mullins could no longer live in Fox Harbour. With her children she soon took the train to Corner Brook, on Newfoundland’s west coast, to join another son, Peter, and his family. The Mullins family suffered further hardship some years later when their home caught fire and burned. Bridget never remarried. She died in 1959 at the age of seventy-seven.

  Mary Ann Mullins, daughter of Captain John and sister to Michael, grieved especially for her lost brother and friend. Nearly nine years after the tragedy, in 1936, she moved to the United States, where she met and married Vito Valenti. Together they raised three children. Mary Ann worked as a seamstress in New York, where she and her family lived. Mary Ann carried Michael’s photo in her wallet, retelling her last memory of him (singing from the deck of the Annie Healy) until her death in 2005. She was eighty-five.

  Captain Mullins’s brother, Patrick (Pad), whose life was spared due to a bad back shortly before the Annie Healy made her last trip, died in 1949. He was sixty-one.

  Pad Bruce’s wife, Liz, remarried and lived at Fox Harbour until her death in 1987. She was almost ninety. Her son, John (Johnny), married Bridget (Bride) Healey. He died in 1997 at the age of seventy-five. Pad and Liz’s only daughter, Ellen, married her childhood sweetheart, Maurice Whiffen. They spent their lives in Fox Harbour, and were known and adored by many for walking countless miles every day, holding hands. Maurice died in 2007. He was eighty-seven. Ellen was the last living survivor of the Annie Healy story. She died in April 2013 at the age of ninety-three.

  Liz Bruce’s brothers, Benjamin and Michael Sampson, who disappeared in December 1899, were “lost in woods and never found,” according to their death records. In the early 1980s, on his deathbed in the United States, a ninety-nine-year-old man, a first cousin of the missing brothers, confessed to murdering the boys for tampering with his rabbit slips. He said he buried them in the bog. He was fifteen at the time. Their bodies were never found.

  Following the loss of her husband, Jack, Eliza (Lize) Foley lived in poverty beyond what they’d ever experienced. Lize never again saw her daughters, Jane, Margaret, and Helen, who lived in the United States. She died in 1944 at the age of seventy-four.

  Their daughter, Laura, never returned to Grand Falls, staying at home after the loss of her father. In 1928 she married the schoolteacher, Jimmy Houlihan.

  Recognizing the desperate need for professional navigational skills at sea, Houlihan studied navigation in St. John’s during the summers and taught it for several years in Placentia Bay. Laura and Jim had their share of misfortune, too, having twenty children and losing twelve of them—some stillborn, others at birth or soon after, some who lived to be children, and one teenager. At this time of writing, their remaining eight children are living. Jim and Laura remained in Fox Harbour until 1966 when they moved to Placentia. She died in 1981 at the age of seventy-one. Broken-hearted, he died a year later. He was seventy-two.

  Angela Foley, married to Frank Murray, remained in Fox Harbour until her death in 1989. She was eighty-nine.

  Bernadette Foley married Frank’s brother, Phil Murray, and remained in Fox Harbour until her death in 2004. She was eighty-seven.

&nb
sp; Little is known about Walter (Watt) Sinnott after the tragedy. He is buried at the cemetery in Fox Harbour, where a few residents still care for his gravesite.

  In 1928, a year after the loss of the Annie Healy, Mike and Jim Healy built a schooner, their last, and named her the Henry H. When the United States Naval Base began at Argentia in 1941, the Healys sold the schooner to an American serviceman and went to work on the base themselves.

  Jim Healy died in 1942 at the age of seventy. Mike is buried in an unmarked grave next to Jim’s, his death date unknown. Henry Healy moved to St. John’s after Mike’s death. He died an old man, and is buried in St. John’s.

  Anne Healy Furlong’s sister, Mary (Minnie) Davis, died in 1965. She was eighty-eight.

  Anne Healy and Edward Furlong had nine children. Throughout the years, Anne retold the tale of the Annie Healy to her children, who, in turn, told their children, making sure they’d never forget the sacrifice of these iron men in their wooden boats. She died on January 1, 1965, at the age of eighty-six.

  Thomas Furlong, Edward and Anne’s first child, kept over 600 coded postcards from his parents’ early romance and compiled a book called Sweet Nothings: Anne Healy’s Postcards, published in 1982.

  The Furlong children are gone now, except Mary (Fantina), who lives in New Jersey. At this time of writing, she is ninety-two.

  Mike Murphy, the last person on board the Annie Healy before the storm struck, was twenty-two years old at the time. He and the rest of his fellow sharemen made it safely to port at St. Bride’s in their schooner. Mike died in 1999 at the age of ninety-four and a half.

  The 1927 August Gale remains the worst storm on record in Canadian history.

  No trace of the schooner Annie Healy or bodies of her crew were ever found.

  Acknowledgements

  If it were not for the co-operation, memories, and kindness of the following people, this story may never have seen the light of day. I carry the memories of our brief but unforgettable relationships in my heart and soul, and I hope your stories contained here within this book bring some form of closure where necessary.

  Thanks go to: Bernadette Murray; Beth Maher; Nellie Barnett; Arthur Sampson; Maude (Sampson) Kelly; Maurice and Ellen Whiffen; William Murray (Billy Penny); Captain John Russell; Leo Murray; Anne King; Gerald Healey; Theresa Healey; Mary Benton; Helen Springham; Louise Butner; Becky Murray; Peggy Kromholtz; Annmarie Naimo; Eneida and Bill Valenti; Mike Kelly; Mary Murray Hawco; Susan Mandville; Bernie O’Reilly; Betty Howard; Shirley Duke; Jack Houlihan; Jim Houlihan; Joe McCue; Mary McCue; Mame Culletin; Frances Duke; Jimmy King; The Jim Spurveys; Mary P. F. Healy; Joan (Healy) Halley; The Centre for Newfoundland Studies; Tom Furlong; Wallace Furlong; Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Maritime History Archive; the Daily News; the Evening Telegram; Joann Fantina; Mary Fantina; Bob Hyslop; Peter Murphy; Harry Murphy; Maggie Burns Widell; and Dorothy Sparrow.

  Special thanks to Cynthia Howard of CH Permissions, Halifax, for the eighteen months she spent editing, as well as for encouraging me to do the best I can to represent the memories of my interviewees without compromise.

  More special thanks to Tracey Duke for executing multiple interviews at Fox Harbour while I was living in the Middle East. It was there, in 2006, driven by her interest and encouragement for me to get this story on paper, that I began the actual putting together of what is now this book.

  I would especially like to thank the staff of Flanker Press for believing in my work and for the tremendous opportunities to ensure this story reaches as many readers as possible. Many more thanks to Paul Butler for his amazing skills and insight as an editor on this book.

  Darrell Duke is an author, singer, songwriter, performer, and photographer from Freshwater, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. He lives in Clarenville with his wife, Lori, and daughters, Emma and Jessie. Thursday’s Storm is Darrell’s third book. His second book, When We Worked Hard: Tickle Cove, Newfoundland, has been in the Newfoundland and Labrador school system since 2008. Darrell is currently completing his next album, which contains his song, “The Annie Healy,” and he is also writing his fourth book, a novel set primarily in Ireland in 1778 depicting his fourth great-grandfather’s plight and subsequent journey to Newfoundland.