Bay of Spirits: A Love Story

by Farley Mowat

  The rough ground off White Bear Bay had torn the net, so now all hands including the skipper turned to, mending it with heavy twine from wooden shuttles that served as needles.

  We shot again at 0900 and half an hour later got hung up on a rock or a wreck. Max freed the trawl by slowly steaming in circles while the mate worked the tow wire back and forth with the big deck winch. This haul turned out to be a bumper one–enough to fill the wooden pounds set up on deck for sorting. The brilliant crimson colouring of the fish quickly faded as Rodney and the mate tossed the keepers into the hold, where the engineer stowed them, mixed with crushed ice, in wooden bins, and as the rest of us shovelled the bulk of the catch overboard.

  Max told me that a few years earlier the use of ice had not been necessary because fish had been “so plenty” the ship could be filled in a day. Now it might take a week to do that.

  “’Tis old fish, surely, time we unloads it. Ice helps some but I wouldn’t eat it meself. The plant fillets and freezes it anyhow; then off it goes to the mainland, where I dare say they don’t hardly know the difference.”

  The bulk of the catch from the first two hauls had been redfish, with some small cod and a few such exotics as lumpfish, wolffish, dogfish, and sculpins. Perhaps half the catch had been stowed in the hold–the rest had gone overboard to form a glittering wake stretching a mile astern of the ship, a magnet for thousands of gulls.

  Having shot the trawl three times in ninety fathoms with only meagre success, Skipper Max now took us out to a depth of a hundred and fifty fathoms, where we made two two-hour drags that took us almost to the Burgeo Islands and back. We were lucky to happen on a patch of good ground and ended the day with nearly nine thousand pounds worth about $250 penned below decks.

  Max told me he and his crew had to average at least six thousand pounds a day in order to make a bare living. They fished on shares. As owners, John Penney and Sons took 67 per cent and was responsible for operating costs, though not for the crew’s food. The Penneyworth had been designed to be fished by a crew of six, but could no longer provide a living for that many so now she fished with four. They fished every day that was “fitting” all year long, Sundays and holidays included. And each day stretched from four in the morning to whenever the last fish was unloaded at the dock, usually not before nine at night. The only time off they got was when they were too sick to go to sea or the weather was too foul for the Penneyworth to sail.

  The weather had been moderate all morning but by mid-afternoon a hard sou’easter was kicking up a big sea and making the little Penneyworth execute such wild gyrations that I could not endure the cramped and smelly forecastle where I had gone to get warm. Retreating to the cramped wheelhouse, I jammed myself in beside Skipper Max, who was at the wheel.

  By six in the evening it was blowing a gale with driving rain and occasional flails of sleet. Visibility was almost zero when Max finally ordered the gear hauled aboard, and we headed home. Despite the storm, Max belted the little vessel along at full throttle, making her buck and leap while solid green water roared over our decks and smashed against the wheelhouse windows.

  “Best to hurry in afore the night shift comes on at the plant,” Max bellowed apologetically. “They’s some slow to handle fish.”

  We were then making a full nine knots through the seething mass of reefs and sunkers surrounding the Ramea isles. There was a dim and jumpy old radar set, but Max paid it no heed. He knew where he was and where he was going. At 8:45 he laid Penneyworth alongside the plant’s now all-but-invisible wharf in a screeching wind and almost total blackness. As the hatch covers came off and the crew began winching out the fish, the skipper invited me home with him for a scoff, but I declined. What I wanted was a stiff drink in the cosy dimness of Happy Adventure’s tiny cabin. Of one thing I was now absolutely certain. I did not want to fish for my living on the Sou’west Coast of Newfoundland.

  I visited the plant next morning. It was a low-ceilinged wooden building crowded with zinc-topped tables that formed a disassembly line for whatever species of fish happened to be “on the go.” On one side of the shed a “cutting line” of boys and men was filleting the fish we had caught, while on the other side women and girls standing shoulder to shoulder packed the fillets into cartons ready for freezing. All hands wore heavy rubber boots to protect their feet from the stinking swirl of icy salt water mixed with blood and slime that coated the concrete floor. There was too much racket from the engine house to permit conversation with the workers but I later learned that the women were paid sixty cents an hour, the men seventy. They did not work regular hours but were perpetually on call, hurrying to work whenever a dragger arrived and the plant whistle summoned them, and remaining at the cutting and packing tables until the current lot of fish had been cleared away. In addition to wages, they also received unemployment stamps issued by the federal government according to the number of hours they put in “on the line.” Under certain conditions these stamps might later be converted into cash–if one had enough of them.

  “With the fish gettin’ so scarce,” one man told me, “you has to have the stamps to keep bread on the table. ’Tis a hard go, old man.”

  That afternoon Claire and I dressed in our best and climbed the hill to Four Winds to play the delayed round of croquet before again dining with Mrs. Penney.

  The croquet ground was a patch of rich green lawn (the only lawn of any kind on the Ramea Islands) lovingly created from soil brought by ship from the Canadian mainland. The players included our hostess; Gladys Stewart, a Scots nurse employed by the provincial government to care for the islanders’ health who also served ex-officio as Mrs. Penney’s lady-in-waiting; Kevin Smart, and his parents visiting from Montreal–she in heavy tweeds and he in golfing garb; and a real, live Colonel Blimp with a white moustache and ruddy complexion (he was actually only a “majah, in the Injun Ahmy”) and his sprightly wife, who, before her marriage, had been a Clement–one of the Jersey merchants who through the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth had dominated the Sou’west Coast, returning to Britain to retire and to enjoy the rewards of having served in the distant colony of Newfoundland.

  Amiably we batted croquet balls around until the fog rolled in and Scotty, the nurse, clapped her hands and dourly directed us to the dining room, where we enjoyed another excellent meal accompanied by good wines served by Julio. Julio had arrived in Ramea in 1931 as a stowaway aboard one of the company’s transatlantic schooners, and Marie had trained him to be Four Winds’ major-domo.

  Dinner over, Julio served port and coffee in the living room before a crackling fire, and Marie Penney put us through our paces.

  “You must earn your dinner, you know,” she said as she directed us in games such as Twenty Questions and charades. When these began to pall, she sat herself down at her big, old-fashioned piano and belted out Victorian-era and traditional Newfoundland songs, while Scotty hectored us into singing along.

  It may have been a bit ridiculous but it was fun, bringing back vivid memories of childhood celebrations at my grandparents’ home in Ontario before the arrival of television and home-entertainment centres. There is magic in remembering childhood, and Marie Penney knew how to lead one back to it.

  By the time Claire and I made our way down the hill to Happy Adventure, the fog had once again become impenetrable. The plant was silent, awaiting the arrival of the company’s newest and largest vessel–the 150-ton Senator Penney, which had been fishing on the Grand Banks for ten days and was now log-loaded and homeward bound.

  As we climbed aboard our little vessel, we could neither see nor hear any signs of life about us. There was only the pervasive stench of rotting fish offal to remind us of the enormous distance we had travelled from the mansion on the hill back into the world of fisherfolk.

  Seduction

  Wednesday morning, August 22, dawned clear and bright as we took our departure from Ramea on a course intended to bring us to La Poille, fifty miles to the westward. We had s
ome involuntary passengers aboard. Late the previous night, Skipper Max had given us four enormous spider crabs (the snow crabs of commerce) stuffed into a burlap sack. He explained he had made a special haul for us over “crab bottom” because “the old skippers t’ought as spider crabs aboard brought a vessel fair winds and full sails. I hopes these does the same for you.”

  His crabs must have got their signals crossed. No sooner had we cleared the harbour than a brisk westerly sprang up and was soon blowing a dead-muzzler right on Happy Adventure’s nose. We had to beat against it, and that meant tacking four or five miles to the south then north again almost to the coast in order to gain a mile or two of westering.

  Growing impatient, I started the engine and we slogged along until we were abeam of the fifty or so little islands constituting the Burgeo archipelago clustered up against the coast.

  Somewhere among these islands lay the settlement of Burgeo, home to the Caribou Fisheries owned by Marie Penney’s daughter and son-in-law, Margaret and Spencer Lake. Marie had given me strict orders to put in here but I was determined to hold on for La Poille.

  Then the gods intervened. Maybe Marie had better access to them than I. Just then, the oil pressure gauge blew out, spraying hot oil in all directions. Cursing, I dived below and shut down the engine. Since I had no means of repairing it at sea, I decided to put in to Burgeo and see what the fish plant’s machine shop could do for us.

  Passing a small lighthouse, we entered a channel that ran north a mile or two between barren shores dotted with houses to the Caribou Fisheries wharf. We came alongside, to be greeted by a big and floridly handsome man about my age. This was Spencer Lake.

  “Mrs. Penney called Margaret on the radio to tell us you’d be dropping in. Good to see you! Let’s have your lines.”

  I explained our problem, and Spencer invited Claire and me to have lunch with him and his family at what he called the Staff House while the plant’s mechanics looked at my engine. This gracious, white-painted clapboard house had been built more than a century earlier as the residence of one of the Jersey merchants. Now it belonged to Caribou Fisheries, on whose books it was listed (for tax purposes) as a hostel for transient officials and business visitors. In fact, it was the Lakes’ home, housing them, three of their four children, seven purebred dogs, and two maids. As a mark of status it was surrounded on its landward sides by a stalwart chain-link fence, the first and only such we were to encounter during all our travels in Newfoundland.

  In anticipation of our arrival Margaret, a slim, dark-eyed beauty, had prepared a four-course luncheon complete with vintage wines, and we were received as if we were illustrious guests rather than the nondescript drifters we were.

  After the leisurely lunch, and despite Margaret’s insistence that we linger for coffee and liqueurs and, preferably, overnight, we headed back to the dock, determined to resume our voyage. Spencer accompanied us and did not seem at all surprised to find three men from the plant’s machine shop refurbishing Itchy’s engine.

  “Needed a good overhaul,” he told us, smiling. “Long trip ahead of you. So leave the lads to it and you two come back to the Staff House for dinner. Then, if you’ve a mind, you might enjoy a good soak in Margaret’s new bathtub from Boston, of which she’s very proud.”

  No greater temptation can be offered to wandering mariners in small boats than a hot bath. Bringing along the bag of spider crabs as the only hostess gift we had to offer, we meekly followed Spencer back to the Staff House. After luxuriating in the promised soak, we were entertained in a wide living room through whose array of picture windows one could look out upon a world of rock, water, and ships, with the feeling of being monarch of all one surveyed. As we nibbled snacks of steamed crab legs, smoked salmon, and red salmon caviar, Spencer and Margaret asked cogent questions about the writing and painting life and our personal histories. The martinis Spencer lavished on us were very, very dry and we were in a jolly mood by the time we went in to dine on fillets of sole and roast caribou served on exquisite china by a uniformed maid, while our host and hostess extolled the virtues and delights of life in Burgeo.

  “Finest kind of people here. Salt of the earth. Do anything for you. Give you everything they’ve got,” Spencer testified as he poured more wine.

  “And so honest! So loyal!” Margaret interjected, bestowing a fond smile on the shy young maid who was serving our dessert.

  “The stories they’ve got to tell!” Spencer added. “My God, if I could only write…there’s a dozen books right here in Burgeo. Now, who’s for some Napoleon brandy?”

  By the time dinner was over, Claire and I were so nearly comatose as to be easily persuaded to spend the night ashore–in a king-sized bed with scented linens.

  Such were the beginnings of the Fall.

  Breakfast was a late and lingering affair during which Margaret and Spencer queried us about our plans. When we confessed that these centred on finding a small coastal community, perhaps in Cape Breton, where we could winter the vessel and ourselves, Margaret pounced.

  “Why on earth look any farther? Why not stay here? You’d be as welcome as the day is long. Burgeo’s made to order for a writer and his artist wife! You really ought to stay!”

  “At least take time to look around,” Spencer insisted. “Give us a day or two to show you the sights. We’ll take you on a tour of the islands tomorrow. Show you a little bit of paradise.”

  Burgeo was at its best the following fine, late-summer’s day as we cruised the tickles and runs between the islands in the Lakes’ luxurious launch, the Turr. Spencer explained that most of Burgeo’s sixteen hundred residents now lived on the largest island, where they were handy to the plant.

  Operating four big draggers, the fish plant was the economic mainstay of the community, employing up to two hundred people. Some fifty or sixty families still lived on the smaller, or “offer” islands, where the majority of Burgeo’s people had lived dispersed before the plant was built. The offer islanders still took their livelihoods from the small boat (or inshore) fishery as their forebears had always done.

  Burgeo’s elite consisted of the Lakes, followed at some considerable distance by a husband-and-wife team of British doctors stationed at the cottage hospital that served the region. The minuscule “middle class” included an Anglican clergyman, an RCMP constable, five or six teachers, a provincial welfare officer, and four independent merchants (the plant owned the largest store).

  Although the Lakes admired the sterling qualities of the inhabitants, they felt a dearth of what Margaret delicately called “interesting people.” The phrase rang a bell for me.

  “Listen,” I told Claire when we were alone together. “I think they think we’re interesting people. You know, the kind who might liven things up for them during the long winters here. Playmates to keep them from getting bored.” My suspicions did not sit well with Claire, who tends to think the best of everyone and never looks for ulterior motives.

  “I think they like us just for ourselves,” she replied, “and I like them. I think they’re very nice.”

  We did not sail on the next day. Or the next.

  Happy Adventure remained in the hands of workers from the plant, who seemed to find endless problems to resolve. Claire and I remained as guests of the Lakes, who never ceased their efforts to enchant us with Burgeo.

  Unaware of my aversion to the “hook-and-bullet crowd” who hunt and fish primarily to satisfy their blood lust, Spencer extolled the “sporting” possibilities of the region.

  “There’s all the moose, caribou, ptarmigan, rabbits, turrs, and ducks you can shoot, any time you’ve a mind to do it. No reason to worry about closed seasons or bag limits here.”

  “And the fishing,” added Margaret. “We’ve some of the best trout and salmon rivers in the world. And the least fished. Spencer and I have permanent fishing camps–comfortable cabins, really–on three of the best rivers. You’re welcome to use any of them for as long as you want.”

 
One sunny morning they took us in the Turr to the Big Barasway, a vast salt-water lagoon bordered by miles of white sand beaches lying just west of the islands. Although the water was too cold for swimming, we sported on miles of pristine beaches, played games, dug clams, and sunned ourselves while an attentive staff grilled salmon and served it accompanied by goblets of chilled white wine. As the afternoon waned, they revived our flagging appetites with steamed clams in cognac and butter sauce.

  After several days of la dolce vita in beautiful weather, my conscience was pricking me. When I told our hosts we really must be getting on, they only intensified their efforts to persuade us to remain. The plant owned a small house that they now offered to rent to us for a nominal sum. It had no plumbing, but Spencer grandly offered to install running water and all the amenities, including a bathtub, if we would take it for the winter.

  “Why not?” demanded Margaret. “You won’t be trapped here, you know. You can travel to the mainland on the coast boat any time you want.”

  “Indeed,” Spencer added, “or aboard one of our vessels. The Swivel–she’s our refrigerated freighter–often sails to Boston and Halifax. She’ll be sailing to Montreal in a couple of weeks. You’re welcome to go along in the owner’s stateroom. She could take your car too. The coast boat could bring it here from Fortune and we’d swing it aboard.”

  The temptations being offered were having their effect upon both of us, especially Claire, who, faced with too many uncertainties, very much needed to settle somewhere, if only temporarily. And now the weather became the Lakes’ ally. On August 28 a hurricane warning was issued for all of southern Newfoundland. Small craft ran for shelter. Soon scores of fishing boats lay triple-moored to the plant’s wharves with Happy Adventure in their midst.

  As it happened, the eye of the hurricane passed well to the south of Burgeo, but we were hit by a fierce sou’easter. Hardly had it finished battering the coast than there came another hurricane warning. The season for small-boat sailing was clearly over. Reluctantly I concluded we must leave Happy Adventure in Burgeo for the winter.