Bay of Spirits: A Love Story

by Farley Mowat

  The question of what Claire and I would do remained unresolved. I felt I needed to discuss future plans with Jack McClelland but the storms had disabled Burgeo’s radio/telegraph link to the outer world, and the nearest functioning telephone was at Port aux Basques. Leaving Claire with the Lakes, I took the next coast boat west, phoned Jack, then found myself marooned in Port aux Basques for two days waiting for the eastbound boat to sail while yet another gale blew itself out.

  With little else to occupy me I went walking. On a rocky, windswept stretch of shore I came upon two middle-aged brothers, Tom and Mark Anderson, who, together with their father, Gabriel, were defying modern times by building themselves a hundred-and-fifty-ton schooner.

  The three men had spent many years together in the coastal trade, mostly freighting coal from Cape Breton and potatoes from Prince Edward Island to the outports of Newfoundland in an old Grand Banks fishing schooner. When, in 1960, this vessel caught fire and was condemned, the brothers and their eighty-year-old father and skipper immediately set about building a replacement.

  Tom and Mark and a team of horses spent the best part of the next two winters in the woods, felling and hauling out the logs from which to cut twelve-by-fourteen-inch keel and keelson pieces, naturally curved timbers and knees, and three-inch-thick hull planking. The keel had been laid the autumn before my visit. The hull was now fully framed and partly planked but, as Tom apologetically explained, it would be another year before the vessel was ready for launching.

  “Takes a power of time, me son. Everything got to fit tight as your skin so’s when ’tis done she’ll be stanch and dry.”

  She would certainly be staunch. Her planks and framing looked heavy enough for an icebreaker. Every piece of her was cut and fitted (using only hand tools) with a precision that had to be seen to be believed. Clambering aboard the partly completed vessel was a little like going inside the skeleton of a leviathan. Her ribs thrust high above the rocky shore like those of some antediluvian monster.

  She still had no name and when I wondered why Skipper Gabe glanced uneasily at me. Mark cleared his throat and answered, “Might jink a vessel to name her afore she was launched off.”

  One evening after a boiled dinner shared with Mark’s family, he told me that he, his brother, and his father had already “used up” twenty-six axes, five adzes, and several ten-pound mauls building this vessel. And of their savings there was little left.

  “What odds, bye, we still got tea and lassy and they’s plenty fish in the sea and meat in the country. Us’ll finish her off come summer, then we’ll be on the go again.”

  I lacked the courage to speak of something painfully evident to me. I knew the day of the tramp coasters was virtually over, and the vessel taking form on the hard below Mark’s house belonged to another time. All I could do was wish her builders well.

  Happy Adventure may have found a home for the winter, but Claire and I were still adrift. We accepted Spencer’s offer of passage to Montreal aboard the Swivel, planning to drive on to Ontario and then, after consulting friends and family, decide what to do next. I wired the wharfinger at Fortune asking him to ship the Morris to us on the next westbound coast boat.

  Since the Swivel would not depart for another week, Spencer suggested he and I sail Happy Adventure to White Bear Bay for some partridge (ptarmigan) hunting. We took with us one of the Lakes’ pedigreed English pointers, Sport by name, and their “gillie,” Dolph Warren, a lean and vital little man with a good admixture of Mi’kmaq blood in him. We had barely cleared the Burgeo Islands when we spotted a distant vessel passing to the south at a speed suggestive of a naval vessel. As she slipped out of sight, we speculated about who and what she might be.

  An easy four-hour sail along the austere coast took us to “Wiper” Bay. We entered under power and steamed some seven miles into the land until we were astounded to behold a gleaming white ship lying at anchor. She was the distant vessel we had seen earlier. As large as one of the coastal steamers, she had the flaring bows and cruiser stern of a warship…but she flew no nation’s flag.

  Whoever she was, as far as Spencer was concerned she had no business to be in White Bear Bay. He considered these waters his own private hunting and fishing preserve.

  “What the hell’s that bloody thing doing here?” he demanded of wind and water. He did not add, “without my permission,” but might as well have done. “Bastard better not be fishing salmon! Let’s find out.”

  As we closed with the stranger, she grew more and more imposing–and ominous. She carried no name on her bows. Not a soul was visible on her bridge or on the great sweep of her decks. She appeared to be ignoring us the way a liner in harbour ignores the local bumboats.

  Spencer was becoming more and more agitated.

  “Take us alongside!” he ordered. “I command the Canadian Ranger detachment on this coast. We’ll damn well find out who she is and why she’s here.”

  Although by no means sure this was a good idea, I slowed the engine and we approached the towering stranger very cautiously–so cautiously that Spencer could not contain himself. Leaping up on the cabin top he cupped his hands and bellowed, “Ahoy there! What ship are you? What’s your port of registry? Why aren’t you flying an ensign? Identify yourself!”

  While I knew Spencer was a lieutenant in the Rangers (a civilian militia charged with keeping watch and ward on Canada’s coasts), I also knew his “command” consisted of fourteen fishermen volunteers armed with antiquated .303 rifles, scattered along a hundred miles of coast. I was not convinced we were a force to be reckoned with. An officer in a white uniform who now appeared on the stranger’s bridge may have felt the same.

  “Who the hell are you?” he replied, looking down on us with unconcealed contempt.

  Spencer told him. At length. With vigour. By the time he had finished, the officer was no longer alone. About a dozen sailors in uniform had materialized on the main deck, ranging themselves along the railing to stare down at us unsmilingly.

  The officer spoke again. This time it was an order. “Come alongside my landing stage! We will discuss the matter.”

  It was at this point that Dolph panicked and scuttled into the shelter of the cabin, muttering, “Oh me soul! ’Tis the Red Chinee!”

  This was 1962, and the Cold War was heating up as the United States intensified its crusade against godless Communism. The consequent hysteria was making otherwise sensible people believe that if there wasn’t a Communist under every bed, there probably was one around the next corner. Dolph’s reaction was understandable.

  So was mine. I jammed the throttle forward and Happy Adventure sheered away from the ominous stranger. Then, as we scuttled under her stern, we were at last able to see her name–DANGINN–written across her transom in foot-high letters of gold. Under it was her port of registry: MONROVIA. The vessel’s name sounded vaguely Chinese, or maybe Japanese. And Spencer and I both knew Monrovia was a registry-of-convenience widely used by shipping that wished to conceal its real origins.

  I did not slow down until we rounded the headland and were out of sight of the Danginn. There we drifted and had a drink or two while discussing what ought to be done. Dolph and I were for returning to Burgeo, but Spencer would have none of that.

  “Can’t let that foreign bastard get away with whatever it is he’s up to. You see those launches hanging from his davits? He could be charting the bay. Could be a Commie spy.”

  The rum was taking effect and my courage was returning.

  “Yeah, I suppose we should put up a bit of a show. I’ve got my old army battledress jacket aboard with captain’s insignia still on it. Could put it on. Could promote you to colonel, Spencer. Say you’re in civvy clothes. With me as your adjutant we could board the bugger and demand to see his papers. Tell him he’s in a prohibited zone and there’s a NATO exercise about to begin,” I concluded, getting into the swing of the thing.

  “Yes, by God!” Spencer agreed. “And whatever else he’s doing, the fu
cker’s probably after our salmon. We’ll run him off!”

  Although Dolph was not supportive, we turned Happy Adventure about and headed into action.

  Gingerly I brought her alongside Danginn’s landing stage, which had been lowered on the port quarter. A squad of sailors watched intently as Spencer and I climbed the stairs, then surrounded and escorted us along the main deck. We passed a rack of salmon rods, which made Spencer growl, and were able to peer through the broad windows of a glittering dining saloon occupied by a single diner. Whoever he was, he did not deign to give us a glance as we were shepherded past.

  Instead of being taken up to the bridge as we had anticipated, we found ourselves being herded down into the bowels of the ship, ending up in a room without windows or portholes. There, behind a steel desk, sat a slim, dark-complexioned man wearing a captain’s gilt-encrusted hat. He offered no greeting. I was acutely aware of four crewmen close behind as I waited for my “Colonel” to take the lead. When it seemed that the cat had got Spencer’s tongue, I broke the silence by nervously introducing him as my commanding officer, adding that the Danginn was anchored in a restricted area where a military exercise was about to take place.

  Spencer now entered the fray with a peremptory demand to see Danginn’s papers, including the cruising permit without which she, as a foreign vessel, had no right to be in Canadian waters.

  Her captain leaned back in his chair and grinned.

  “You want my papers? So. First I will see your papers proving you are not pirates, yes?”

  A dreadful moment ensued when all we were able to produce was Spencer’s driving licence.

  It cut no ice.

  “So. You drive an auto. What is that to me? I think you are dead-beats. Now get off my ship. Go quick!”

  The sailors hurried us back on deck and jostled us down the companion ladder to where Dolph was waiting in Happy Adventure’s cockpit–with a shotgun in his hands.

  “Oh me son,” he said fervently to Spencer, ignoring the gap between lord and master, “I t’ought you was took!”

  We wasted no time pushing off and heading down the bay, with Spencer waving his fist at the Danginn while muttering dire imprecations. We retreated a good four miles to shelter behind Grip Point while we put our ruffled feathers back in order, a process that involved opening another bottle. Then Dolph rowed Sport ashore for a much-needed run while Spencer and I planned our revenge.

  That night the two of us set off in inky darkness in our little bathtub of a dinghy for the head of White Bear Bay, where there was a cabin occupied by Garfield Hann, a Burgeo man who worked as a part-time fisheries warden during the salmon spawning run. We left Dolph behind to look after Sport. Or maybe it was the other way about.

  Garfield also worked at the plant and so could be counted on to do what Spencer required. He had a big trap skiff in which, weather permitting, he could make the run from the warden’s cabin to Burgeo in three hours. We despatched him bearing a telegram I had pecked out on my portable typewriter. It was addressed to NOIC (Naval Officer in Command), Coastal Defences, Halifax. It read:

  FOREIGN VESSEL APPROX 200 FEET OVERALL EQUIPPED WITH COMPLEX ELECTRONIC GEAR AND ASIAN CREW DISCOVERED WHITE BEAR BAY STOP WHEN BOARDED CAPTAIN REFUSED DIVULGE ANY INFORMATION STOP CONSIDER PRESENCE AND ACTIONS HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS AND URGENTLY RECOMMEND INTERCEPTION

  SPENCER G LAKE OFFICER COMMANDING

  CDN RANGER DETACHMENT BURGEO

  Spencer and I rowed back to Happy Adventure. Sometime well before dawn we heard the sound of Garfield’s engine thumping past, but did not really wake up until the morning was half gone. We were a heavy-lidded lot as we partook of what Spencer called a “whore’s breakfast”–cigarettes and coffee. Although Dolph was still mumbling about an invasion by Chinese Communists, Spencer and I were having a reality check.

  “Who do you think that floating gin palace really does belong to?” I asked.

  “God only knows. Somebody with money enough to make his own rules, anyway.”

  “The Prince of Monaco, maybe? Or some Arab potentate? How about the Aga Khan?”

  These suggestions did not comfort Spencer, who, instead of answering, added a shot of grog to his coffee and sloshed it down. Eventually he felt well enough to go partridge hunting with Dolph so I rowed the nimrods and Sport ashore. Leaving them to comb the surrounding hills, I started back to Itchy. From midstream I could open the whole length of White Bear Bay but could see nothing of the Danginn. I boarded my own vessel and went back to sleep.

  Around noon I was jolted out of my bunk, to bang my head on the cabin trunk as the world seemed to explode around me.

  Staggering on deck, I was in time to see and feel a four-engined bomber thunder over at masthead height in what must have been the second of two very close passes. Even as I ducked, comprehension dawned.

  “Oh shit! That telegram…Garfield must have delivered it! Oh double shit!”

  As the big Royal Canadian Air Force plane climbed steeply and swung out to seaward, three shots rang out from shore–the agreed-upon signal that the hunters wished to come back aboard.

  Although Sport seemed unperturbed, Spencer and Dolph were in a state by the time I reached them. Dolph was convinced the plane had been full of game wardens come to arrest us for hunting partridge out of season. Spencer understood the real implications behind the bomber’s appearance and was feeling his neck.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Mowat,” he said accusingly once he was back aboard Happy Adventure. “Now you’ve done it! You and your fucking telegram! Start up your goddamn engine! Dolph! Help me get the anchor up! We’re getting the hell out of here!”

  Running out of the bay we saw nothing of the Danginn–nothing to indicate she had ever existed. Oh, how we wished that this would prove to be the case. All the way back to Burgeo, Spencer was preoccupied with visions of military courts of inquiry into who had been responsible for putting Atlantic Command on alert. I was afraid the incident would end our comfortable relationship with the Lakes. Instead, its consequences were such that for years to come Spencer would hold me in high regard.

  Garfield Hann had set off for Burgeo with the dedication of a Paul Revere. Shortly before dawn he had come in sight of a spectral monster anchored in the bay and was so startled that he squeezed an extra knot out of his old engine, managing to reach Burgeo as the telegraph operator was finishing breakfast. Within minutes our message was on its way again.

  Canada’s defence command rose to the challenge with admirable efficiency. An Orion reconnaissance bomber based on Prince Edward Island thundered off the runway bound for the Sou’west Coast. As it closed with White Bear Bay, the radar operator and visual observers searched for the intruder.

  Their quarry was no longer there. It appears that shortly after Garfield’s boat passed by, Danginn upped her anchor and departed for parts unknown. The bomber arrived to find Happy Adventure in sole possession of the fiord. Having assured themselves that my little bummer could not be the target they were seeking, the bomber’s crew flew out to sea and instead of heading back to base, flew eastward. Some years later I met one of them who finished the tale for me.

  “We hadn’t had a mission in weeks and it was a nice, clear day so the skipper decided to put in some air time and show a new radio operator some of the Newfie sights. We flew close over St. Pierre, then just as we were getting set to head for home, we spotted a big, white boat tearing along to the south leaving a wake a mile long. We made a couple of passes over her and got her name. She was still in territorial waters so we tried to make radio contact but she ignored us and kept going like a bat out of hell. There being nothing more we could do–we reported what had happened and went home.”

  Halifax immediately put out a general alarm and requested the U.S. naval base at Argentia, Newfoundland, to lend a hand.

  A U.S. reconnaissance plane found the “target” still speeding south. When this aircraft, too, was unable to get any response to radio calls, the U.S. command dispatched a destr
oyer at flank speed with orders to intercept the fleeing vessel and escort it into Argentia.

  The pursuit on the high seas took several hours, and then the Danginn, for such the vessel was, refused to comply until the destroyer brought her guns to bear. Reluctantly, the fugitive turned back and was escorted to the Argentia naval base, where she was boarded and examined. And her identity was revealed.

  Far from being the Chinese Communist spy ship of fevered imagination, Danginn proved to be a flag carrier for rampant capitalism–the private yacht of one David Keith Ludwig, who, according to Time magazine, owned one of the world’s largest commercial fleets as well as a vast array of mines, oil fields, refineries, cattle ranches, and incidental possessions, all of which made him one of the planet’s richest men.

  And one of the most private. As Time reported: “About the only place that Ludwig’s wealth shows through is aboard his $2,000,000 yacht Danginn on which he occasionally likes to entertain movie stars and other celebrities….”

  Ludwig’s wealth also showed through in his arrogance. Coming north for a little salmon fishing in Newfoundland, he had not bothered to obtain the requisite Canadian permits to cruise, or to fish, in Canadian waters. And, when challenged, he had ignored (in order of their importance) the local commander of the Canadian Rangers, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the United States Navy.

  Did he get away with it? Of course he did. When the U.S. naval commandant at Argentia realized who it was he had arrested, the Danginn was hurriedly released, presumably with appropriate apologies. And this despite a request from Canadian authorities that she be held at Argentia until charges against her could be investigated.