Bay of Spirits: A Love Story

by Farley Mowat

  I do not know if Washington punished anyone in the U.S. Navy for their lèse-majesté in arresting one of the monarchs of American capitalism, but I do know how Ottawa dealt with the commander of the Burgeo detachment of the Canadian Rangers.

  A month after the Danginn incident, Spencer Lake received a letter of commendation–and promotion to the rank of captain.

  Dolph and Sport and I could only bask in the reflected light of Spencer’s glory. It was enough.

  Dropping the Hook

  On the morning of September 12 I went to the government wharf to meet the coastal boat that was bringing us the Morris Minor. By the time I reached the dock, some forty or fifty men, women, children, and dogs had assembled to greet the first automobile to reach Burgeo and the first many of them had ever seen.

  They watched intently as Baccalieu’s derrick-man adroitly hoisted the car off the foredeck and swung it onto the wharf. Children yelled triumphantly. A group of young men and women from the fish plant raised a ragged cheer when I got in and, surrounded by a surge of dogs and people, cautiously eased the little vehicle up the wharf and onto the stony track leading into the village.

  “’Twon’t be no time ’fore dey’s a road from Burgeo to all de other places!” crowed one young man. “Be clear sailing ashore after that!”

  Not everyone was as ecstatic about the prospects for overland transport, or as ready to renounce the age-old allegiance to sea travel. The Bishop of Newfoundland, who was touring the southern portion of his diocese, happened then to be in Burgeo, staying at the Staff House. He was not overly enthusiastic about the new arrival.

  “Indeed. The automobile has reached Burgeo. A mixed blessing perhaps? I wonder, will it carry these good people to the top of the surrounding hills…or might it take them over the edge of a cliff? Whatever. I don’t say as it will make them one whit the happier.”

  Spencer came in just then, anxious to tell us about a not-quite-completed house at Messers Cove that might be for sale. He suggested we drive out there in the Morris and take a look.

  Margaret and Claire squeezed into the back seat. I drove, while Spencer piloted us along rocky tracks that threatened to shake the guts out of the car and us. As we came abeam of the school, several teachers and forty or fifty students rushed to the doors and windows for a glimpse of the automotive age. Had the Queen been coming by in a gilded coach, I doubt she would have attracted much more attention than did our salt-stained little puddle-jumper. Margaret Lake bestowed a regal smile and a wave upon the enthralled audience.

  The house we sought turned out to be a white-painted frame bungalow perched, somewhat precariously, I thought, on a bald granite dome commanding an unparalleled view of the outer islands and the rolling ocean beyond. The house’s owner, Harvey Ingram, was at work completing the afterdeck (rear porch). Spencer introduced him to us then inquired if he might be interested in selling.

  Hesitantly the young man admitted that his wife of less than a month was not happy with her new home. She felt that it and Messers Cove were too far from the centre of Burgeo where, presumably, the action was.

  “She has her eye on a bit o’ land right handy to the plant we might build onto, could we sell this one.”

  How much was he asking?

  After some thought, he opined that $4,500 would enable him to rebuild in the new location.

  To Claire and me this seemed like a give-away price for the snug little house with its large, airy kitchen; cosy parlour; and three small but adequate bedrooms, all on one floor. There was even a bathroom that, though devoid of fixtures, was something few outport homes possessed.

  Claire was enchanted by this “cottage by the sea.” I was delighted with its location on the shore of a sheltered cove shared by only four other houses, and far from the bustle and stench of the fish plant.

  “Hell of a bargain!” Spencer enthused as we bounced back toward the Staff House. “And Ingram’d likely be willing to take the money spread out over a year or two with no interest asked. We could let you use the plant’s carpenters, electricians, and plumbers to finish it up. Most anything you needed we could either find here or ship in for you on one of our boats…. What do you say?”

  “Say yes!” Margaret chimed in, seizing Claire’s arm affectionately. “Oh, do say yes!”

  Claire and I lay long awake that night. Did we really want to anchor ourselves in this or any outport on a year-round basis?

  At breakfast we had not made up our minds. Nor had we done so two days later when, having signed on as crew members of the Swivel–a manoeuvre designed to avoid the problem that the ship was not licensed to carry passengers–we stood on her bridge as she drew slowly away from the dock and out into the stream, bound for Montreal with our Morris firmly lashed atop the after-hatch.

  Swivel was a strange bird–almost as strange as her name. Built in 1942 for the U.S. Navy as a deep-sea salvage vessel, constructed of softwood “on the cheap,” she had been laid up by the Navy in 1947, then sold as war surplus to a civilian company, which used her as a small coastal freighter. In 1958 Caribou Fisheries had bought and converted her into a “reefer”–a refrigerated carrier. Since then she had been hauling frozen fish from Newfoundland to Gloucester, Massachusetts, with occasional voyages to Halifax and Montreal. Near the end of her working life and receiving only the minimum maintenance and repair, she was kept going mainly by the extraordinary competence and ingenuity of her crew.

  Our cabin on the upper deck, once the quarters of a naval salvage master, had been turned into the owner’s cabin. Claire was delighted with it, particularly the private bathroom Margaret Lake had had installed. This was such a far cry from the “facilities” Happy Adventure had to offer that I felt constrained to promise Claire something similar (if less ornate) when we reclaimed the Fort Amadjuak–still languishing at a dock in St. John’s–and refitted her.

  By dawn next day the Swivel was lumbering westward across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The top-heavy old tub rolled like the proverbial drunken sailor, but we did not care for we had our sea legs. After a hearty breakfast of eggs and potatoes fried in pork fat, we made our way to the afterdeck and climbed into the Morris, which then became a private observation car from which to enjoy the aerial acrobatics of phalanxes of gannets from the Bird Rocks of the Magdalen Islands as these eagle-sized birds flung themselves like black-and-white javelins into schools of herring.

  During the leisurely days of the passage west, we spent much time on the bridge, where, under the tolerant eye of Captain Moffat, I stood my trick at the wheel, managing to acquit myself well enough to gain acceptance as a quondam member of the crew.

  One evening they threw a party for us. It was held in Swivel’s cramped little dining saloon. The cocktails were Nuns’ Delight–a queasy mixture of cherry wine and grain alcohol from St. Pierre. The hors d’oeuvres featured smoked salmon canapés (a travel gift from Margaret Lake) and pickled cod tongues (the cook’s contribution).

  All hands except for the wheelsman and a lookout were in attendance. First Mate William Moulton, a dishevelled, almost toothless man in his late sixties, officiated. He was seconded by Obie, the hatched-faced, pop-eyed chief engineer. The bosun and one of the deckhands provided raucous music from an accordion and a harmonica. When the cocktails ran out, the steward produced a gallon jug of aromatic Martinique rhum.

  We docked at Montreal on the eighteenth. While the Morris was being swung ashore, Claire and I accompanied Captain Moffat to the harbour master’s office to “sign off” from the vessel’s crew. Here we encountered a shipping-news reporter who wanted an account of our voyage. Claire obliged.

  “We’ve had a smashing trip,” declared Claire Mowat as she and her husband disembarked at Montreal from the trim Caribou Line flagship Swivel. “It’s Caribou Line for us from now on,” added her husband, Farley, firmly.

  Seen off on their voyage by the Bishop of Newfoundland, the Mowats occupied the bridal suite, and were feted by Captain Moffat at a cocktail party given i
n their honour.

  “Sparkling conversation, brilliant company, incomparable cuisine,” said Farley. “It’s difficult to know which we admired most.”

  “And don’t forget the impeccable service,” added Claire, formerly a Toronto artist, who also commented on the ship’s decor:

  “The most authentic reproduction of Newfoundland provincial I’ve ever seen!”

  Commenting on the food, Mr. Mowat added:

  “No detail has been spared to capture the age-old tradition of Newfoundland cuisine. The seal flippers, prepared in the immaculate and gleaming galleys, were extraordinary.”

  The Mowats say they have cancelled their season’s tickets with Cunard Line and plan to travel exclusively with Caribou Line from now on.

  Returning to Toronto, I was immediately enmeshed in the writer’s world, playing a performer’s role in what seemed to be an endless round of publicity for my recently published book The Black Joke, while engaging in preparations for the upcoming publication of Never Cry Wolf.

  Meanwhile Claire was finding life in Toronto more demanding than she remembered or expected. One morning near the end of September, after a particularly gruelling round of parties and entertainments, she raised the image of the little house by the shores of Messers Cove. We discussed it with mounting enthusiasm until we realized with some considerable surprise that a decision had finally been made. I sent off a telegram to Spencer Lake, asking him to buy the house on our behalf and telling him we hoped to take possession before the end of November.

  His reply came next day: “HOUSE IS YOURS LETTER FOLLOWS WELCOME HOME.”

  Jack McClelland, who was sincerely appalled by our decision, nevertheless did everything he could to smooth our way, including making a generous advance on royalties for my next book, whatever it might be, and introducing us to a friend who was an executive at Simpsons-Sears department stores. This kindly fellow arranged for us to acquire on credit the essential furniture and household equipment we would need, and to expedite its shipment to Burgeo.

  He was astonished to discover that the goods would take at least a month to reach us there.

  “We could send them to Alaska a lot quicker. You folks surely are going off to the back of beyond.”

  In mid-November we boarded the Ocean Limited train to North Sydney, crossed Cabot Strait by ferry, then steamed eastward in the Bar Haven. Because the Sou’west Coast chose to welcome us back with a spell of fine weather, the journey took only five days.

  Our house at Messers.

  Claire’s account best describes the warmth of our welcome.

  Our new home stood off by itself, its clapboard walls painted a pristine white in contrast to the turquoise, yellow, and green of the other houses in the cove. The back door was ajar and I stepped warily inside, to find the kitchen warm and welcoming. Sim Spencer, our nearest neighbour, had fired up the range. A mob of children poured in behind us, hauling our suitcases. One little girl of seven or eight held out a paper bag to us. In it was a loaf of homemade bread–a gift more welcome than roses for it was Sunday and the shops were closed, and there wasn’t a morsel of food in our new home.

  The house was far from finished. Farley and I and Leslie Fudge, a handyman we had met in Francois, went to work on it. I painted while Les and Farley built walls and cupboards. They also installed a set of bathroom fixtures. To get running water they ran an intake pipe to a shallow well they dug in a patch of muskeg behind the house. The well was only six feet deep before it hit rock bottom, but the rain kept it full most of the time. The water looked like tea but was pure enough and we soon got used to the colour, though a bathtub full of it did look odd.

  The men also dug a ditch amongst the rocks and installed a pipe leading downhill to the sea a hundred yards away. No one objected to this simple sewage system, either on sanitary or ecological grounds. In a land too rocky or too marshy for septic tanks, it was standard practice to empty the night bucket over the end of the wharf every morning. We were just being a bit more modern. We had a pipe to do that for us.

  At first we did feel a little isolated from the world. But every Monday, weather permitting, of course, the eastbound steamer brought mail to Burgeo. This was our main umbilical cord to the “outside.” There was no television and the only standard radio station we could get was the CBC from Sydney. Anyway, our receiver was usually tuned to the shortwave so we could hear what the men on the fishing boats off the coast were talking about.

  The weather was rough. Almost every week a gale blew up. Winds of seventy and eighty miles an hour were commonplace and gusts frequently reached a hundred. Fortunately they seldom came without warning. We would watch the southern sky turn from pale grey to the smeared and gloomy colour of school blackboards and know a “blow” was coming. Then the chimney would begin whistling, and the waves would pound the shore until our little house vibrated on its rocky foundation and tiny waves actually appeared in the toilet bowl.

  The first time this happened I expected scenes of damage and destruction to follow. But no one’s roof blew off. The power line from Burgeo’s diesel generator stayed in place atop poles planted deep in rock-filled cribs. Boats, large and small, survived at their moorings with extra lines ashore. Small children were kept home from school. The coast boat anchored in the refuge of some cove. And I learned the lesson that people didn’t flaunt man-made schedules on the Newfoundland coast in winter time.

  A mummer in our kitchen.

  During our early months at Messers, we were preoccupied with homemaking, leaving us little time to engage with the neighbours; nevertheless they found ways and means to involve us in their lives. Every kitchen in Burgeo, including ours, was common ground. Visitors were so frequent that we sometimes felt overwhelmed. Usually I was able to retreat behind the barrier of my typewriter, leaving Claire to hold the fort, but outside the house I found myself inducted, willy-nilly, into the male life of an outport tribe.

  I was taken handlining for cod, netting for herring, trawling for flatfish, and jigging for squid. I was carried off gunning for ducks and ptarmigan and for surreptitious ventures deep “into the country” from which three or four of us might return in the dark of night hauling slides laden with moose or caribou meat.

  As 1962 neared its end, we found ourselves engulfed in the greatest festival of the outport year–the Twelve Days of Christmas. From Old Christmas Day, December 25, until New Christmas Day on January 6, despite snow, sleet, or hail, every ambient soul in Burgeo seemed to be on the go in the guise of masked mummers re-enacting ancient rites rooted in early Christian or, more likely, in pagan times.

  This brush with the enigmatic past sharpened my urge to delve into the history of Newfoundland. I had already begun investigating the probability that Norsemen from Iceland and Greenland had made extensive explorations of Newfoundland and Labrador as early as the end of the first millennium. I thought if this indeed proved to be the case there would be a book in it. However, when I broached the idea with Jack McClelland, he was less than enthusiastic.

  “Newfie screech [the rawest kind of cheap rum] has addled your brains, Farley. I’ve told you, Canadian readers don’t give a damn about Newfoundland and they sure as hell won’t be lining up to buy a book about a bunch of Norskies stupid enough to cross an ocean to raid that barren, bloody pile of rocks!”

  Nonetheless I went ahead with my plans, which still included restoring the Fort Amadjuak to service. Since she had been built for the Arctic, I thought that–properly repaired and refitted–she ought to be just the ticket for the Norse project.

  In mid-December I arranged with two Burgeo fishermen, Ephram Cook and a cousin of his, who were bound for St. John’s on personal business, to bring the Fort Amadjuak back to Burgeo to be overhauled and refitted.

  Making a snuggery for themselves in the vessel’s wheelhouse (the rest of her interior was a shambles), the two men set out from St. John’s on December 21. By midnight of the twenty-third, Fort Amadjuak was steaming through a snowstorm som
e fifteen miles off Cape St. Mary’s at the southeasterly tip of the Avalon Peninsula when the fuel line to her three-hundred-horsepower truck engine apparently broke, flooding the tightly enclosed space with gasoline.

  The consequent explosion might have blown the wheelhouse and its occupants sky-high. Instead, it blew Fort Amadjuak’s stern clean out of her.

  She went down like the proverbial stone. Her crew–one of whom had been sleeping while the other steered–barely had time to fling themselves out of the wheelhouse, cut the lashings of a dory on the foredeck, and leap into it before Fort Amadjuak slid out from under them and took the long plunge. Virtually in their shirtsleeves, they abandoned everything, including their life jackets, only finding time enough to snatch a packet of Purity biscuits, a carton of cigarettes, and a hand-held boat compass.

  As Ephram later told me, “’Twere blowing half a gale from nor’ard, you understands, and the nearest land to sud’ard were Bermuda, twelve hunnert mile away. If that were the way us had to go, I t’ought us’d need a compass….”

  Fortunately the north wind fell out. Nevertheless, with only one set of oars between them, it took the castaways eight hours alternating at hard pulling against sea and current to reach Newfoundland. Which they did at Distress Cove–an uninhabited bolthole in Placentia Bay’s hard coast. It took another day to row to Placentia itself, where there was a telegraph station.

  Late on Christmas Eve Claire and I were at the Staff House, having dined with the Lakes and other guests. Outside it was bitter cold and snowing. Inside, all was aglow with the warmth of good food and drink. There a handwritten telegraph found me. In elegant capital letters on a yellow form, it read:

  COLLECT TO CAPTAIN MOWAT BURGEO