“The fishermen know the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient for remaining ashore.”
— Vincent Van Gogh
In 1991, Captain Raymond Ryan from Port Saunders, Newfoundland, was pondering his future.
Some days he thought it might be time to get out of the fishing business. At fifty-nine, some would consider retirement, but Raymond was still too active for that, so he wondered what else he could do with his life.
The cod fishery had been declining for several years, and it was difficult to make ends meet, let alone make a decent living. On his last trip of the cod-fishing season in 1991, fate played a hand in Raymond’s decision. The trip came perilously close to being his last trip ever, but despite that occurrence, his future plans might have surprised some people.
Raymond’s enterprise was very much a family concern. He owned a fifty-two-foot wooden-hulled inshore dragger, Dolores R, named in honour of his daughter. His crew consisted of his two sons, Maurice and Rene.
The marine weather forecast for Wednesday, August 7, 1991, called for cloudy skies and northwest winds ranging from twenty to twenty-five nautical miles per hour, increasing in the afternoon—not ideal fishing weather on the northwest coast of Newfoundland, but nothing that a fifty-two-foot dragger couldn’t handle.
The Ryans: Rene, Raymond, and Maurice.
The Ryans had just 4,500 pounds of codfish left to catch in their season’s quota, and the men figured they could land that amount in a couple of tows and be back in port by afternoon before the winds increased.
Everything went according to plan early in the morning.
The Dolores R steamed out from Port Saunders at approximately 7:00 a.m., and although there was a large swell on the water that morning, they were about twelve miles offshore by eight thirty and preparing to shoot away the net for their first tow of the day.
About an hour later, when the men took back their net, they estimated the bag contained all of the 4,500 pounds needed to fill their quota. For a while it looked like they would be back home earlier than expected, but that suddenly changed.
Dolores R
Just as they had the net and fish over the stern, a stay, or cable, attached to the A-frame jammed, which in turn deactivated the net roller. Without the appropriate hydraulics working to keep the net in place, the net slid to the aft deck on the port side, causing the vessel to list to port, while at the same time the weight of the fish pushed the stern of the Dolores R low in the water.
Maurice took control in the wheelhouse and headed the vessel to port while Rene and Raymond tried to fix the problem with the jammed cable to move the fish farther forward and to the centre of the deck, but it was jammed too solidly.
When they were about halfway home, the Ryans noticed the stern of the vessel getting lower and lower in the water. Someone checked the engine room and the fish hold, but everything was fine there. They couldn’t check the compartment farthest aft, known as the lazarette, because the cover was on deck and the disabled net, with more than two tons of fish in it, was on top of the cover.
Whether or not the hatch to the lazarette was forced open by the sliding net, allowing water coming over the stern to flow down into the compartment, is not known. Raymond thinks that is a strong possibility, but the only thing certain was that the vessel was taking on water from somewhere, and when they were about four or five miles from Port Saunders, the Dolores R started going down rapidly, stern first.
All three men knew they had to get away from the vessel as quickly as possible.
Raymond ran to the wheelhouse, grabbed the microphone, and issued a mayday, although he couldn’t wait to hear if anyone heard his call, because by then water was flooding into the wheelhouse door, and with the stern already partly submerged, he had to get out while he still could.
Rene went to the galley, or bunk area, to look for life jackets, and Maurice tried to free a life raft.
With the Dolores R going down quickly, there was no time for the father-and-sons crew to coordinate a survival plan, so it became a matter of simply getting off the boat as quickly as possible. Rene managed to get his life jacket on, but there was no time to retrieve the others, so he ran to the deck and prepared to jump.
“Come on, Maurice, we gotta go,” Rene called to his brother.
“Hang on, I’m trying to get the life raft,” Maurice called back.
Rene couldn’t wait any longer, and he jumped over the side of the boat and started swimming.
Meanwhile, Maurice was frantically trying to free the life raft, but he couldn’t spend any more time at it because the situation had reached an extremely dangerous point. Maurice was telling his father to jump, but Raymond wanted to stay with the boat until the last minute and certainly not leave until Maurice was with him.
Maurice was very worried that the vessel, now with the bow pointing nearly straight up in the air, might roll end over end and possibly crash down on top of them and send both men to their doom.
There was only one thing left to do.
Even without life jackets or the raft, it was time to jump.
Raymond and Maurice surfaced close together, but Rene was nowhere to be seen. Maurice and his dad didn’t know that Rene had managed to get his life jacket on and that he decided to try and make it to shore and get help for the other two. When several minutes passed and there was still no sign of Rene, his father and brother feared that he had drowned, but it was time to think about their own survival.
Fortunately for Raymond and Maurice, a wooden fish chute had washed away from the deck of the Dolores R and drifted near enough for one of them to grab. The chute was a homemade device used to guide fish from the deck to the fish hold. It measured about five feet long and approximately eighteen inches wide and provided enough buoyancy to keep both men afloat by holding on with one hand and kicking their feet in the water at the same time.
With the wooden chute keeping them above water, Raymond and Maurice finally had time to assess their situation.
They saw the Dolores R about ninety per cent submerged, with just the bow sticking up. They also calculated that they were far enough away from the boat that if it suddenly slid all the way down, they were out of harm’s way—being hit or sucked down by the undertow.
It was only when they had nothing more than their heads above water that the men realized just how large the ocean swells were. When they were at the trough of the swell, they could see nothing but walls of water on all sides, as high as fourteen to sixteen feet above them, but when they rose to the top, they could see for miles.
“In fact, I could see my own house in a subdivision on the road at the end of Port Saunders as you head toward Port au Choix,” Maurice says.
They knew from their last calculations, before things started to go wrong, that they were approximately five miles from home, but Port Saunders is located on a lengthy inlet and the nearest point of land was much closer. The men estimated they were about two miles offshore from a place called Spirity Cove, a resettled community that was still used as a fishing port by several inshore fishermen from various fishing towns on the northwest coast of Newfoundland. And as luck would have it, the winds, current, and the large sea swells were pushing them in that direction.
Luck may sound like a strange concept when the distance between life and death is separated merely by a small wooden fish chute, but many strokes of luck turned out to be the key elements for the Ryan brothers and their dad that day.
The outcome might have been much different if even a single one of those hadn’t happened.
Trying to hang on to a small piece of board in the cold northwest Atlantic Ocean, without life jackets and at the mercy of seas producing fifteen-foot swells, did little to make Captain Raymond Ryan and his son Maurice feel lucky, though. Compounding their misery was the fact that they didn’t know if Raymond’s mayday was heard and whether anyone knew about their plight. But the most distressing concern was that Rene was nowhere to be seen, which led Raymond and Maurice to assume he hadn’t survived. For fifty-nine-year-old Raymond, the thought of having lost his son was unbearable and subdued his will to go on.
“Dad was saying that he didn’t think he could make it, that he couldn’t hang on, so I tried to keep talking about other things to try and keep his mind off it—sometimes I would yell and even curse at him,” Maurice recalls.
Maurice’s tough love and nagging worked, and his dad continued to cling to the wooden fish chute that provided enough buoyancy to keep their heads above water, as they both hoped and prayed that Rene was still alive.
The northwest Atlantic Ocean is never warm, not even in August, and it is only a matter of time before hypothermia sets in and weakens one’s physical and mental abilities. Both Raymond and Maurice silently wondered if they would last long enough to make it to safety. Their spirits were lifted somewhat knowing they were inching toward land, but the closest shoreline was still more than a mile away, and judging by the hour or more it took to get this far, it would be at least another hour to reach the shoreline.
“There is no way to properly describe the feeling of what it was like out there—a minute seemed like an eternity, with endless stuff going through your mind,” Maurice says, adding that he was also concerned that the section of Spirity Cove that they were drifting toward was dotted by craggy rocks several feet out from the beach. He knew the sixteen-foot swells they were experiencing offshore were getting larger and would turn into cresting breakers in shallow water, which meant they risked being battered to pieces on the rocks mere feet from safety.
The Ryans received a ray of hope when they heard the sound of a vessel’s engine not far away. However, the vessel was always in the trough of the large ocean swells at the same time Maurice and Raymond were at the top of another wave, and subsequently the boat passed by and nobody could see the men in the water.
“We saw his spar once or twice, but that was all,” Maurice says.
As disappointing as it was that a potential rescue boat hadn’t spotted them, the Ryan men took some solace in that their mayday may have transmitted and that rescuers were possibly looking for them.
They were right. Tony Ryan, a cousin, did hear the mayday, and it was his boat that passed nearby.
“Tony was fishing not too far from us, and when he heard the mayday, he cut his nets and headed toward where he thought we might be. Another guy from River of Ponds also heard the mayday, but his engine wouldn’t start or something,” Maurice says.
Another man knew the Ryans were in trouble. Sam Hoddinott, a veteran fishing skipper from Hawke’s Bay, was in Spirity Cove that morning and noticed the Dolores R had disappeared from view. An experienced man of the sea, Sam wasn’t going anywhere until he knew whether a vessel was sinking and, if so, what happened to the crew. When Sam first realized the vessel might be in trouble, he had no idea how pivotal his role would become during a rescue attempt later that day.
During the second hour in the ocean, Maurice was growing increasingly worried about his dad. Raymond, fifty-nine, was showing signs of losing strength and even talked about giving up. At thirty-three, Maurice was stronger and still doing relatively well and kept encouraging his father to hang on a little longer, because the shoreline was looming larger and they were still drifting in the right direction.
As Raymond and his son drifted closer to the rocky shoreline and shallow water, Maurice’s earlier concerns were soon realized. The swells turned into large, cresting seas, and he and his dad were in serious danger of getting bashed against the rocks near the beach.
When he eventually spotted the two men clinging to a piece of board being washed toward the rocks, Sam Hoddinott had a brilliant idea. Sam knew the danger the men faced and ran along the shoreline to see if he could find something to help. He saw a long pole that he could extend out several feet, but incredibly he saw something else. There was a lengthy piece of rope also washed up on the beach. Sam quickly tied the rope to the end of the long stick and ran to where Raymond and Maurice were nearing the shoreline. Sam skilfully cast the rope, mimicking the same motions as casting a fish line on a rod and reel. Miraculously, Sam’s aim was perfect, and Maurice caught the rope on the first cast. With Sam onshore and his feet firmly planted on the beach, he held the stick and line tightly while Maurice used the extra leverage provided by the rope to guide himself and his dad around the most menacing rocks, and finally, close enough for Sam to grab and haul them both to safety.
It was an amazing rescue scene that was perfectly executed. It would normally be reserved for fiction or a suspense movie.
Also like in the movies, the next scene unfolded in moments of disbelief. As Raymond and Maurice were finally able to stand, they saw a man climb up from the beach over an area known locally as “The Scrape.” Maurice didn’t know who it was, but when the man was walking toward them, and as he got a little closer, it looked like Rene.
“I didn’t think it was him first because this man was wearing an orange life vest, and when I saw Rene jump from our boat, he had his rubber clothes on,” Maurice explains.
What Maurice didn’t know was that Rene had gotten a life vest, but for some reason he put his rubber jacket on over the vest and later discarded the jacket.
It was a highly charged and emotional few minutes when the three men were united on the beach, each thinking the other was dead. Rene explained that he found the life vest before jumping overboard, and in the panic he decided to swim for shore, with the intention of running to get help to rescue his father and brother.
Meanwhile, when Raymond’s mayday went out, the Coast Guard initiated a helicopter search and, as luck would have it, the chopper arrived on the scene just minutes after the Ryans crawled ashore.
“The chopper touched down only a few feet away from us, and just in time, too,” says Maurice. He explained that Raymond was rapidly losing strength and required medical attention immediately—a few minutes later might have been too late. Raymond was hospitalized, but he made a full recovery.
Raymond Ryan and his two sons survived an amazing test of courage and strength, but they also realize that their survival hinged on several factors. If that small wooden fish chute had not floated along next to Raymond and Maurice, they would not have survived. If the wind and currents had been offshore instead onshore, the ending would almost certainly have been tragic. Had Sam Hoddinott not been as smart, resourceful, and strong as he was, Maurice and Raymond might have been seriously injured, if not killed on the rocks. Had the mayday not transmitted, a helicopter wouldn’t have been dispatched.
As close as the three men came to losing their lives that day, they were very fortunate that, as luck would have it, many things worked in their favour on August 7, 1991.