We’d Have Been Better Off Staying Home

“Eternity begins and ends with the ocean’s tides.”

— Unknown

“We’re goin’ birdin’ tomorrow,” an excited Dion Faulkner exclaimed to his wife, Sue, as he entered their home in Musgrave Harbour on Sunday afternoon, February 2, 2003.

“Birdin’” meant saltwater duck hunting, and like most men in rural Newfoundland communities, bird hunting had a huge appeal to Dion for various reasons.

Duck was a delicious food staple, good to have in the deep-freeze for great meals in winter, but hunting it was also a thrilling sport. And it was more than that for Dion Faulkner on that day—it was another opportunity to enjoy the camaraderie of family and friends, because he was going to be with his dad, Irving Faulkner, his two brothers, Danny and Darren, and good friends Roger Hann and Draper Fahey.

The men were a diverse group ranging in age from twenty-four to fifty-nine. At fifty-nine, Irving Faulkner was the eldest, his son Dion was thirty-eight, Roger Hann was thirty-six, Danny Faulkner, thirty-five, Darren Faulkner, thirty-one, and the youngest of the group, Draper Fahey, was just twenty-four. All but Draper were married with children. Irving was owner of the Spindrift-by-the-Sea Motel in Musgrave Harbour, Roger was a well-known commercial fisherman, Dion worked as a refrigeration mechanic in Gander, Danny worked with the Department of Transportation, Darren had a seasonal job in Ontario, and Draper worked at seasonal jobs whenever and wherever one became available.

Dion Faulkner

The six men chatted on Sunday and noted the weather forecast called for moderate winds and sea conditions. The guys figured it was a reasonable outlook to accommodate a day on the water, considering it was in the middle of winter, and an ideal forecast in February was not likely on the northeast coast of Newfoundland that time of year.

Like many others in the area, the hunters were really anxious to get out on Monday because it was the last day of the hunting season that they would be allowed to take six birds each. The bag limit was going to be cut in half to three ducks per person the following day, so it was one of those “seize the moment” decisions.

Draper Fahey was especially excited that day. Although he was an avid hunter, this was going to be his first saltwater-duck-hunting trip. He went to bed just after supper on Sunday evening to be well-rested for their adventure the next day.

Saltwater ducks are best hunted at dawn when they take to wing, so that meant a very early morning departure. Irving and the experienced hunters in the group decided the best place to hunt on Monday morning would be around an island called the Offer Wadham, located about twelve miles away.

To allow themselves plenty of time to be in a good position to take advantage of the day’s first light, the guys decided they would meet on the wharf at 2:00 a.m., where they would board Irving’s twenty-two-foot speedboat and also tow along a smaller boat.

Irving’s boat had a small shelter at the front and a small, enclosed locker space at the bow—a compartment known locally as the “cuddy,” which looked small but was big enough for two people to crawl into if necessary in times of bad weather.

The boat, Darlene and Dianne, named after Irving’s daughters, was a good and sturdy vessel, and Irving was an excellent boater, known for his attention to safety and overall care and caution on board.

When Sue Faulkner was helping her husband, Dion, pack food and a few things for her husband’s trip, she had one request.

“Make sure you wear your floater jacket,” she said with a pleading tone.

Dion heeded her advice, and is eternally grateful that he did. Although the floater proved to be an obstacle at one point, it more than made up for it in the end.

At his brother’s house, safety concerns were also prevalent. As Danny was leaving his house, he hugged his wife, Kelly, and smiled. “I’ll give you a kiss now because you never know—anything can happen out there,” he said.

The Faulkner men and their friends weren’t the only hunters who had duck hunting plans for Monday morning—dozens of others had the same idea. One of them was Larry Easton from Carmanville, about eighteen miles west of Musgrave Harbour.

Lady Easton

Larry, a well-known fishing captain, along with ten of his family members and friends, had the same idea as Irving Faulkner. Larry, the owner and captain of the forty-five-foot fishing vessel Lady Easton, took two speedboats in tow. The plan was to drop four of his buddies on Peckford Island in one speedboat, where they would hunt from, while the remaining seven would continue on to the Offer Wadham, where they would anchor the Lady Easton and use the remaining speedboat for hunting. Larry, along with two of his long-time hunting friends, Rod and Bob Gillingham, would go to the island to hunt, while his dad, an uncle, and two others would stay on board the longliner and cook up a big meal to be enjoyed at the end of the day when hunting was done. The Easton team planned to stay overnight and hunt again on Tuesday before going home to Carmanville on Tuesday evening.

About 3:00 a.m., Larry had a call on VHF Radio. It was his friend and fellow fisherman Roger Hann. Roger explained that he was with the Faulkner men, along with Draper Fahey, and he asked what Larry and his crew were planning.

Larry outlined his plans to be at Offer Wadham Island before daylight. Roger replied that he, Irving, and the others might head to Small Island, not far from the Wadhams. After a couple of minutes of general conversation, Roger and Larry noted that the weather wasn’t as good as they had hoped, with thick fog and gusty winds that were kicking up whitecaps on the ocean. “Yes, perhaps we’d have been better off staying home,” Roger laughed, as the two fishermen friends wished each other good luck “birdin’.”

Irving knew the area like the back of his hand. Not only had he hunted there dozens of times before, he also took tour groups to both the Offer and Inner Wadhams in summer. However, even though he had a GPS, it appears they steamed south of Small Island. Eventually, Irving gave up looking for the small island in the dense fog and decided to head for the much larger Offer Wadham Island.

Unlike the large fishing vessel Lady Easton, the little speedboat Darlene and Dianne was not equipped with radar and other sophisticated electronic equipment to pinpoint their exact location, and although Irving found the Offer Wadham, he wound up on the south side of the island instead of the north side as he intended. In the fog there were no visuals for Irving and the guys to use as reference points. With an increasing southerly wind, they would have been far more comfortable on the north side in the lee of the island, with the land providing a natural shield from the winds and seas.

Sometime around 5:30 a.m., Irving was guiding the boat along the rocky shoreline, keeping a close eye out for rocks. It would be daylight within the hour, and they wanted to be ready before the ducks took to wing.

It was foggy and chilly, but the men were all experienced outdoorsmen and were dressed appropriately for winter weather. Despite the unfavourable conditions, they should still have a successful hunt. But a good hunting trip was not to be that day.

Suddenly, without warning, all hell broke loose.

Dion Faulkner is still not sure what happened.

He and the other five men were in relative comfort while his dad, Irving, manoeuvred the speedboat near the rocky shores on the south side of Offer Wadham Island, and all six peered through the dense fog looking for a place to land.

The stiff southerly winds were kicking up a bumpy sea, but nothing more than their boat had handled many times before.

Suddenly, something unexplainable happened.

Dion remembers the boat rising up high on a wave that was also tipping the boat off its even keel, pushing it up and twisting it far to its port side.

According to Dion, it seemed surreal. He remembers exchanging an anxious and inquisitive quick glance with one of his brothers, who also had a shocked look on his face that indicated he too felt the same disbelief that they could suddenly be in the midst of something huge and serious.

“It was like a giant monster’s hand or something that reached down and grabbed the [starboard] gunwale and lifted us up and tossed us over, and then when we came down, we were all in the water and the boat was bottom up.”

He was trapped underneath the capsized boat, but the other five were thrown clear and surfaced outside, although Dion says he is almost certain that when the boat landed in the water, Roger and his brother Danny were struck a heavy blow when one of the gunwales landed directly on top of them.

Dion figures the force of the boat’s weight, as it crashed down on top of Danny and Roger, probably knocked them out or may have even killed them instantly. Either way, he never saw them again.

Fortunately, the boat didn’t strike Dion when it fell, but being trapped underneath the boat was not the best-case scenario either. Water quickly rose to the bottom of the overturned boat that was now on top of his head, with no breathing space remaining. Still, Dion was composed enough to consider his options, and instead of following his instinct to try to get out from beneath the speedboat right away, he realized that he needed time to plan for that—and he needed air, immediately.

Dion thought there might have been an air pocket inside the locker in the cuddy, which just happened to be located right next to where he had surfaced.

Normally the bow of a capsized speedboat is slightly elevated because the weight of the outboard motor on the stern drags the aft section lower. Pulling himself partly inside the compartment door, his hunch was verified. Sure enough, the water had not completely filled that room yet. He took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down a bit before assessing his next move.

After sizing things up, he realized he would have to swim down through the water column from the boat, past a door, a rail, and the gunwales before he could turn back up toward the surface. He was wearing a floater jacket, which was designed to try and push him up to the surface, so swimming down was going to be a challenge. Removing the jacket wasn’t an option because he would need it if and when he could get away from the boat and swim to the island. Dion remembers rationalizing his situation.

“I knew I had to get to the island. I said to myself that I might perish there, but at least I wouldn’t drown.”

Without wasting any more precious time and letting the below-freezing water sap his strength, Dion forced himself underwater and swam with all his might downward, and then out from under the gunwales.

Resurfacing, he soon realized that he had at least one bit of luck going his way. The small boat they had been towing was just inches away.

“I didn’t even need to swim to get it—I just reached up and grabbed the side of her and held on.”

Dion’s thoughts turned from his own well-being to that of his dad, Irving Faulkner, his bothers, Danny and Darren, and his two friends, Roger Hann and Draper Fahey. He couldn’t see any of them. He called their names several times, but there was no answer.

With a heavy heart, Dion knew he had to try and save himself.

Using the small boat as support, he paddled his way toward the rocky shores of the Offer Wadham Island and the relative safety of land.

He eventually made it close enough to shore to let the boat go and managed to stumble and crawl across the icy rocks of the island, away from the water’s edge, far enough to be safe from the breaking waves.

“All I could think about was the boys,” he says. “It kept going around in my head they’re all gone, they’re all gone.”

But he had another thought. His seven-year-old son, Myles, his wife, Sue, his mom, Margaret, and the rest of the family would need him more than ever.

There wasn’t much time to wonder about what-ifs, but even when his own survival required all the will he could find, he was acutely aware that there was no indication that anyone else had survived the capsizing and that he may be the lone survivor. The enormity of that tragic possibility was almost too much to bear, but somehow it served to strengthen his determination to make it back home.

Amazingly, Dion’s ability to think rationally was still intact.

Thinking back to Roger’s conversation with Captain Larry Easton the previous afternoon, he knew where Larry and his crew would likely be as they were preparing for the daylight duck hunt.

His reckoning suggested they would be on the north side of the island, about a half-mile from where he had crawled ashore. What he didn’t know was whether Larry and his friends would be near the island or still on board the Lady Easton.

Dion knew that if they were still on board the large boat, they would be too far off shore to attract their attention. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had to try to get to the other side of the island, even though his trek would have to be through snow and icy rocks in miserably cold, damp, and windy weather.

Those conditions were challenging under normal circumstances, but for a man who was soaked to the bone and emotionally distraught, unsure whether his dad, two brothers, and two friends were alive or dead, it was almost beyond comprehension to attempt such a feat. But he had to try.

When Dion Faulkner reached Wadhams Harbour, he didn’t know what to think.

In his weakened and nearly delirious state, he had hoped to see the longliner Lady Easton anchored just off shore. He remembered the conversation between Roger Hann and Captain Larry Easton a few hours earlier, when Larry said that he and his crew were headed to the island to be ready for duck hunting at dawn.

But Dion couldn’t see the lights of the Lady Easton off shore because of a dense fog that reduced visibility to near zero.

Meanwhile, Dion, an experienced saltwater duck hunter, also knew that Larry and his friends wouldn’t hunt from the longliner—they would likely be in a speedboat near the shoreline waiting for daylight. Although he couldn’t see anyone, he called out a barely audible “Hello” and “Help.” He wasn’t able to muster enough strength to give a loud yell.

Amazingly, though, he was loud enough to get the job done. Just as Dion had hoped, Larry Easton, along with two of his buddies, Bob and Rod Gillingham, were sitting quietly in their speedboat with guns ready and waiting for the ducks to take wing at dawn.

“It was just after five o’clock, I think, when one of the boys heard what he said sounded like a moan or something and asked us to listen. I’m a little hard of hearing and couldn’t hear anything, but then the boys said they heard it again. We thought it might be an old seal or something on the rocks but decided to check on it anyway. I put the motor in reverse and backed in to where the boys thought the sound had come from, and the boys were shining their flashlights, and all of a sudden one of them said he thought he could see a man in there on the island,” Larry recalls. Drawing a little closer to the shoreline, their suspicions were confirmed—it was a man.

Larry manoeuvred the speedboat to the shoreline, and Rod and Bob jumped out to see what the man was doing there.

The Gillinghams and Larry didn’t know what to expect, but intuitively they knew something was seriously wrong. Just a few seconds later they recognized the man as Dion Faulkner, and he was in bad shape, barely able to stand.

“Not only was he exhausted, he was literally stiff, like he was frozen. When the boys tried to help him from the rocks to the speedboat, he couldn’t raise his arms. They had to take his arms and put them over their shoulders and bring him, sort of drag him to the boat,” Larry says.

Dion also recalls the moment when he realized that Larry and the Gillinghams knew he was there.

“That’s when I lost it,” he says, explaining that some of the extreme stress and tension drained from his body and he practically collapsed.

Although Dion was no longer burdened by worrying about being rescued, his emotional anxiety over the loss of his father, two brothers, and two friends was greater than ever.

“Dion kept saying ‘they’re all gone, the five of them are gone, they’re all gone,’ he kept repeating it over and over,” Larry says, adding that they knew who the five were, but the enormity of the possible tragedy was beyond comprehension at that time.

After getting Dion into the speedboat, Larry quickly headed toward his longliner, Lady Easton, where they could get Dion in the warmth and comfort of a bunk to help regain his strength. Larry’s father and three other friends were on board the longliner.

They had come along on what was mostly a recreational trip. The plan was to overnight on board, enjoy a nice meal of fresh saltwater duck that evening, enjoy a beer, and then take their daily bag limit of ducks again the next morning before heading back home to Carmanville the next afternoon.

“We got Dion on board the longliner, and Dad and them got the freezing, wet clothes off, wrapped him in blankets, and got him in a bunk. They took a few of those large Pepsi bottles and filled them with warm water and put them near his feet, and so on. They took real good care of him.”

Meanwhile, Larry got busy on the VHF, contacting the Coast Guard, police, and other authorities to notify them of what was transpiring on Offer Wadham Island. He also sought medical advice on how to give Dion the best care possible while they steamed back to Musgrave Harbour. While Larry was making calls, Brian Mouland, also a fishing captain and vessel owner, took control of the Lady Easton and set course for Musgrave Harbour. After a couple of minutes, Larry realized that they were responding instinctively to getting Dion to a hospital, but perhaps that should not have been their priority.

“I reached over and pulled back the throttle and said to Brian that maybe we weren’t doing the right thing. I didn’t want to leave the island without searching for other survivors. Dion was saying they were all gone, but he couldn’t know that for sure, so like I said to Brian, what if he is wrong?”

Larry asked for guidance from the Coast Guard and was told to use his own discretion, but he also indicated that if Larry and his people didn’t think Dion was in immediate danger of dying, it would be prudent to see if there were other survivors.

Larry asked Brian, who is Dion’s uncle, to go below and talk to his nephew to get a better idea on how he was doing. Brian came back and said Dion was alert and seemed to be progressing satisfactorily, albeit slowly, so they determined to go to the site of the accident and search for the others.

“If I left there I don’t think I could live with myself, because I’d be always wondering if there was one or more of the boys still alive that we could have saved, because we knew it would take a while before the Coast Guard and others arrived, and in cases like that, a few minutes can mean the difference between life and death,” says Larry.

Larry and three of his crew went ashore on the island and soon saw the smaller of the two Faulkner boats wedged between rocks, half submerged but still upright.

“There was a lot debris—stuff like gas cans and things floating around there, too—so we knew this is where it happened,” Larry explains.

Shortly after spotting the small boat, someone saw a body at the water’s edge. It was Roger Hann.

After securing Roger’s body to higher ground, safely away from the sea, the searchers saw another body several feet away. It was Darren Faulkner. The men placed the bodies of their friends side by side and continued searching for others.

“All the debris was floating to the east. And since most of it was half-submerged, we figured that a person would float in that direction as well, so we started combing the shoreline to the east, but there was nothing to be seen,” Larry says.

After satisfying themselves that it was highly probable that there were no survivors, the four men decided they could now get on with taking Dion to Musgrave Harbour.

“But before we did, I decided to take a look to the west of where we found Roger and Darren, just in case, but I didn’t see anything, and when I heard the Coast Guard helicopter coming, I felt satisfied to move on, so I turned around and went back.”

Little did Larry know that if he had gone just a few feet farther, he might have seen the bodies of two more of the ill-fated duck hunters.

When the Coast Guard helicopter landed on Offer Wadham Island shortly after daylight, Larry and Brian briefed the search and rescue crew members before going back to the Lady Easton to head home with Dion.

Meanwhile, more vessels from Musgrave Harbour started arriving. Some were bird hunters, but several others were arriving in an official capacity as members of the Coast Guard Rescue Auxiliary, consisting of mostly fishing vessels.

On board one boat were four of Roger Hann’s brothers. They asked Larry if he could come on board to see them before he went back to Musgrave Harbour.

“Geez, that was awful hard—I didn’t know what to say to the boys, but I knew I had to go to them, so I got in the speedboat and went over and got on board.”

Larry was uncertain who was supposed to notify the families of the victims, but he was sure it wasn’t his role. Therefore, he was careful not to identify the survivor to anyone other than police or Coast Guard officials, because doing so meant he would be identifying the other five, too—two of whom, including Roger Hann, were already known to be dead, and the other three still missing.

“So anyway, I got on board and the boys wanted to know if their brother Roger was the survivor. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, but all I could do was shake my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘Roger is not the survivor.’”

Meanwhile, about eight thirty that morning, word reached Musgrave Harbour that there had been an incident on Offer Wadham Island involving duck hunters. Details were very sketchy—just that there had been a boating accident and it appeared there were no survivors.

There were dozens of boats with bird hunters out that morning, because it was the last day of the first phase of the 2003 hunting season. With very little information available, people back in Musgrave Harbour knew it could have been any one of those boats.

Within minutes, phones were ringing, and an entire town grew extremely tense under a shroud of anxiety and uncertainty.

Dion Faulkner’s wife, Sue, got a call from a family member saying there had been a bad accident. Sue instantly got a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she called Dion’s mom, Marg. Almost without hesitation, Marg said, “It’s the boys, I know it’s them.”

Call it woman’s intuition or what you will, but Marg had an uneasy feeling about her husband and three sons, along with Roger and Draper, going bird hunting even before they left just after midnight.

The next several hours were unbearable for the Faulkner, Hann, and Fahey families.

Darren’s wife, Janine, couldn’t sit still and wait for the phone to ring, so she went to the wharf to find out if anyone had any details about what had happened.

“I saw a friend there and asked him what was going on.”

Janine’s friend said he didn’t know any more than a boat was lost and there may have been fatalities. But she believed her friend knew more than he was saying—perhaps even what boat was involved—so she asked him again, but still her friend said he didn’t know. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he was trying to protect her from the fact that the word on the wharf was that it was the Faulkner boat.

Danny’s wife, Kelly, also had an overwhelming feeling of despair—likewise Roger Hann’s wife, Haley Abbott, as well as Draper Fahey’s family—but there was nothing they could do but wait, hope, and pray.

The Faulkner women gathered at Kelly’s house to wait for news, and soon their worst fears were confirmed—it was the Faulkner boat and, at that time, word was that no one had survived.

Sue took her young son, Myles, into a room and tried to find the appropriate words to tell him that his dad was not coming home again.

In the midst of indescribable pain and emotional chaos, the Faulkner women were later given another update. They were told there was in fact one survivor and that he was on board the Lady Easton headed for Musgrave Harbour at that moment. But the survivor was not identified.

Sadly, the news of a sole survivor only served to create further stress in an already horrible time. In fact, it seemed that fate was intent on torturing the loved ones of the Faulkner families even further.

A new rumour spread though the community that the lone survivor was the youngest member of the bird-hunting group, Draper Fahey. Draper’s mom and dad were on the wharf, anxiously waiting to see their son when the Lady Easton arrived, but it wasn’t long before their world was once again tossed upside down and ripped apart.

Phonse Fahey quickly boarded the Lady Easton after police officers went on board, but when he looked down in the galley, he saw Dion and suddenly realized that Draper was not on board and that his son wouldn’t be coming home alive.

Meanwhile, back at Kelly’s house, the tormented women were in for yet more tumultuous news.

Sue remembers the moment when she was told that her husband wasn’t dead after all.

“The nurse came in and said, ‘I have more news—the survivor is not Draper, its Dion.’”

Drained from the multitude of roller-coaster emotions of the last several hours, Sue was shocked, confused, and barely able to comprehend what she had just heard.

Sue kept asking the nurse if she was positive, and when the news eventually sank in, Sue says she “lost it.”

“I don’t remember much about it. I remember people telling me to breathe.”

Haley Abbott also remembers when RCMP members came to her door. “I ran. I couldn’t bear to hear what I knew he was going to say. I covered my ears, but my sister held me down and, more or less, made me listen.”

Dion and friends on board his dad’s boat at the Wadham Islands after the accident of 2003.

Later that day, the town learned that four of the five bodies had been recovered, but for Kelly Faulkner, that news devastated her even more than knowing her husband was gone. Hearing the news that Danny’s body was still missing was more than she could bear.”

“I bawled, I screamed and I sobbed—I remember saying, ‘What a sin, he’s left out there in that cold ocean by himself.’”

Despite the amazing physical and emotional ordeal that Dion had suffered that day, he was doing remarkably well in hospital—so well, in fact, that despite the wishes of hospital staff, he refused to stay in hospital overnight. He had to get home to his son, Myles, his wife, Sue, his mom, Marg and the rest of the family.

Sue smiles now when she remembers her son, Myles, when his dad walked in the house that evening.

“He was sitting at the kitchen table writing a letter to Larry Easton to thank him for saving his dad’s life. It was the best feeling in the world—we just hugged and hugged and hugged.”

Five headstones, but only four bodies rest in the Musgrave Harbour cemetery.

After some of the grieving had taken place and the healing process had begun, Dion eventually went back to Offer Wadham Island and reclaimed his father’s boat. Search crews had hauled it ashore on the day of the accident and left it there. The accident had caused severe damage to the twenty-four-foot vessel, but Dion painstakingly worked on every scratch and restored it to look like new again. He still uses it to this day.

There are five headstones side by side in the Musgrave Harbour cemetery—but there are only four bodies resting there. Danny Faulkner’s body was never found.