Cod fishing off Labrador, 1925
Forty years ago a workman in the yard of J. F. James and Sons, on the banks of the Essex River, drove a last swift blow with a sledgehammer under the keel, and a schooner slid gracefully into the water. No more graceful, trim, staunch nor able craft than the Effie M. Morrissey, which was her name, was ever launched from this famous shipyard, and the men who built her knew it. In that day shipwrights built sailing vessels with a real pride in their work, and with more than a touch of genius. I believe that any modern schooner would have broken to pieces in a twentieth of the pounding the Morrissey has taken. No one anywhere builds vessels like the Morrissey now.
No gasoline or diesel engines for her; no fancy wire rigging; no turnbuckles. She was just a good, honest, beautiful craft. Her masts were 74 and 76 foot sticks from the pine forests of Maine, and her booms, gaffs, and bowsprit came from the same place. Locust treenails and Swedish iron fastening the white oak knees and stanchions and the white pine deck made the whole one common bond of security.
No one knows the merits of the Morrissey better than I, for I have taken her all over the North Atlantic and Pacific in summer, autumn, spring, and winter gales, and I have found her living up to the fullest and finest traditions of her master builder. He did his work well, and when the northwesters came howling out of the Arctic, and down across the Canadian shores with the power of unlimited momentum behind them, the Morrissey never failed to justify my faith in her. I loved that schooner the first minute I clapped eyes on her, and that feeling has grown ever since.
She was built for old Skipper Morrissey, the most famous fish killer of his day in Gloucester, and the best was none too good for him, or for the gang that shipped with him. He wanted her for the Grand Banks. Those were the days of iron men and wooden ships, and what a team they were! Where Skipper Morrissey wanted to go, his schooner took him – yes, and brought him back, too, all shipshape and Bristol fashion.
I remember one of my bos’ns in a gale in the Gulf Stream saying, “What a schooner! What a schooner! With all this deckload and canvas and the engine going in this blow, and no pumping. Why, sir, last winter in a brand new two-masted schooner running rum off the Long Island coast we had the pumps going all the time. But she was not from Essex, Massachusetts, sir.” A yard doesn’t get a reputation like that without earning it, but when it turns out vessels like the Morrissey it can’t help having a good name.
How did I come to own the Morrissey? The answer to that question is a story, and here it is: a year or two after the Armistice found me without a job, and with no money save an endowment or two not then due. And when they did mature I needed that cash to square up my debts. It seemed an awful thing to me then, but today it is apparently fashionable and the thing to do, to owe money. It stamps you as having the brains to get away with it, I guess.
Anyway, it was at this time, in the New York Yacht Club on West 44th Street, on the starboard side of the lower deck, that I had the pleasure and the good fortune to dine with James B. Ford, vice-president of the United States Rubber Company, and commodore of the Larchmont Yacht Club. And what a man he was! Bearded, thick-set, gruff of voice, he combined the shellback with the man of big business . . . and with the philanthropist. The old gentleman asked me what I was doing, and evidently his keen, appraising eye, looking over my clothes, told him I wasn’t very prosperous, although I thought I looked well-rigged. If I didn’t, it was only partly due to my being broke. Living alone and having no one to take an interest in you can do it. That is where a woman comes in, but somehow I couldn’t hold any woman’s interest long enough, which is my loss. When they like us most, so I have observed, they are the most critical, and that keeps a fellow looking shipshape.
Well, I told the commodore that I wasn’t doing anything, and he asked me why I didn’t get a schooner and go cod fishing or seal hunting, or something, because the way I was I seemed like a lost soul in hell. He was right, but I told him I couldn’t raise enough money to buy a rowboat, let alone a schooner.
“Forget about money,” he said. “You go find a schooner, and when you’ve got her, let me know.” Just like that. When I had recovered sufficiently to act like a normal human being, we went into the model room of the club, where I tried to tell him how much I appreciated his interest in me, and his willingness to buy me a schooner. He just waved me away, shook his head as though he didn’t want to be thanked, and bade me good night. I can still see him walking off just as plainly as though I had but now come from the club. A great man, Commodore Ford, and a good friend to me. He loved the sea, and I mean the sea of the old days. He never had a motor launch aboard his yacht. Not he. He had a gig, and the men tossed their oars when he came aboard, too.
As I had managed to get a lecture engagement in Boston a week or so later, I boarded a train to Gloucester to look over the schooners there. My old friend Ben Smith, of Gordon, Pew, had gone to his reward, and I knew no one in the famous fishing town anymore, but Lloyd Hayes of the Boston City Club told me that Captain Clayton Morrissey and Captain Ben Pine were there at the time, so up I went to Cape Ann on a dull, grey December day, and strolled around the waterfront, talking to merchants and agents.
They weren’t much help to me. Somehow it seemed that they didn’t want their schooners to leave Gloucester, and I didn’t waste much time on them when I sensed this attitude. Clayton Morrissey wasn’t home when I called, so I went down to where the Columbia, the old cup defender – not the sloop, but the schooner – was tied up. A man was standing on the wharf, and I engaged him in conversation about Columbia. He didn’t give her a good name, perhaps because he had a grudge against the owners, and I finally went aboard. She had no power, and I began to think of the expense of putting an engine in her. It was in my mind to go into the far north country, where a motor is indispensable. And for a number of other reasons the Columbia did not make much of an impression on me.
Nonetheless, I called again on Captain Morrissey, and this time found him at home. We went together to Ben Pine’s store, after which the three of us inspected the schooner. I was even less keen for her now than I had been, and when they told me the price was $25,000 I knew it was all off. I made an offer more as evidence of good faith than anything else. They refused it, and I left Gloucester.
It was then I remembered the Morrissey. I had seen her a year or so before when on a visit home. With her newly painted black hull, her scraped and oiled spars, and her white masthead she had looked good to me. I remarked to my sister at the time that I wished I owned her. She was old, but I was told by a carpenter friend that her bottom was as sound as the day she slipped into the Essex River, and that her stanchions, deck, and spars were in excellent shape. I was in Chicago lecturing shortly after this visit to Gloucester, when suddenly the idea came to me that I had to have that schooner. I communicated with my cousin, Harold Bartlett, who owned her, asking if she was for sale, and if so, what the price was. He replied that he would sell her for $6,000, so when I returned to New York I called on Commodore Ford and told him what I had learned.
His only comment was that as she was registered in Newfoundland I might have some difficulty in claiming ownership, I being a naturalized citizen of the United States. But he gave me a cheque for $6,000 and then, as I was leaving, called me back and told me to sit down. For 10 minutes at least not a word was said, and then he broke the silence to tell me that if I ran into difficulty in regard to the registry to let him know.
“Perhaps I might get you a life membership in the New York Yacht Club,” he mused. “Then the Morrissey would be a yacht flying the club burgee.”
For fully three minutes I was speechless. When I did get my breath I asked permission to speak.
“Sir,” I said, “it’s wonderful, all of this. But I am going to use her for fishing, and much as I would like to be a life member of the New York Yacht Club, and have the Morrissey there, it wouldn’t do. I am a poor man, and I will always be one, and I realize that I would be out of place in the club without money to keep up my end of the plank. No one but a man of means could survive long in that atmosphere.”
Well, sir, he smiled for a minute, and then burst into a roar of laughter, waving his hand in a manner absolutely characteristic of him, and he was still chuckling when I left him. I got together every dollar I could lay my hands on, and about the 1st of June took passage to Brigus. Father was on the Labrador, but mother was home, and I spent a few days in port with her while waiting for the Morrissey to make port. The schooner arrived shortly, and was moored in the harbour. I remember standing on the wharf looking at her, at my schooner, as happy as a youngster with a new toy. And as she lay there I wouldn’t have traded her for the finest craft ever built.
I had no fishing gear, and this had to be arranged. It struck me that our family was not doing very well with the fishing these days. The age was changing. My father had built up the fishing centre at Turnavik many years before, and for a long time carried on with great success. But now the men he had around him were growing old and staying home. It was hard to get the right sort of crew to carry on. And one summer, owing to bad ice conditions, he drew blank. The cod did not come into the coast around Turnavik, and instead of the usual catch of from 10,000 to 12,000 quintals of fish he got exactly 94 quintals. He was delayed in getting back to port, and that made it worse.
Father never recuperated from this loss, although he kept on fighting to come back. He went deeper and deeper in the red until at length everything was mortgaged to the Bonnys. The firm, especially Sir Edgar Bonny and his stepson, John Shannon Munn, were very kind to us, but there had to be an end sometime, and I could see it coming. I got into communication with Father and my brother Will, who was still going to Turnavik every summer, and the result was that I went to the Bonnys with a bid for fishing gear and also for the Turnavik property. I couldn’t offer much, for I had very little money, but they were exceeding generous, and we made a deal. And I was the proud possessor of a schooner, with all necessary equipment for fishing, and our family again had the Turnavik station.
It is strange how things put themselves in the way of our destinies, only to be swept aside. Just before I got the Morrissey something of that sort came up, and if it had worked out the whole course of my life would have been changed. But I believe it was written in the record that I was to have my little schooner. What happened was this:
Just before the deal for the Morrissey was arranged I visited the American Museum of Natural History, and chatted with its president, Henry Fairfield Osborn. We began talking about cruising in the north, and he asked me how I would like to go there as captain of Harrison Williams’ yacht Warrior. I expressed interest in the idea, and a few days later Mr. Williams called me. He offered me command of the Warrior at a handsome salary, a sum that dazzled me so much that I tentatively accepted.
But once out of his office I wasn’t so sure about it. I went over to the Tebo Basin in Brooklyn to look at the Warrior, and when I saw her, my heart sank. She was as big as an ocean liner, and all over her, from stem to stern, swarmed an army of stewards, sailors, passengers, and delivery boys. She was a beautiful sight, but I knew there was too much cod and seal oil smeared over me for such a command. And when I heard the chief steward and the designers giving the captain orders I knew this floating hotel wasn’t for me.
I didn’t know what to do about it, and I played my last trump. I needed advice badly, and I went where I knew I could get it, to Commodore Ford. I told him the situation, and he thought it over for awhile. Then he settled the whole thing with one brief sentence.
“Who the hell told you that you knew anything about a yacht?” he roared.
Well, I knew before I went to his office that I had no knowledge of that sort of seafaring, and I realized that the old gentleman had put his finger on the weak spot. My misgivings were swept away, and I went straight back to Mr. Williams and told him why I couldn’t command the Warrior. He was mighty nice about it, and we parted good friends.
And so that was off, and now here I was in Brigus. I made as many inquiries as possible about my new schooner: how she behaved in good weather, in a blow, running, reaching, hove to; whether she sailed better trimmed by the head, or on an even keel, or by the stern; whether when hove to, she rode better to a rag of mainsail or to the riding sail; whether she managed better in heavy weather under single-reefed, double-reefed, or whole foresail; if she was lazy in stays. In getting under way, did she pick up speed quickly? Of course, these are the things you must find out for yourself about your own craft, but nonetheless, it helps to get other slants on it.
And at last we were ready to go. On the wharf were many old skippers, and you know that retired seafaring men are as critical as a lot of old women. I imagine they were wondering whether I could get the Morrissey out of the cove with an onshore wind. I was none too sure myself, for I hadn’t handled a schooner since I commanded my father’s Osprey, 24 years before, and I had become so accustomed to grabbing the handles of the engine room telegraph when I wanted to go somewhere that making canvas and wind take you was practically a new sensation.
We had one of the old-fashioned barrel windlasses aboard – I saw one a few years ago aboard the whaling ship Morgan on the estate of Colonel E. H. R. Green at Round Hill, Massachusetts – and we hove the anchor short. We put the mainsail on her, then the foresail, took the stops off the jumbo and the jib, cast to port, and off we went. I was at the wheel, and I looked astern to see the crowd on the wharf waving their caps. No one of them could have done it better, and believe me sir, Captain Peel of the Mauretania backing out of the Cunard pier at New York couldn’t be any more proud of his vessel and of himself than I was when the Morrissey lay over to it and began to foot along with a bone in her teeth.
Before leaving, I had received a wire from Mr. and Mrs. Morden, of the American Museum of Natural History, telling me that they contemplated taking a trip up the Labrador, with a cruise to Greenland if time and weather permitted. They wanted me to take them in the Morrissey, but as I had already decided on the cod fishing venture, I was forced to wire my regrets. Their message gave me an idea, though, for the future, and the Morrissey has been engaged in scientific work every summer but one since. Had I known of the Mordens’ plans earlier I should have been able to save myself a good deal of money lost fishing. But then, you never can tell what might have happened. I guess, as I hinted before, that things go in this world pretty much as they are ordered, and if it had been meant for me to go cruising, that is what I would have done. Anyway, I had a grand time fishing, with many interesting experiences, and it may be that more people were helped and served than if I had gone and done something else.
And we were on our way, carrying clear weather with us to within a few miles south of the White Bear Islands. Then came the fog, with light northerly winds, which brought us into loose ice and many bergs on the shoal ground between Bull Dog Island and the Bears. Fog and swell, with hardly any wind, make unpleasant conditions on sail alone. Somehow the currents and swell seem to drag you onto the cold, stark walls of ice. Many vessels have worked off a lee shore only to run afoul of a berg, and the curtain has come down. More than a few ships in berg-infested waters have died that way. Sometimes their people escape the crash and the sinking only to give up to exposure before they can be rescued.
We had a pretty tough time of it, even though the night was short. The cold, dank fog blinded us and almost froze the marrow in our bones. Bergs, and worse, the dirty-looking growlers, low, flat ice floes, were all around us, and we were on the jump tacking to keep clear. I was pretty busy, but I found time to wonder whether the good old Morrissey would ever go into stays when we tacked to clear some icy obstacle, or whether we might find ourselves suddenly trapped, with no place to go. On several occasions, in the dark and fog, it looked as though we had got into a bad fix, for we had to carry full sail to get steerage way in the light air, and any smash would have stove a hole in us, but we always managed to clear.
And the slatting! That great 68-foot mainboom was slamming back and forth like Neptune’s scythe as the swell rolled us almost from beam to beam. This put a terrific strain on the guy tackles and the main sheet, and I never have known how the mast stayed in her. That sort of wear is hard on sails, and it’s expensive, too, for no amount of chafing gear can keep the canvas from taking a bad beating.
Another difficulty was that our hull wasn’t sheathed for protection against ice. In consequence we had to be doubly careful about growlers and bergs, for if we hit one right, the Morrissey would go to Davy Jones’s Locker in a brace of shakes. With a sailing vessel, as I have said, you must keep headway so you can steer. And while you don’t dare to drive her, neither do you dare to luff along, or reef down. I guess the best thing is just to sail, keep a good lookout, and pray.
One thing is sure: familiarity doesn’t breed contempt of icebergs. They are beautiful things, seen at a distance. At the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance to the National Museum, Washington, I have often lingered and studied that marvellous painting of a berg that is, or used to be, hung there. It is called “Grim, Silent Spectres of the North.” It is so realistic that you can see the swells washing over its smooth, greenish-white sides. You can see it sink ponderously into the hollow of the seas, to surge mightily up again. But they are less beautiful and a lot more fearsome when you are trying to weather them in a sailing vessel.
I remember one experience I had when I was mate of the Windward. This was the auxiliary steam whaler that brought Jackson, of the Jackson-Harmund expedition, to Franz Josef Land, and it was the same Windward that took Nansen and Johansen from there to Norway. Sir Alfred Harmsworth, afterward Lord Northcliffe, gave her to Admiral Peary after the Jackson expedition. He had her sailed to New York in the spring of 1898, and in July we sailed for the north.
On the afternoon of which I am thinking, we were running north off the Greenland coast in the track of bergs coming out the fjords. There were two men beside myself in the watch, one at the large single wheel. The bridge was at the forward end of the poop, about eight feet above the deck, and extending from rail to rail. The helmsman couldn’t see ahead, and as the other hand and myself were aloft taking in the main topgallant sail, no one was on the lookout. After working hard to get the sail on the yard and secured, I took a look around. It was snowing hard, and I nearly fell to the deck as a berg loomed close under our lee bow. We were making about eight knots, using the engine and sails.
I can make some noise with my voice when the situation warrants it, and I let go a hail that made Tom Hickey, the helmsman, think a bomb had exploded. It startled him some, but it put him on his toes, too, and I yelled again, telling him not to let her fall off an inch to leeward. Fortunately the wind was free and by luffing her up we didn’t have to start the brails. Jimmy Way was with me on the yard, and after my roar to the helmsman neither of us said a word. We held our breath and sort of mentally pushed our vessel up to windward until she slid by, with perhaps a few feet to spare. Then we heaved a sigh of relief, and at that we didn’t know how lucky we were until daylight came, when a light southwester came in, and under easy canvas we worked into the bay through more bergs than this pair of salty eyes have ever gazed upon. How in the name of God we kept clear of all those congealed Woolworth buildings through the murk of that late afternoon and night is something I’ll never be able to tell you.
Of course, we did have power in the Windward, but we had none in the Morrissey, and we were in a somewhat similar position. I was worried sick with fear of losing her, but all’s well that ends well, and we anchored in Sloop Cove five days out of Brigus, which was not a bad run. A good deal of ice was in the runs and in the cove itself, but we managed to work in far enough to get out of its way. And better still, we discovered that the cod and the caplin had come in. Some fishermen there told us they had had but a day or two of trapping, and that they had done well.
The words were hardly out of their mouths when the wind hauled to the north and ice blocked the coast, but this lasted but a day or two, and when a light southwest breeze worked in we were able to put down a cod trap. We did not intend to remain there, but ice and wind conditions forced a stay upon us, so we improved our time by catching 50 or 60 quintals of cod. We were forced to stay close to our trap, for when the tide changed it brought the ice in with it, and ice can wreck a $1,000 trap in a few seconds. When the ice came in, the trap came out, and that was all there was to it. We could leave the moorings, however, sinking them on the bottom.
You have to choose your spot for setting the trap. There are what are known as choice berths, where the fish swim closer together, and are found more often than in other places. Men leave home early in the season and come up the coast at the cost of untold hardships, trying to reserve the best spots. This means added expense, too, but the game is worth the candle and often pays heavy dividends, with full holds at an early date, and a good chance to be first on the market, getting the best prices.
But it isn’t a sure thing. Sometimes the cod don’t come in the cove where the choice berths are, and in that case no one gets any fish. And sometimes a berg will come in and ground in a good spot, ruining a man’s chances for the season. It’s pretty hard to have to sit by and see your hopes of a prosperous cruise go glimmering through this cruel trick of nature. But when you’re going out to wrest your living from nature, you’ve got to expect a fight. And yet it is such a hard battle most of the time, against such odds, that you wonder why men still do it.
I have asked myself, who ought to know, and the best I can get is theory. Men who go down to the sea in ships ask no odds of the elements. The very uncertainty of it has a strong appeal. And real men like a good fight. If they didn’t, the race would have vanished from the earth a thousand years ago. We grumble and we crab, and we curse, but we come back for more. Man is, as far as I have been able to see, a killer, and a waster, and a destroyer. He takes the beauties of nature and replaces them with ugliness. But he will fight, and he does fight, against any and all odds. It’s one of the few things that makes him worthy of respect.
Speaking of fighting, the fishermen frequently battle one another when these cod berths are at stake. They are good, honest scraps, but not too harmful. It is a wonder, though, that no murders have been committed over them. Once in awhile, someone gets hit over the head with a boathook, but usually some sensible fellow is on hand to straighten things out. In the fall, when the voyage is made and the men gather in Newfoundland, you hear of lawsuits over cod berths, but as a rule the parties to the action have forgotten their bitterness by that time, and the judge talks them out of the suit.
We remained at Sloop Cove a few days, and then the southwester came in strongly enough to clear the coast of ice, giving me a chance to work farther north. I was a fool to go, but I had stubbornly set my mind on Turnavik, and I wouldn’t give up the idea. Indications pointed to a good season where we were. The schooners that did stay loaded early and were able to fare home with the new fish in fine time. I didn’t get to port until late October, when it was too late to ship away to market. Well, it was my own fault, for my crew was against leaving. But I was going to be the captain of the Morrissey, and we hove up.
At that we came close to not getting out of Sloop Cove. The wind was light, and we were having our difficulties keeping clear of ice. A large berg had gone aground on the north point of the cove, and as we neared it the light airs off the land caught the mainsail, gybed us and threw our bow toward the shore. Before we could do a thing she struck the spur of the berg, which began to roll. Pieces of ice weighing tons fell from the top of it, crashing into the water around us. I was at the wheel and, believe me, I was frightened. I’d look up and see one of those blocks, as big as an automobile, slide free and then hurtle down, to disappear under the surface with a tremendous splash, and then bob up again with tremendous force. Had one of them struck the Morrissey’s deck it would have gone right on through and wrecked us.
As the berg rolled, I feared that the spur would lift us clean out of the water, staving in our bottom. But at this crucial moment, with the schooner’s fate depending on chance, the wind struck in, the sails filled, and we slid ahead over the obstruction. We got clear with not a second to spare, for as our stern pulled away a real shower of loose ice, great chunks as hard and sharp and heavy as Vermont marble, thundered down into the water where we had been. There would have been no chance for the Morrissey, or for us. It was an alarming start, but we managed to get away with it.
So many situations like this arise at sea. I have known hundreds of them, and so has anyone who has done much sailing. A combination of circumstances arises that can easily destroy your vessel, and you get out of it by good luck, good management, and experience learned in the game. Telling about it afterward, it doesn’t sound like much. After all, nothing serious actually happened. But you know that it might, had any little thing slipped up, have been the end of you and your little craft, as it has been the end of many a brave vessel.
Turnavik was 100 miles away, and it took us several days to make it. Old Tom Evans, our caretaker, came aboard, but I hadn’t been in since 1916, his eyesight was poor, and so he didn’t place me at first. But once he knew who I was we had a fine talk, going over all the gossip of the Labrador. We also talked about the cod, for I was getting a little anxious. It was getting along into July and none had made an appearance, although the caplin had arrived. Things didn’t look very promising to me, even if my brother Will and the trapmaster said they thought well of the outlook. I wasn’t so sure. Here we were, with plenty of gear, and a wide area of sea to ourselves, with men who knew the fishing grounds thoroughly, confronted with the danger of not getting even a fair voyage. Our motorboats greatly simplified handling the traps, enabling the men to go off and get back before I had missed them, but that didn’t help in bringing in fish that weren’t there. The upshot of it was that I decided to go still farther north.
We began taking up the traps on a Saturday, which meant that we did no work the following day. It was the rule to abstain from all manual labour on Sunday, some of the men refusing from religious convictions, but the majority because they felt that if they broke the rule they would end up working seven days a week. That Sunday made a lot of difference to us, too, for the day’s delay held us at Turnavik until Tuesday afternoon, and the fresh southerly that had been blowing since Saturday petered out at just about the time we towed, using three motorboats, out of the harbour tickle. A schooner passing Turnavik early Monday morning, running before the southerly, made Cape Mugford in 24 hours. And when we got there this same vessel had laid in 1,100 quintals of cod. Ten days it took us, what with calms, light headwinds, and a strong southerly current. Had the men worked on Sunday, we’d have done it in a little more than one day. There you have the uncertainty of operating a windjammer.
As it was, a week’s stay in Mugford netted us 300 quintals, of which 50 were given us by Captain Roberts, who commanded the schooner that did in one day what we required 10 to do, in exchange for a few hogsheads of salt. I talked things over with him, and we agreed that the trapping was almost done for the season, in this place, anyway. And so I determined to sail on north to Saglek Bay. This found little favour with my crew, but I was bound to find the fish, and we hove up and got out of the harbour, to slat around in a heavy swell and no wind.
The more we rolled, the larger grew that 68-foot boom in my thoughts. I remembered Victor Hugo’s story of the cannon taking charge of the deck. Well, sir, if that boom ever got away from us in that light air and heavy swell, we would be able to tell Mr. Hugo something about troubles of that sort – if we lived long enough, and were able to save the hull. I’m positive the masts would have gone overboard like matchsticks. No rigging could have stood that strain. Later in the voyage the boom did get away from us, but in different circumstances.
Fortunately for us, the falling tide carried us far enough offshore for us to pick up a light breeze, and eventually, in late August, we dropped anchor in Saglek Bay. I had been there 30 years before in the Osprey, and in the three harbours of St. John’s Island. Then there were about a hundred schooners. Now there were two. One of them, Captain White commanding, had arrived early in the season and had just about filled up. The other, belonging to Captain George Barbour, a three-masted schooner, had got there two days before us.
White, a thoroughly experienced man, believed the run of fish was over, but he thought we might get a week’s trapping, and he offered us two of his choice berths, also volunteering to leave one of his traps in the water for us. I declined the latter suggestion, partly because I had enough traps, and partly because of an experience this skipper told me.
He had loaned one of his traps to a Brigus man many years before, of course expecting to get it back, dried, cleaned, and mended, at the close of the season. But he had a lot of trouble getting it back at all, and when he succeeded it was in poor shape. It was the old story of selfishness, thoughtlessness, and greed, which I believe cause most of the trouble in this old world of ours. If people would realize that in doing mean things they hurt themselves as much as the other fellow, they might be more considerate. It usually works out that way at sea, anyway.
Had I been in desperate need of traps I might have taken his, for he knew my father and he knew me, and was sure he would get it back in good shape. As things stood, I thought it better not to do it. I thanked him for his kindness, however, and soon he sailed away, bound for home. Captain Barbour followed him after the first week in September, and we had the place to ourselves, save for a family of Eskimos in the cove. Fishing was no part of their worries, for their golden age had dawned. Fur was bringing big prices, and they lived on what they earned hunting. And they lived well. They had a gasoline launch, with plenty of fuel, and they putt-putted all over the place all day long. Gasoline cost a dollar a gallon, but that was only a drop in the bucket with silver fox bringing from $250 to $2,000 apiece. The Eskimos had neither oars nor sails, and if the motor went dead, they were too damned lazy to do a thing about it, except wait for something to turn up. We towed them in a couple of times when they broke down, I remember.
It was while I was in Saglek Bay that I met Varick Frissel, that child-hearted lover of the northland, a gentle, eager-eyed giant. He first came to Labrador with Doctor Grenfell, and then went seal hunting in the Newfoundland steamers. He grew to love the life, and spent a lot of time in the north. On this occasion he had come up the coast with Captain Barbour, and I first saw him when he appeared alongside in a leaky skiff, and asked permission to make pictures. I was glad enough to have him aboard, although I didn’t cotton much to the picture idea, as I had lots of cleaning up to do. But he cheerfully offered to lend a hand, and when we finished the job we turned to photography. I asked him to stay for lunch, which he did, and we enjoyed ourselves hugely. He declined an invitation to supper, but when I told him we were having venison for dinner the next day, he accepted with a good deal of promptness, particularly when I added that we had fresh vegetables brought from Brigus by the mail boat, as well as canned milk and other delicacies he didn’t have on Barbour’s schooner.
I saw a great deal of him, and liked him well. He was one of that Labrador fraternity of which everyone has heard so much praise – and just praise, too. George Williams, who gave me the venison, was another. He had been visiting in these parts for a quarter of a century, and knows more about the salmon pools and rivers than anyone alive today. He has, in addition, a caribou head with 51 points, which is pretty close to being a record.
By this time the trapping was absolutely done, so I had the traps put on shore, for the rain and the dew to clean, and we started jigging for the cod in the motorboats. Weather conditions were fine, and we didn’t miss a day. Most of the fishing was done under the high, beetling cliffs known to fishermen as the Gull Battery. This is a favourite nesting place of the terns and kittiwakes, and when disturbed the birds would fill the air like a snowstorm. We used to fire a gun occasionally, just to see them take alarm and swarm off the cliffs.
I am sure those days in Saglek Bay were the happiest I ever spent. We were busy from morning until night, and that kept us mentally and physically fit. The life was the life I loved, and I was truly sorry when, with the end of September, snow and frost served notice on us that it was time to be getting out of there. We loaded the traps aboard, and on the last day of the month hove up anchor, getting under way at 8:00 p.m. And when eight bells sounded again the point of the Nanuktuks, 48 miles from Saglek Bay as measured on an Admiralty chart, was abeam.
We had all we wanted. The sea was smooth, and the offshore breeze was on our quarter. We were on our best point of sailing, and how the old Morrissey did snore along! Our lee rail was under most of the time, the water rushing like a millrace along the deck. With a bright full moon in a cloudless sky making it as light as day, the water piled up like soapsuds under the forefoot, and our wake looked for all the world like the Milky Way in the black sea. When the squalls swooped down on us, we felt as though we might take off and fly. We were logging off about 12 knots over the ground, and it was like driving one of those streamlined automobiles. Twenty-four hours from the Blue Bell we anchored off Hopedale. And at that the wind died after 16 hours of it, and we used the rest of the time covering 25 miles. It was black as pitch going into the harbour, but instinct, developed by experience, enabled me to take the schooner in all right. I knew the north, had spent years sailing there, and you can’t have all that practice without learning things, learning them so thoroughly that they come to the fore unconsciously when you need them.
From there we ran to Turnavik, where I checked up and found we had taken 1,000 quintals of cod. This being the case, I decided to go to Newfoundland to get it cured. But first I had to stop at Indian Harbour, for a letter from a friend of mine awaited me at our station, asking if I could pick up himself, his party, and his fish. I had just room enough for the quantity of fish he mentioned, so I decided to do it. The result was that when we left Indian Harbour, with all of it stowed below, we were right down to our lines, and then some. But it didn’t impair the Morrissey’s sailing qualities. We had all the breeze we could ask, with snow squalls to make things interesting, and an hour before dark we were off Wolf Rock, having hove up anchor at the crack of dawn.
We had been on the starboard tack all the time, but now we had to head out to sea to clear the rock, and this brought us into a position that we were sailing by the lee. The sky carried plain indications of more wind, and I thought it a good idea to tie a reef into the mainsail. But I didn’t want any fishermen’s gybes, so I decided that we would gybe when we wanted to – which was right away. And trouble came without waiting a second. The hand on the guy tackle slacked off, lost the last turn on the pin, and away went the guy. This put a terrific strain on the mainsheet, and there weren’t enough turns on it either, and it got away, too. That line whipped through the block in a brace of shakes, and the 68-foot boom fetched up against the lee shrouds with a crash that sickened me. The standing rigging fortunately had some give to it, and although it pulled the mast out of line at the first impact, nothing carried away. And there we were, with the boom taking charge, just as I had feared. But the breeze was our salvation.
I brought her head up so that the wind held the mainsail as firmly against the lee rigging as though it had been lashed there, and kept her so. The fact that the breeze was offshore was a big help, as it didn’t give the sea any chance to make, and I managed to hold her up as we tore along. My men, using light lines, braced themselves and tried to lasso the boom. It was dangerous work for them, as had one of them gone overboard we couldn’t have made a try for him – and whether you can or not, a man overboard at sea in the nighttime is as good as gone, barring miracles – and I hate to think what a flaw in the wind would have done to us.
They made try after try at the boom, and I kept holding her up, trying to keep the strain on the rigging as even as possible. And finally one of the hands made a successful throw. The bight of the line settled over the end of the boom, and with a quick movement he drew the falls taut. They made fast the sheet line to one of the falls, and then worked that out and back. This line, with all hands tailing on, took the strain off the rigging, and as I gradually worked the schooner up into the wind, they brought the boom inboard, until finally they could get at the blocks. Another sheet was rove through, the preventer secured, and we had control again, resuming our course. No one had been killed or injured, and the Morrissey was undamaged, but we were lucky. It was another of those times when things might have happened to destroy the Morrissey, had we not got the breaks.
Safely out of this mess, I ordered the trysail put on, using it with the foresail, jumbo, and jib. We continued to log off knots, and when the light was doused on Cape Bauld the next morning we had it abeam. The breeze went flat, and we lay over there for one night, and hove up again, in a breeze so strong that we had to go back to the storm trysail, and tie a reef into the foresail. It was getting dark at the time, and shortly after midnight the reef cringle in the foresail pulled out. We then tied a double reef, but that cringle let go too. We were shipping water over the quarter at the time, we were footing high, wide, and handsome, and it looked like a tough job to save the foresail. I ordered all hands forward to work on it.
All hands, that is, who were in my gang. My friend’s crowd were under battened hatches forward. Locked in the after cabin was Jim Dove, my nephew, whom I had taken along as cabin boy after overruling his mother’s protests. I did not want him on deck in such rough weather, even though he had learned quickly, and knew how to handle himself. That decision on my part saved all our lives.
I heard pounding in the after cabin, but there was quite a sea on, and I thought some books had worked out of their shelves and were falling to the cabin floor. But the noise increased in volume and rapidity, and I finally I shoved open the companion slide. Out came Jim, looking like a drowned rat. I knew that something had gone wrong, for the cabin should have been dry, and he quickly told me what had happened. A sea had smashed down on our deck and stove in a deadlight. And there was plenty of water in her. But thanks to Jim being below, we found out about it in time to plug up the opening in the deck, and keep right on going. If Jim hadn’t been there, she’d have taken some water every time a sea came aboard – which was pretty often – until with this deadly shifting ballast in her she’d have gone over on her beam ends, and sunk under our feet. We’d have had no chance of getting away.
People talk about vessels going to sea and never being heard from again. There’s no mystery about it. Why, my dear man, you can see how easily it could have happened to us then, and not even we ourselves would have known what caused it. One moment we’d have been boiling along in great shape, and the next would have seen us on our way to Fiddler’s Green. But our luck had held, and we were all right, having an uneventful run from there to Brigus. It looked on deck as though we had a quick and wet run, but when the hatches were unbattened I found that not a drop of water had got through to the fish.
Think of that! The pounding the Morrissey took on that cruise would have made a modern cruiser open up, but she was a Gloucester Banker, built by men who knew their business, and she was tight as a drum. This fact, coupled with our safe arrival, was almost a disappointment to Micky Ryan, one of our crew, a superstitious man who had been predicting dire things for us ever since a raven came aboard at Saglek Bay. A crow is supposed to have nine drops of the Devil’s blood in it, and to be unlucky for that reason. I knew that Micky was thinking of that bird when the mainboom got away from us, when the foresail blew out, and when the deadlight was stove in. So when we were tied up, I called him aft, curious to hear what he would say.
“What about the raven, Micky?” I asked him
“Be Jasus,” he said, “I thought we were lost. But she’s a good vessel, the Morrissey, sorr, and a good crowd to handle her, begob.”
And he went forward. Superstitions like that are dying now. When I was a boy we used to go out looking for crows, to destroy them and keep trouble away from innocent men. Today the boys are in school, learning and doing other things, more useful things. Micky, though, was an old shellback, and he’ll never think of the times the curse of the raven didn’t work. If the Morrissey ever does founder, and he hears about it, even if it’s 50 years from now, he’ll still wag his head and say he knew she’d come to grief because of that bird.
I’m bound to admit I have a few superstitions myself. I hate to hear anyone talk of women or horses aboard a vessel of mine. It brings bad luck. Another thing: there is one person I hate to dream about, for every time I do it means trouble for me. I’ve had lots of trouble when I didn’t dream about that person, but just the same, when I do I look out for squalls.
As for the voyage, I lost money on it. My fish was late for the market, and when it was finally cured and sold, long after I had gone to New York to keep lecture engagements, the man who bought it couldn’t realize, and failed, owing me half of the purchase price. However, we’d had a damned fine sail.