Belle of Burgeo
In the days after the loss of the Belle of Burgeo, many folks “in the know” of the sea, the weather, the geography, and the lore of the ocean were puzzled by the wreckage found—or not found—of the schooner.
After the initial appearance of this story in the book Committed to the Deep (1999), nearly twenty years ago, other clues to the disaster have come to light. To avoid a repetition of the tale, the story of Belle of Burgeo is presented here in the form of a folk poem, annotated, that is, given explanatory notes to fill in background material that may not be known to the reader.
The final note on this song-poem actually gives the new information on another possible reason why the vessel went down.
“Loss of the Belle of Burgeo”
Attention all ye seamen bold,
Who plough the raging seas,
Please harken for a moment
And attention give to me,1
And hear about this fearful loss
On Friday afternoon,2
When the schooner Belle of Burgeo
Near Sambro met her doom.3
She sailed away from Halifax,
For Newfoundland was bound,
Her cargo oil and gasoline,
A schooner staunch and sound.4
But soon a heavy gale come on,
When reaching Sambro Shore,
And in that gale she foundered,
And soon she was no more.5
John Haddon, her commander,
And five more seamen brave,6
That evening went down in the Belle
And met a watery grave.
Peter Bennett hailed from Newfoundland,
As did George Martin too,
George Johnson and Paul Magnes,
That formed the schooner’s crew.7
They left their home in happy glee,
As from the pier did sail,
Lighthearted and in health and strength,
As they leaned over the rail.
They cast their lines that afternoon,
And soon she sailed away,
With mainsail and with foresail set,
As she sailed out that day.
It soon did blow a hurricane
While seas and wind did rise,
It was a hard and trying time
On those poor sailor boys.8
She foundered in that fearful storm,
And went down in that gale,
And not one soul on board the Belle
Is left to tell the tale.9
NOTES
1. This poem probably originates in Nova Scotia, most likely Halifax and area. It was meant to be sung or recited, asking for your ear and to pay attention for it is a tale of woe. The piece is unsigned and the author is unknown at this time.
2. Wreck of the Belle of Burgeo was discovered on September 7 and 8, 1918, on the rocks of Inner Sambro, twelve miles southeast from Halifax. Local fishermen picked up pieces of wreckage: one part of a nameplate had BELLE on it, while another had BURGEO.
Parts of a derelict hull were located floating bottom up while the surface of the sea around Sambro was covered with oil. A section of the stern was visible at low tide. Ship agencies in Halifax figured it had been lost sometime on Friday, September 6.
3. As the poet says, it was the Belle of Burgeo. Once owned by John Moulton’s business of Burgeo, it shows up in the “1914 Spring Catches for the Fishing fleet of Burgeo” as under the command of J. Warren and having secured 195 quintals of fish. It was the first schooner in Burgeo with a motor, although it relied on sail when winds were favourable.
Not long after its work in Burgeo, it was sold and transferred to James Dunn, North Sydney. The Belle was a two-masted vessel of nearly seventy ton, seventy feet long, and had been built in France in 1893. How or why it came under Moulton’s ownership is not clear, but he sold it to Dunn in 1913.
4. The Belle was towed out of Halifax by the harbour tug early Friday morning and it set sail for Newfoundland, carrying 350 barrels of oil and gasoline consigned to Imperial Oil, St. John’s. Farquhar and Company were the Halifax agents for the schooner, and they had insured the cargo for a value of $5,000 and the vessel at $10,000.
Statistics for the fishing fleet of Burgeo in the spring of 1914 show the Belle of Burgeo as one of the highliners.
5. The wind picked up that day, leading mariners to speculate that even if the crew had had time to lower the lifeboats (assuming the schooner struck the treacherous Sambro Ledges), they would not have weathered the gigantic waves. The livyers of Sambro kept a watch for days after, in hopes a lifeboat might drift or that a body would be found.
6. All crew perished, and there was no report in subsequent days of remains being found. Lost was Captain John Haldone (probably misidentified here as Haddon), aged sixty-five, leaving a wife and a daughter, Hattie, in Halifax. There are other discrepancies in spelling of surnames in other written records.
The writer of the poem-song says “five more seamen” but names only four. In fact, there were only four. Schooners of this size and in this type of work usually carry five seamen plus the captain. Thus, the Belle of Burgeo sailed short-handed.
7. Two of its crew were Newfoundland sailors: George Martin, aged thirty-two, who lived in Halifax; and Cook Peter Bennett, thirty-seven, of Port au Port. The mate was Georges M. Johansen, twenty-three, of Lystle, Sweden, and there was Seaman Paul Manges, thirty-three, Finland.
According to ship agent Farquhar, the sixth seaman was supposed to be Paul Valentine, an American. He signed on to sail on the Belle. He was paid an advance of $25 but did not show up for work.
In fact, the story in Farquhar’s office was that three of the Belle of Burgeo’s sailors had a close brush with death on the sea a short time before.
Johansen, Martin, and Valentine came to Halifax from Sable Island. They had been shipwrecked on the M. P. Connolly on August 8, waiting weeks for the Nova Scotian service ship to visit Sable and to bring them to Halifax. They came to Farquhar’s office looking for work. Valentine, in essence, escaped with his life twice in a month.
8. The Halifax Chronicle described the Friday night storm as a “Tempest that gripped Halifax” and further speculated the storm capsized the Belle of Burgeo. Newfoundland’s Evening Telegram later said “the cause of the loss of the vessel was attributed to the storm.”
Yet other people reasoned that if the Belle left Halifax on the morning of the sixth, it would have well passed the Sambro hazards within an hour or two. The storm came on later in the day, thus the Belle would have been well east of Sambro. It was, like so many losses at sea, baffling to families and mariners.
As well, none of the 350 barrels of gas, debris of its cargo, were sighted.
9. It was two and a half years later when another factor emerged which helped solve the mystery of the loss of the Belle of Burgeo—according to some experienced seamen.
In mid-March 1921, a floating unexploded mine was found by two fishermen near Sambro Head at the mouth of Halifax harbour. They immediately contacted naval authorities in Halifax, and armaments personnel went out to bring the mine back to Halifax.
The location of this mine accounted for eight out of fourteen known to have been laid by the enemy in that area in the summer of 1918 (according to German war records).
The discovery brought back memories of the loss of the Belle in September 1918. Although naval authorities knew a German sub was in local waters, it was still speculated the loss of the schooner was due to severe weather.
The Evening Telegram (of March 22, 1921) stated:
Finding the mine makes it clear that this staunch schooner was the prey of either a submarine or the victim of a floating mine as the Belle would have been long past Sambro before the storm sprang up.
The anonymous writer of “Loss of the Belle of Burgeo” went with the best information available at the time—a September storm.
On the other hand, another significant fact analyzed was that while the schooner was loaded with gasoline, not a single vestige of a barrel or drum was found. That led to the theory the vessel was stopped by a submarine—a fairly common occurrence during the war. Could it be that, after the valuable fuel was confiscated by the enemy, the Belle of Burgeo was ruthlessly torpedoed or blown up and the crew left to perish?
Many seemed to think so. It became a mystery of the sea that still bothered family for years after the loss of the Belle of Burgeo.
Perhaps the crew of a Newfoundland schooner had a unique experience of being shipwrecked, taking to a lifeboat, and then being offered rescue—a lift to land, so to speak—which they refused. It may be one of the few times a shipwrecked crew turned down a ride to land. They continued rowing.
When the Dorothy P. Sarty sank late in the evening of June 12, 1954, her crew took to the lifeboat and rowed to Nova Scotia’s coast. Owned by Lake and Lake of Fortune, the eighty-five-ton coaster sprang a leak twenty-four hours after leaving North Sydney.
When Captain Frank Poole saw there was no way to stop the inflow of water, he ordered his men over the side and into a lifeboat. Her crew—Engineer Nauss Piercey, aged thirty-seven; Cook Vince Savoury, forty; William Poole, sixty; Philip Keating, twenty-eight; and Clyde Poole, thirty-one, all residents of Belleoram—rowed twenty-five miles back to Nova Scotia.
En route they were hailed by the captain of the coal carrier Arthur Cross (above), who offered to take them aboard. Cheerfully they waved the vessel on and rowed in to shore, pulling in near the town of Lingan, Nova Scotia, but by that time each man had blisters on his hands “the size of a fifty-cent piece,” as they called it.
When the Dorothy P. Sarty went down it was carrying 150 tons of coal destined for Badger’s Quay, Newfoundland. Photo author’s collection.