Third Shipwreck
Erastus Moores survived the loss of the schooner Devon, abandoned in the Atlantic on January 25, 1901, as presented in an earlier tale. Twelve months later, he went through another sinking at sea, and yet a third shipwreck in 1913.
Erastus Moores was then in command of the schooner Frances. Captain Moores had with him Mate James Carroll, Cook Albert Harding, and seamen William Taylor and William Rockwood. Built in Shelburne in 1907, the Frances was seventy-seven feet long and netted sixty-five tons. In 1911, its ownership changed from Halifax to the St. John’s–based business of James Baird Limited.
The Frances left home port on a Monday, November 17, 1913, bound in ballast for Change Islands, where it loaded dry cod. On Sunday, five days later, it sailed for St. John’s.
Then the Frances and crew seemingly disappeared, only to reappear weeks later in France. The newspaper Halifax Herald said:
It was never heard of until three weeks later, when a cable from France announced the arrival of a steamer bearing the rescued crew of the Frances.
After Captain Moores and crew left Change Islands, it stopped at Seldom-Come-By and on Monday sailed for home. By Tuesday morning, a typical but blinding snowstorm came on, accompanied by high southeast winds. The Frances hove to under a foresail, as the wind had increased to a hurricane.
On Wednesday, a sudden squall carried away the foresail, and about the same time a heavy sea swept over the deck, carrying away everything movable on deck, including fifteen casks of cod oil.
The mainsail was rent in tatters by the storm, making it useless. That evening, as the weather moderated somewhat, fifty quintals of cod were thrown overboard in order to free the clogged pumps in the hold. Captain Moores was still confident of reaching St. John’s, then about fifty miles to the eastward, and had another foresail bent on.
So close to home port! After an hour running toward land, the Frances ran into yet another strong offshore wind, and Moores was forced to run to sea. By Thursday, November 27, again the Frances hove to. It had no canvas left but the main top staysail. The jib, jumbo, and the new foresail had been carried away by the last blast of wind.
All that night, the Frances drove to sea under “bare poles,” the wind blowing at a hurricane force. At 8:00 a.m. on November 28, Captain Moores sighted a steamer. The Frances was, by that time, in a sinking condition and had drifted to about ninety miles southeast of Cape Race. The crew had been working the pumps for hours in a useless attempt to keep the water out of the hold.
Both vessels worked down toward each other until Captain Moores was close enough to shout to the officers of the steamer that he and his crew wished to be taken off. It could be seen then the steamer was the Cairdon, crewed by English mariners. It was headed to Calais, France, from Montreal with a cargo of grain.
The big liner then put a lifeboat over the side and transferred the five Newfoundland seamen to their vessel. Captain Moores, the last to leave, touched a match to the pile of oil-soaked clothes and blankets. When the Frances burned to water level, it would ensure a quick sinking and would not become a hazard to shipping.
When the Cairdon reached Calais, Moores’s first thought was to get a telegram home as soon as possible. He knew folks back home were worried. On December 10, 1913, a message reached the office of James Baird and simply read:
“Frances a total loss; all safe. Coming home.”
When Baird contacted the families involved, all breathed a sigh of relief, as the seamen had not been heard from since they left Seldom-Come-By, three weeks previously. Relatives and loved ones could only surmise the schooner had been driven to sea by recent storms. If they had survived, perished, or been rescued was simply guesswork. But with such a long passage of time, no doubt many a sad tear of “loss at sea” had been shed.
From Calais, Captain Eras, as he was sometimes affectionately called, and his crew crossed the English Channel to Dover, thence to London, where they travelled by train to Liverpool, the latter being a port of departure for North America–bound ships. The five joined the Allan Liner Sardinian, headed for St. John’s. They arrived, safe and sound from an ordeal on the wild Atlantic, on December 29.
In one of their few public statements of the shipwreck, they were quick and clear to praise the kindness and fine treatment they received on the Cairdon and by the French and English people.
It was Captain Moores’s third time being rescued: the Devon in 1901; in 1902 he was a member of the crew of the schooner Penguin when it was abandoned at sea. Eras, for reasons known only to him, was not inclined to speak or write of this near-miss at sea. It was a brush with the spectre of death.
On the other hand, it was not his lot to die violently in a shipwreck despite three close calls. He died of natural causes as mate on board the schooner Hazel Trahey, under Captain Barnes, while sailing in the Mediterranean.
It would have been too long a voyage to attempt to preserve the body and to transport it to Newfoundland. Erasmus Moores was buried at sea.