CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

On Saturday, April 4, the sealing crews at the ice began to mutiny. It started on the Diana, a small ship belonging to Job Brothers, while she was taking coal from the Nascopie to continue the hunt. Seven men refused duty and were put on board the Nascopie, since she would probably be the earlier ship into port.

The Nascopie was still forbidden by Job’s to abandon the trip. On Sunday her men held a memorial service at the ice-field for the lost members of the Newfoundland’s crew.

Their voices rose feelingly as they joined in the hymn:

“Eternal Father, strong to save
Whose arm doth bind the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep—
O hear us, when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.”

It did nothing to improve the mood of the men, as the Nascopie drifted far to the south of St. John’s with the drifting ice, engaged in a futile search for seals that were now on their way back to the Arctic.

Coaker was furious. In his log he flayed the “heartless lovers of gold” in St. John’s who “reaped the cream of the seal fishery” without sharing its dangers and without a trace of respect for “those who risk their lives from year to year” to “maintain them in luxury.”

On the Eagle, one of Bowring’s ships, thirteen men mutinied and were put on board Joe Kean’s Florizel, which was now ready to head for port.

The Stephano, too, was having trouble. When Captain Abram Kean ordered the sealers over the side on Monday morning, a group of them, led by Mark Sheppard, refused to go. It was the first time in his life that the Old Man had been defied by a common seaman.

“What!” he roared, thunderstruck. “Will ye refuse duty?”

Sheppard answered, using abusive language, that he did not intend to go for seals for any man, that he thought too much of the dead sealers.

Captain Kean had a puritan horror of swearing. He might roar at a man until the victim was thoroughly cowed, but he would never swear at anyone, or permit profanity in his presence. Sparks flew from his flinty blue eyes as they swept the group of men and returned to fasten on the leader.

“I’ll put ye on the log if ye’re man enough to give me yer name,” he roared.

Being “logged” meant, first, that the man would get no pay, would lose his share of the voyage. Much worse, though, a man logged by Captain Kean was as good as blacklisted. He’d have his work cut out ever to get a berth to the ice again.

Sheppard stepped forward. “Ye’ll find me man enough.”

Angrily, the captain signalled Mark up on the bridge and thence to the chart room.

“Log this man,” he said curtly to the navigating officer, William Martin. Then he turned to Sheppard. “What’s yer name?”

“Mark Sheppard.”

Martin asked, “What’s the offence, Captain?”

“I said that if I had a brother in the Newfoundland you’d see the devil jumpin’ about this one’s deck,” Sheppard retorted. He had said more, too, about an incident earlier in the voyage.

Sheppard was logged, and the Old Man said grimly, “Well, what have ye got to say fer yerself?”

“Ye’ll know what I’ve got to say—in the court,” Sheppard replied.

“The court?” The thought of being in court had not entered the Old Man’s mind. “I’m not afraid to go to court with ye.”

“Ye’ll get what’s due ye if ye do.”

For the record, the Old Man put the formal question: “Why do ye refuse duty?”

“After what I seen of this disaster through neglect of yours,” Sheppard coolly replied, “I don’t think ye’re competent enough to look after me.”

Never, in all his career, had anyone dared to stand up to the Old Man like this, or to cast doubt on his ability. Kean couldn’t believe his ears.

“On Tuesday,” Sheppard continued, “I asked Garland Gaulton to ask you to go looking for the Newfoundland’s crew—in time to save their lives.”

An enraged roar came from the Old Man. “Would ye dictate to me?”

“I wouldn’t wonder, sir,” Sheppard retorted, “if yer career as a master isn’t very nearly runned.”

There was an awesome silence as Mark left the bridge. For once in his life Captain Kean was too shocked to express his feelings in words.

Later that day another gale lashed the ice-field, putting a virtual end to the hunt. Next day the Florizel headed for home, passing the Newfoundland on the way. But the Stephano, with the mutineers sitting sullenly below, went back to hunting seals.

Mutiny erupted on the Bloodhound that evening. Captain Jesse Winsor had 8,000 pelts stowed down when 90 of his 145 crewmen marched to the quarterdeck, stacked their gaffs and ropes, and announced that they would do no more sealing, nor allow anyone else on board to do it, either. The men had been given only three real meals during the entire trip. The rest of the time they had lived on hard tack and tea.

Next morning, Winsor was steaming through scattered seals. He asked for volunteers to “pick them up.” When the mutineers remained adamant, he accepted the inevitable and ordered the ship to be fired up for the run home. But the crew wouldn’t work the bunkers, either, and refused to let the officers work them. The Bloodhound drifted southward, beyond Cape Race and on to the Grand Banks, before the crew agreed to work her again, and only on condition that she head straight for port.

Early Saturday, she steamed out of the ice-floes into clear water about ninety miles sout-east of Cape Broyle and into wreckage (its drift checked by the ice) that looked like it might be from a sealing ship—gaffs and flag-poles and the like. As a result of this, the search for the Southern Cross was resumed in that area by the revenue cutter Fiona and the S.S. Kyle. They found some wharf sticks, some “longers” from a fishing stage, and a wooden biscuit box. The Kyle also picked up the floating pelts of two whitecoats, and saw some spots of oil on the water, but nothing that could be identified as belonging to the Southern Cross.

Meanwhile, the magisterial enquiry had started at St. John’s under Judge A.W. Knight. Because the judge was indisposed, it started a day late, on Tuesday, April 7, with evidence from the captain of the Bellaventure, who described in dreadful detail his discovery of the dead and dying sealers on the ice pans.

Joe Kean, in the Florizel, made port that afternoon. Wes Kean, in the Newfoundland, arrived at 8 P.M. All witnesses except those of the Stephano were now on hand.

The survivors who were well enough to testify were called to the witness stand. Without exception, they laid the blame for the disaster squarely on the shoulders of Captain Abram Kean. They assigned a lesser degree of responsibility to George Tuff. They blamed Kean for putting them on the ice, many miles from their ship, at the beginning of a blizzard, and for not returning to search for them after the blizzard had started. They blamed Tuff for not making arrangements with Kean to have them picked up.

Tuff accepted the blame, but could not recall any instructions from his own captain to remain on the Stephano that night. That such instructions were actually given was confirmed by Wes Kean himself, and by witnesses who overheard him. But Tuff, at the time, had been busy getting the men over the side, and might well have missed the import of what Wes was saying.

On the witness stand Wes Kean was hesitant and apologetic. No one blamed him very much for what had happened.

The enquiry proceeded without the key witness, Captain Abram Kean, who was still out at The Front, driving his men, trying to put the Stephano at the head of the list for that spring. Finally, on April 8, he abandoned the futile effort to get more seals, and headed for St. John’s, embittered by the thought that Billy Winsor in the Beothic had beaten him that year. The few pans of pelts he had lost during the storm had placed him second.

On the witness stand, April 13 and 14, his mood was that of righteous indignation. He had done far more than his duty, he declared, and was now suffering for righteousness’ sake.

He told his story precisely, and in great detail. It had the ring of truth. Perhaps, to him, it was the truth, even though many men closely associated with the tragedy told a different story.

The story he told was in sharp conflict with that told by the sealers. But he was adamant. He insisted upon testifying to courses and directions that nobody would confirm, and that, in fact, were flatly denied by almost all the other witnesses. He denied having told George Tuff that the patch of seals he was taking them to lay to the south-west. He denied that his ship had been steaming south-west while the Newfoundland’s crew were on board. He denied that he pointed south-west when he ordered them over the starboard side. He denied that they had crossed the bow as they left. (This would have proved that his ship lay in a more or less westerly direction.)

He claimed that they had been steaming south all the time, and that when the men were put on the ice they were near the flagpole which he had left in the heavy Arctic ice the day before.

If all this had been so, then the point where he dropped the men would have been only about four miles from the Newfoundland instead of about eight, and they would have had to walk in almost a complete circle to reach the Stephano’s flag after two hours on the ice with the aid of compasses.

There is no proof that Captain Kean lied on the witness stand. Incredible as it sounds, he may have believed that he was steaming south when in fact he was steaming south-west or even west-south-west (for, everything considered, the latter course seems most likely).* He was mistaken not only about his own ship’s course and her position, but also about the position of the Newfoundland. She was three or four miles farther away than he thought.

This error arose from the fact that Second Hand Yetman had reported to him at 9 A.M. that the Newfoundland’s crew had just left her. That was when Yetman first saw them, and the rough ice prevented his seeing that they were already several miles from their ship. But, in fact, they had been on the ice since 7 A.M.

Yetman tried not to contradict the Old Man and tried, at the same time, not to tell any actual lies under oath. His position was obviously an anguished one. Is it possible that he, an experienced barrelman and mate of a sealer, looked at a ship on a clear morning and thought she was only half as far away as she was? Perhaps it is possible.

Was it possible for Captain Abram Kean to have made the same mistake, not only then, but also the evening before? Perhaps it was possible. Could Captain Kean have mistaken a south-west, or even a west-south-west course for a southerly one? Again, though it stretches belief, it may have been barely possible. It was overcast at the time and snowing lightly.

There is one really damning fact, however: The seals really did lie south-west of the point where he dropped the men. They walked south-west and found them, even in thick weather. If Captain Kean was telling what he believed to be the truth—if he was, in fact, hopelessly muddled about his ship’s courses and positions, how come Tuff and the men found the seals?

If Kean had really steamed south, he would, indeed, have been taking the men “a couple of miles nearer to the Newfoundland” as Tuff recalled his having said, for the Newfoundland really did bear south-east from the Stephano. On a southwesterly (or west-south-westerly) course he was taking them away from their ship, not towards it.

There was also conflicting evidence concerning the message sent from the Florizel. Joe Kean and his wireless operator both testified that Captain Abram Kean had been asked to pick up the men from the Newfoundland as well as those from the Florizel. Joe then amended his statement to say this was what he had told the operator to send, and the operator insisted he had sent it. Captain Abram Kean and his operator both testified that the message made no mention of the Newfoundland or her men. No copy of the message could be produced, so the matter was never settled.

In his final statement to the court, Abram Kean insisted that what he had done, so far from being shameful in any way, was actually generous and noble:

“Now that I have looked back upon the past,” he said, “and now that everything is over, I have concluded that there is only one action of mine on that day that would have saved them people from that terrible catastrophe, and that is an action of total indifference towards the crew of the Newfoundland. If, instead of leaving my own work at 10:40 A.M., and going and taking the crew of the Newfoundland on board, if I had paid no attention to them whatever, allowed them to have their long tramp for nothing, they probably would have reached my ship between one and two o’clock in the afternoon, at which time no man would think of allowing them to leave his own ship, but I acted with the very best motive and with the very best intention, as any humane father would do for his son’s crew. By running back, I was lessening their journey considerably. By giving them a dinner I was strengthening them for the work of the evening. And by taking them two miles nearer their own ship I certainly thought they would have no difficulty in panning up to a thousand or fifteen hundred seals and getting aboard long before night.”

“Why,” the court asked, “did you not make sure on Wednesday that the men were safe?”

“Because,” he replied, “when they didn’t come to me on Tuesday, I felt certain they had reached their own ship.”

* Strangely enough, compass deviation was not mentioned even once during the enquiry. Everyone there took it for granted that they were talking about compass bearing. In fact, the compass deviation was such that a south-west course by the compass was very nearly true south.