The Doryman Read online

  Rachel appeared at the door, with her youngest two in tow.

  “It’s not fit, is it?” she asked bitterly, but it wasn’t really a question.

  Angela shook her head and kept staring out the window, as if she might see Richard walking up the hill if she kept looking. Rachel got two cups out of the cupboard and fiddled with the kettle.

  “Might as well have some tea,” she said. She sounded almost angry, Angela vaguely registered.

  “It’s we who have the worst of it,” Rachel continued. “The women. We got the worry. Worrying is worse than the thing itself. Worrying is worse than doing, than going through something. Being onshore is worse. I’ve always thought that.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Angela answered quietly. Rachel was always coming up with something, she had to hand it to her. She never accepted anything the way it was. “But there’s nothing we can do about it,” Angela said.

  “And that’s what makes me mad,” Rachel said. “At least the men know what’s going on. Right now, Jerry and Richard know if they’re safe or not. We don’t. You got to be some strong to be a woman.”

  “Rachel, girl, it’s no sense being mad,” Angela said. “It won’t help them out there or us in here.”

  “And it’s no sense waiting for him at the window either,” Rachel said. “Come here and have a cup of tea with me. We’ve got some work to do later to get those kitchen gardens in order.”

  Angela left her waiting post and joined her sister-in-law at the table. She took Rachel’s hand and squeezed it so they could draw on each other’s strength. Outside, the August Gale was about to pluck Banks fishermen from their families, who had felt so safe only the day before.

  The seas were “mountains high” now. All over Placentia Bay and elsewhere in Newfoundland, schooners and other vessels tried to make it into port. Many of them came very close. In one community, women stood in their houses and breathed long sighs of relief to see the western boat carrying their husbands round the point. Then, as it turned in to face the village, it listed and crashed into the sea, breaking into three pieces. The men went sailing into the air, then into the cold sea, in waves for which they were no match. Their wives and children onshore wailed in limitless grief, able to do nothing but watch their husbands and fathers die.

  The Annie Healey of Fox Harbour, captained by John Mullins, was on her second ever trip. Affectionately known as “Big Annie,” she sank in high seas just outside Fox Harbour on her way back from Point Lance Rock, where the men had fished before the gale bore down on them. All seven crew members died, and none of the bodies were ever found.

  Indeed, the storm turned the South Coast into a graveyard that day. From Burnt Island, the Vienna and her six men were lost. From Rushoon on the Burin Peninsula, the Hilda Gertrude and her seven crew members were lost. The gale took the lives of the six men of the Ella May from Rencontre West in Fortune Bay, and the four men of the Annie Jane from Isle aux Morts, farther west. From Red Harbour, the John Loughlin and her eight men were lost. Though the news would not trickle in for days, and in most cases events would have to be pieced together, the August Gale of 1927 left villages of widows and orphans, and the only bodies ever found were those lashed to the riggings. Through the storm, Angela and Rachel waited and prayed in Little Bay, wondering if they would be among the grief-stricken.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Angela’s brother, Val Manning, and Richard were in Dory Number 1 of the Tancook, and they’d made a late-evening run to the fishing grounds. They wanted to load up as fast as possible. There was no sense in drawing the trip out. As usual, they had gone the farthest away from the vessel. As they began the long row back to the Tancook, Richard was thinking that maybe they were getting a bit too confident, or too greedy. He knew Angela would tell him to take things as they came, not to hurry or rush things. He reflected on this now as he repetitively pushed his oar into the water. Life would be easier, he knew, if he took a page or two from her book.

  Then he noticed that the winds were picking up, slowly but steadily.

  “See that, Val?” he said.

  “The wind?” Val answered, for he had noticed it too.

  “It was a dead-calm night until now,” Richard said.

  “Dick, b’y, I hope it’s not an August Gale,” Val replied worriedly.

  Richard nodded and said nothing, but his body filled with dread. By now, every doryman on the Banks had an inkling that an August Gale was on its way.

  Richard bent forward and threw his whole weight into the oar. Both of them wordlessly rowed hard towards the Tancook and the relative safety it offered. As they got closer and the wind slowly gathered force, adrenalin surged through their veins. Underneath them, the swell of the sea picked up. Richard felt a hint of the seasickness his father had cured so memorably years before, but he ignored it and it quickly died away. Finally the ship was in sight.

  John Manning was standing on deck. “Get aboard,” he barked. Richard and Val were the last dorymen to return to the Tancook. They were careless with the fish, tossing it on deck and doing little else with it. How different the night had turned out from what Richard had envisioned when they were hauling trawls on a calm sea just a short while ago. Now most of this catch would land back in the water, and that would be the least of their worries. Making safe port was all they cared about now.

  The wind beating on their backs, Richard and Val hauled their dory aboard the Tancook and tied it down. The other men finished tying down everything else. Although the full force of the storm hadn’t hit, they were preparing for it. They were about an hour southeast of Trepassey. But they would have to cross open water south of Cape Pine to get there. This was a wild body of water, and one that triggered much fear under the circumstances.

  John turned the Tancook towards Trepassey and asked Val to fetch some rope in case he needed to lash himself to the wheel.

  “If we get a good speed up, we’ll be home before the gale hits,” he said to his worried crew.

  As the vessel turned, the sails made their thunderous noise. Up top, there were loud claps, fast whipping sounds, rapid cracks, and then more violent booms as the sails carried the Tancook across the water. With her powerful sails, it seemed for a moment that the Tancook might emerge the victor of the night. She was a strong vessel, and they hoped her nobility would not falter.

  Richard and Val stayed with John at the wheel. They said little. Their thoughts were of home. John thought of his father, Captain Paddy, and all the stories he had told of August Gales. So did Val. Richard thought of Angela and their small brood. She was strong, tough even, and she was pragmatic, but what would life for her be like without him? Outport Newfoundland could be hard on a widow with young children. A woman needed a man just as a man needed a woman. That was the way things worked. It was broken otherwise, he thought. As the wind whistled around him and the sails flapped overhead, he ruminated on this. What would Angela do without him? Her early widowhood was, after all, a very real possibility, although he’d never allowed himself to really think of it before. And if the Tancook were to sink, she would lose her brothers and her husband.

  He thought of his own brother Jack who’d be there to help her. Jack was doing all right in the shore fishery in Little Bay these days. But Richard himself didn’t want to die, not with a woman who loved him and all those pretty girls to rear, and his little boy, Vince, who followed him around like an adoring puppy. He loved the way the children stood around him when he played the mouth organ, tapping their little feet. He had never been happier. He felt needed; he was needed. He felt as if he belonged. Then a sudden gust, stronger than the others until now, knocked him out of his reverie.

  “She’s picking up,” John said quietly of the wind. He took his timepiece out of his jacket pocket and looked at it. It was nearly midnight. Then he looked at the sky. He still thought they could make Trepassey safely
; they were getting pretty close. But he said nothing. He didn’t want to tempt fate.

  Richard was still thinking of his family in Little Bay. He knew that the wind would wake Angela. It always did. The second storey of their house was an attic where the children played, and it creaked and groaned in the wind. It would be making an awful racket this night, he knew. Angela would jolt out of sleep with a start, then rise, light a candle, and go upstairs to make sure the roof hadn’t fallen in. Then, he knew, she’d check on each of the children. She did that when she woke up with the house noises. When he came home, she’d probably ask him to take the second storey down. This time he’d do it.

  Then she’d go back to bed and worry about where he was – at sea or safe in Oderin – and she’d worry until he came home or someone who saw him in Oderin returned to Little Bay and told her he was fine. Neither of them had any way of knowing how long that would take. It was the same for all the women of Little Bay, his sister Rachel included, and every other village along the coast. Sometimes he didn’t know how the women were able to do it.

  John and Richard saw the evening’s catch and the dorymen’s hard work slide off the deck and back into the stormy waves. Gone was their insurance against the hungry month of March. But they didn’t care. Richard was not a rich man by any means, but the wind and water had realigned his priorities. Cape Pine was in sight now. So were other schooners trying to make port: the Mary Anne, the Cape Race, the Jane Bailey. They turned northward as they rounded the point of land into Trepassey Harbour. It was almost 1:00 a.m. now, and in Port aux Basques on the southwest tip of Newfoundland, small boats were being smashed to bits.

  Then the Tancook lost her foremast in a wild gust of wind. The long pole cracked in half, plunging into the dark waves and throwing the vessel sharply to port until she bobbed up again, almost as if nothing had happened. Her sails were like scraps waiting to be sewn into some order, and the foresail was half-sunk as the mast dragged it into the water. The schooner was virtually helpless now.

  John was lashed to the wheel and he gripped it, trying with all his might to steer the vessel. As the winds howled and the rain began to come down in torrents, Richard knew the Tancook would be driven ashore. He peered at the shoreline, discerning the shape of the rocks upon which she’d be dashed. He saw that they were very near land. At that moment, the gale tossed him out of the Tancook and suddenly his legs were underwater, his mouth filled with wet salt. He’d been thrown from the ship – they all had – and now they were being pitched by the waves. He pulled himself above the water and shook his head, trying to discern the features of the Tancook. He felt like a child looking frantically for its mother. He saw with relief that Val and the rest of the men were close by him in the water.

  Next the gale heaved them onto land, and they sat, and then stood on the rocky beach, coughing and spitting. The Tancook lurched onto the rocks and Val scrambled aboard her to release his brother from the wheel. John, his Cape Ann long blown away, stood in the rain watching his boat flounder in shallow water. “We’ll get help towing her out tomorrow,” he said.

  “She’s not beyond repair,” Richard added, yelling over the screams of the gale. “Her hull is all right.”

  Men from Trepassey arrived over the cusp of the beach, ready to welcome the stranded Banks fishermen into their homes. They were good boatbuilders here, too, John knew, and he’d need their skills soon to replace the foremast on the Tancook. Richard kept looking back at the schooner as he walked up the beach and into the village. It was hard to leave her in the water, looking so helpless like that. It didn’t feel right. He had grown to love that beautiful boat.

  The next day, he returned to the Trepassey beach and saw the wreckage of small boats still splashing about in the ferocious wind. Though the storm had not yet quieted itself, the dorymen of Placentia Bay and Trepassey were already at work on a new foremast for the Tancook. Richard saw that dozens of flakes here were flattened and that the wind had cracked the mainmast off a schooner moored in the harbour. He wondered about the damage along the South Coast, in Little Bay, and elsewhere on the Burin Peninsula. I don’t suppose our roof came in, he thought.

  He imagined Angela and the children fretting about him. Dark-haired Lizzie, just like her grandmother, was the youngest girl, and she would be worried the most, he knew. Rachel would not want to be alone with her fear for Jerry, and she would take her children up the hill to Angela’s. At least they could be together, he thought. But he did not envy them for their waiting.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The people of Placentia Bay, especially the Burin Peninsula, reckoned that the August Gale of 1927 was the region’s worst natural disaster. Although they could recall many gales and many tragedies of men lost at sea in squalls and hurricanes, the oldest of the old people could remember none worse than this one. That fall, they put all the stories together and spread them through the bay. In kitchens and in fishing rooms all over, they talked of little else. They remembered the men of the Hilda Gertrude, who had left the Burin Peninsula community of Rushoon in deep mourning. They spoke of how the wives of the Ella May’s crew had seen tokens, visions of their loved ones that portended their deaths, earlier that summer. Fate was cruel, they said, and merciless. The Annie Healey almost made it into Fox Harbour, everyone said regretfully over and over. But she hadn’t; she’d been bashed to pieces by waves gone mad, and all her crew lost. It was as if the people hoped they could change things if they repeated it often enough.

  Richard realized how lucky he, Val, John, and the crew of the Tancook had been that terrible night. If he and Val, in Dory Number 1, had been any later returning to the schooner, they might have perished. Any delay might have made a fateful difference. Or, if the Tancook hadn’t been such a well-built vessel, made of the finest wood, or if John had made a mistake or two in steering her back to the island, their voyage might have ended in disaster.

  When he thought of this, Richard felt deep down the vulnerability that stalked him all his life as a doryman. He thought of Robert Cheeseman of Burin Bay Arm who’d fished more than forty years, some of them with Old Steve, and of young Arch Keating from Salt Pond, who was just starting out in the Banks fishery and in life. Both of them were lost on the Joyce M. Smith out of Lunenberg, Nova Scotia. They weren’t even in their own country when they died, Richard thought. Somehow the idea of their deaths in a foreign sea left a bitterness on his tongue. Their bodies weren’t found, either, and never would be. Nor were those of any of their fellow dorymen, most of them Newfoundlanders.

  Richard felt damned lucky, even blessed. He had spent his whole life in his own country, which he loved, despite its wildness and moodiness. He had often felt the presence of God in his life. It wasn’t a strict religiousness, exactly. It happened sometimes when he danced, when he played the harmonica, when he looked at one of his children, when he loved his wife late at night. He wasn’t sure what to call it. He wished he had more book learning, so he could give things their proper name. That was his one regret.

  He didn’t really get such a thing – this blessed feeling, this closeness to God – from his parents. His father wasn’t religious. Old Steve’s mother, Susan Spencer from Marystown, had been Church of England and not deeply religious; she hadn’t drilled religion into her children. Steve said his prayers – Richard remembered how the Catholic men gathered to say the Angelus on the Laura Claire on his first spring trip – but it was a rote thing with Steve, a duty, like everything else. Richard reckoned that he knew even less of Elizabeth’s relationship to God, except that she was devoted to St. Anne, the Micmacs’ patron saint, who seemed even more important to her than God himself. He felt, though, that his mother had known God in a way his father had not.

  Richard wanted to thank God for sparing him during the Gale of 1927, but he wasn’t quite sure how to do it. He wanted to be a better man. But he told Angela of his intention and the reason for it, and she told him he
already was a good man. “You’d best carry on being yourself,” she smiled at him, and patted him on the back.

  Then he took to walking into Marystown every Sunday morning for Holy Mass. There was no church in Little Bay itself. There never had been. There was a church in Beau Bois, a mile or two away. It was beautiful, set in the dense fir woods that surrounded the circular harbour that opened into Placentia Bay. Sometimes Angela took the children there for Mass. On the way they passed the small valley in Little Bay, where long ago Richard had seen the fairies and come running home frightened. Lucy and Monica, the oldest girls, told the story while the younger children listened wide-eyed and their mother chuckled. “That’s why you need to have bread crumbs in your pockets,” she said. “So the fairies won’t bother you.” The little ones looked up at her and nodded solemnly. Every time they passed the valley, their bodies stiffened.

  Richard made solitary trips to the Marystown church whenever he was onshore. The walk was a long one. He traced the same route he had taken with Steve twenty years before when they’d set out for the Laura Claire, except now it was fall and he crossed the fjord in a dory, which they called the ferry. Then he went up the hill, glanced out to Shoal Point where his sister Mary Jane was now married to one of the Dobers – she had married a local boy and remained in Little Bay – and down the other side. It was some miles to Marystown, all alone, all silent. He loved this time. He spent it with his God, feeling thankful for all that he had been given and for being spared that awful night. He said a lot of prayers, too, for the men who had been lost and for the women and children they had left behind. He prayed fervently that Angela would not be left in such a situation.