Sail the Wild Seas: Stories of the North Atlantic

Flanker Press Limited

St. John’s

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Parsons, Robert Charles, 1944-, author

Sail the wild seas : stories of the North Atlantic / Robert C. Parsons.

Includes index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77117-662-0 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77117-663-7 (EPUB).--

ISBN 978-1-77117-664-4 (Kindle).--ISBN 978-1-77117-665-1 (PDF)

1. Shipwrecks--Newfoundland and Labrador--History. 2. Shipwreck

survival--Newfoundland and Labrador--History. 3. Seafaring life--

Newfoundland and Labrador--History. 4. Newfoundland and Labrador--

History. I. Title. II. Title: Stories of the North Atlantic.

FC2170.S5P37174 2018 971.8 C2018-902829-7

C2018-902830-0

————————————————————————————————————————————————————------——

© 2018 by Robert C. Parsons

all rights reserved. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.

Printed in Canada

Cover design by Graham Blair

Flanker Press Ltd.

PO Box 2522, Station C

St. John’s, NL

Canada

Telephone: (709) 739-4477 Fax: (709) 739-4420 Toll-free: 1-866-739-4420

www.flankerpress.com

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 157 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Contents

1 Hedley Lake, Survivor of the SS Caribou

When the enemy torpedoed the SS Caribou in October 1942, less than half the 238 crew and passengers survived. Royal Navy man Hedley Lake vividly describes his ordeal.

2 The Orion is Missing

A ship disappears. No one is left to tell the tale. Behind the questions and speculations of how and why and where are the stories of those left behind to struggle on and to raise a family.

3 Derelicts of the Atlantic

Abandoned ships: deadly ghosts of the Atlantic lurking just at sea level to sink their next victim. Newfoundland and Labrador has had its share. Here are the tales of some of these deadly traps.

4 An Epic of the Sea

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an epic narrates achievements of one or more heroes. The twists and turns leading to the final fate of the Coronet must be that.

5 The Unusual Adventures of the Kromhout

Piracy, smuggling, kidnapping on the North Atlantic. The strange tale of the Kromhout takes place off our shores; its last days were in Conception Bay.

6 Heroism at Portuguese Cove

A vessel runs aground on a wild night. One man volunteers to go over the side through the breakers and jagged rocks in an attempt to rescue all. This Newfoundland mariner epitomizes heroism.

7 Saved on Sunday . . . with God’s Grace

Seven and a half days adrift in a lifeboat off southern Newfoundland. Shear luck and divine providence, plus the timely arrival of some Trepassey fishermen, helped save six lives.

8 Newfoundlanders on the Fame

Our people went to the Boston States by the hundreds to find work on land and sea. This is the tale of eight of them on the rammed Fame—some survived; others perished.

9 A Sea Mystery Solved

A coal carrier disappears in 1912; south coast fishermen find the missing vessel under unusual circumstances ten years later. Does Newfoundland have its own Devil’s Triangle?

10 Fifty-five Hours Marooned on an Ice Pan

The captain, crew, passengers, police, and prisoner leave Trinity Bay for St. John’s, but off Cape St. Francis the ship strikes a raft of ice. A tiny white light helps keep two survivors from an icy grave.

11 Lightning Strikes Again, and Again, and Again

Tropical rain and windstorms off Newfoundland are often accompanied by intense lightning strikes. The chances of a bolt hitting a schooner? Very high, according to this tale.

12 Yankee Notions

A Prince Edward Island ship with American shop goods sails to the dangerous waters off Newfoundland, but was Captain Wightman fully prepared for a rugged coastline and a mid-winter storm?

13 The Tragic Footnote to the Monterey’s Wreck

The cattle salvaged from a Saint Pierre wreck stampede. Newfoundlanders look for work on the roundup but with unexpected and tragic results.

14 Two Brave Newfoundlanders

Philip Fiander, with two broken legs and no oilskins or warm clothes, survives a wreck. Marooned on a rock, he tries to save himself and his fellow Newfoundland shipmates.

15 Fire on the Caspar

Fire at sea is one of the most dreaded events to happen on a ship. To stay and fight or to abandon a moving ship prove equally dangerous to these sailors off Newfoundland’s coast.

16 A Survivor Speaks: The Wreck of the Canima

The passenger ship Canima strikes a column of rock, but a high, narrow gulch separates the survivors from safety on the main land. One of those rescued gives a first-hand description of what actually happened.

17 The Man Who Was Almost Mistaken for a Seal

Twenty-six perished in the wreck of the Huntsman on the icefields off Labrador. Solomon French was one who survived. His story is one of faith and a will to live.

18 The Year of the Great Storm

Many are the tail ends of tropical hurricanes that ravaged Newfoundland and Labrador. But the fall storm of 1775 was one of the worst, claiming hundreds of lives, especially in Conception Bay.

19 An Outstanding Feat on a Lucky Day

When the tug Rouella went down, five survived and five died. Captain Filetto stumbled upon those still alive, saying, Those five men were lucky boys, and here’s why.

20 Adrift: A Story of Endurance and Luck

Two Newfoundland fishermen are adrift in an open dory for thirty-one hours without water or food. Forced to eat codfish eyes for nourishment and fluids, they prepare themselves spiritually and mentally for death.

21 Saved by British Steamers

With their schooner battered and defeated by a winter storm, the six crew of the Novelty would abandon ship in mid-Atlantic, if only a rescue ship would come into sight before the schooner went down.

22 The Newfoundland Who Returned a Favour

The Newfoundland dog is known the world over for its loyalty, endurance, intelligence, and its ability to save a life. Snug was this, twice over.

23 The Days Before Christmas: Wreck of the Milton

The Milton catches fire in the mid-Pacific. The California coast is 1,200 miles away. Captain McArthur, his wife, two small children, and a few crew get into one of three lifeboats. The remaining twenty crew board the other two. Only some of them would make land many weeks later.

Appendix A: Loss of the Orion

Appendix B: A Partial List of Bay Roberts Crew Lost in the Wreck of the Huntsman, April 28, 1872

Index

A Slice of Life

Talking with Survivors

I have known the hero of this first story—Mr. Hedley Lake of Fortune and a veteran of World War II—for many years. Yet it was not until 2015 that I went to his home to interview him regarding his wartime experiences, especially the high-seas drama on the war victim SS Caribou. His story was riveting, and I’d like to retell it here.

But first I have to backtrack. I also knew his friend from the Royal Navy, the late Mac Piercey, also of Fortune and a survivor, like Hedley, of the SS Caribou.

I met Mac after I became a member of the Royal Canadian Legion in Grand Bank, and he would come to meetings and often conduct the election of officers. In the course of our conversations there, Mac indicated he would be delighted to come to my elementary-grade class to speak of his wartime experiences, i.e. the Caribou. At that time I was at the midpoint of my career as an educator in Partanna Academy, Grand Bank.

Indeed, Mac did come and relate his tales to my young and appreciative class. This would have been in the days leading up to Armistice Day, November 11, 1990.

His description and talk in the class question-and-answer session were so unique and riveting that, with Mac’s help, I wrote an article which appeared in the magazine Newfoundland Lifestyle of October 1991. It was the story of the sinking of the SS Caribou by an enemy torpedo on October 14, 1942, and his surviving the ordeal.

It was one of the first stories of mine to appear in Newfoundland Lifestyle, a popular magazine at that time, leading me to believe that perhaps I could write sea stories for a wider audience.

However, that early article appeared under the name B. Porter, a pseudonym for Robert P. The editor of the magazine at the time didn’t want two articles in the magazine by the same writer, hence one, Good Fortune = Prosperity, Charm, and History, was under my name, and the second, Mac—A Man to Remember, was bylined with the name B. Porter.

But to get back to another hero of the sea and a survivor of the Caribou. I talked to Hedley Lake at length on November 12, 2015. That was twenty-five years after the late Mac Piercey had come to my class. By then Hedley was one of two survivors of the Caribou still alive. The other, at that time, was Mr. Percy Moores of Botwood.

So it is, good reader, that in a similar style to the above, I will introduce and supplement the stories appearing in this volume with information from my perspective. Information on how a story came to be, background details of my early life, influences on my writing, or certain other publication details.

I’ve always been interested in the process of where stories come from and thought you might be as well. Of course, for those who only wish to read about the Atlantic and its manifestations, you can cheerfully skip these tidbits.

1 Hedley Lake, Survivor of the SS Caribou

Fortune, Channel–Port aux Basques, West Coast

Hedley Lake survived the sinking of the SS Caribou. When I spoke to him in November 2015, he was then ninety-seven years old but with a memory as sharp as a tack.

When asked why he had survived when so many others perished, he said that he had learned to swim as a youth in the harbour of his hometown of Fortune. That along with the fact he was incredibly lucky, and also because he was in great physical shape. And in mind and body he still is today, owing, he claims, to a good diet of fresh fruit and vegetables and a healthy outlook on life.

On October 14, 1942, he and twenty-four other Newfoundland seamen of the Royal Navy (RN) were coming home to Newfoundland. He was on a twenty-eight-day leave after serving for two years in Alexandria, Egypt, in the Mediterranean, where the British had a fleet of ships.

Lake was on the Nova Scotia–to–Newfoundland ferry Caribou when it was struck by a torpedo from the German submarine U-69 when the ferry was about thirty-seven kilometres from its home port of Port aux Basques. It was nearly 4:00 a.m., the darkest hour of the morning, and the ferry was positioned at 47.19 north, 59.28 west.

The Caribou went down in five minutes in a blaze of fire, leaving 137 men, women, and children to drown or perish in the chilling Gulf of St. Lawrence. On its last and fateful voyage it carried 237 people: forty-six crew, seventy-three civilian passengers, and 118 service passengers (military). Hedley, along with Mac Piercey, his bunkmate and fellow RN man from Fortune, was among the 101 survivors.

Produced to commemorate the loss of the SS Caribou, this poster was first published in 1944 by H. Thornhill of Corner Brook. It was also sold door to door in Newfoundland and Labrador. Monies raised went to support the many widows and orphans, especially in Channel–Port aux Basques and area, left impoverished by the catastrophe.

Built in Rotterdam in 1925, the 265-foot-long Caribou had a gross weight of 2,222 ton and was equipped with an engine designed to develop about 3,000 horsepower and could get a speed up to 14.5 knots. The ferry was operated by the Newfoundland Railway, steaming between North Sydney and Port aux Basques. After its first captain, L. Stevson, passed away, Captain Britton had a short command, and he was followed by Captain Benjamin Tavernor of Trinity. Tavernor, still in command when his vessel encountered the sub, perished along with his two sons, Harold and Stanley, who had been his first and third mates.

On the final mid-October night, the Caribou was escorted by the HMCS Grandmère, a minesweeper. High command figured night crossings (three a week) were safer, and the Grandmère, following behind, ran guard duty on the ferry.

It was not to be. German sub commander Ulrich Gräf and his enemy sub were on patrol in the Gulf, looking for victims. It was lights out aboard the Caribou; regulations meant a darkened ship.

I can still see it all in my mind, says Hedley, who was one of about ten or eleven Royal Navy men who escaped with their lives. "The picture of the Caribou and events of what happened are as clear as if it were yesterday."

My family had no idea I was on the way back to Fortune on leave. During the war such information was censored; no military personnel could reveal where they were or where they were heading.

I was asleep in my top bunk; Mac Piercey [since deceased] was in the bottom. In the dark and rushing water I lost contact with Mac but plowed through chest-high water to the deck. I knew it had to be a torpedo that hit us.

I couldn’t see my uniform in the dark and left with no clothes on. Oddly, there was no noise, quiet, only pitch black before I made the deck.

In five minutes the Caribou went under, afire and in a blaze of light. There was an explosion when it sank. When I reached the deck, I didn’t have to jump but slid into the water gently. I was holding my lifebelt for a while but gave to a woman I saw in the water. I don’t know what became of her after.

The sinking ship drifted quickly past me, but I could see one lifeboat was still in its davits and full of people. It never became unattached and went down with the vessel with all aboard.

I could swim, for as a boy in Fortune harbour we learned in a saltwater pool located about where the marine dock is now. After keeping myself afloat and swimming for about an hour, it was just breaking daylight. I spotted a dark object about two miles away and swam for it. It was a life raft full of people and half-submerged. The crowd aboard pulled me in, and I sat naked on the bottom of the boat, for I left my clothes aboard the sinking ferry, with cold water up over my legs and stomach.

Strange, while I was swimming I was fairly warm, but in the lifeboat I shivered and shook with cold—I was naked in the cold morning air. Perhaps the sea water was warmer.

With Hedley Lake in the lifeboat were civilians and servicemen of Canada, Newfoundland, Britain, and the USA. They spent two or three hours in the Gulf of St. Lawrence before the Grandmère, after an unsuccessful search for the submarine, returned to the scene of the sinking.

Lake recalled they were taken from the life raft by the Grandmère’s crew and carried to Sydney, Nova Scotia, where there were better hospital facilities than in Port aux Basques. By now he had someone