The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wreck of the Mail Steamer, by Wilfred T. Grenfell

Title: The Wreck of the Mail Steamer

Author: Wilfred T. Grenfell

Illustrator: Anton Otto Fischer

Release Date: February 24, 2022 [eBook #67489]

Language: English

Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

The Northwest coast of Newfoundland is no favorite with our seafarers in the fall of the year. The long, straight, rock-bound shore line for eighty miles in one stretch, offers no shelter whatever even to the small vessels that ply to and fro along it in pursuit of their calling. Yet, as great shoals of codfish frequent the cold waters of the north shore of the Gulf, just as soon as the frozen sea permits it in spring, swarms of fishing craft, of all sizes, from all the Newfoundland coasts, and even from as far south as Gloucester, push their way “down North” in pursuit of the finny harvest. On the Newfoundland vessels women and children often come, the women helping to cure the fish and cook for the men, the children because they can’t be left behind.

Uncle Joe Halfmast had not been North for some years, for he had never liked the sea and, like many another of our handy fishermen, he had developed great talents as a carpenter. But this year the people of Wild Bight were building a church, and had induced Uncle Joe to come down and lead them. It was a late season; the fall weather had been so wet and “blustersome” that the men found it impossible to dry their fish for shipment as usual, and were consequently late getting ready for the return South. Moreover the church had to be sheathed in before Christmas, so that, when spring came round, the work would not have to be done over again.

The one little mail steamer which served three hundred miles of coast was unusually crowded with passengers and wrecked crews, and it had twice passed Wild Bight without calling on the southern journey, owing to the impossibility of making the Cove in northwest gales. Indeed every inch of space aboard her had been already occupied long before she reached us. Thus for three long weeks we had been waiting for a chance to go South.

Winter had set in in real earnest. Ice was making everywhere, and to offset our anxiety the whole Cove was secretly rejoicing that we might be compensated by Uncle Joe having to spend the winter with us. He was justified a little by the fact that everyone knew his attitude to rough seas, and that if he returned he had promised to take back with him Susie Carless’ derelict baby—a tiny piece of flotsam—with no natural guardian to “fare” for it. And near Christmas is no time for sending babies traveling round our northwest coast. Uncle Joe said nothing—he never did—and the church grew steadily under his hands.

“I’m not worrying,” was Uncle Joe’s motto, “I leave that to Him that watches over us,” he would add, if he was in a real talkative mood.

So as a matter of fact no one was surprised when, one day after Michaelmas, a familiar fussy whistle broke the absolute silence of the harbor just at the first streak of dawn, and kept restlessly repeating itself as if to say, “Last chance—last chance—last chance for the year. Hustle, hustle, hustle.” Sorry as they were to lose him, all hands went to help Uncle Joe off, and give the baby those last touches that only women’s hands are allowed “to be able for” on our coast.

All hands went to help Uncle Joe off

The little vessel was crowded, for her accommodation; badly overcrowded. But she was as fine a little sea vessel as money and human skill could make her and through many a gale of wind she had safely carried our friends. It was bitterly cold, the thermometer being actually away below zero, and our weatherwise people knew that something was brewing to windward that boded no good to a small boat however staunch, with only our long miles of harborless coast under her lea. Some at the risk of appearing self-interested, urged the old man to stay right on through the winter, and with that unbounded hospitality that is so universal a characteristic of our northern people were offering him a home, “baby and all.” But Uncle Joe’s philosophy is proof against any fears, indeed his faith is such real simple working material all through his life that the cynic calls it fatalism. So, as from those who saw St. Paul off on his long sea journey from the beach at Ephesus, not a few prayers went up for their friend and his helpless charge, as the little column of smoke once more disappeared into the sullen darkness that hung on the horizon under the southern sky, while the ominous soughing of the sea note on the rocks sent all hands back to make everything fast, even about the small homes on the land.

The storm did not actually break till after dark that night but slow come is long last with us, and it will be still longer before the memory of that Christmas gale ceases to blow in our memories.

The mail steamer was lost in it, violently blown out of the water on that evil coast. But these happenings are not strange in our world and we never got the story till the following year when one fine Sunday morning I happened to drop into young Harry Barney’s home, a little wooden cottage on the glorious sandy beach at L’Anse au Loup in Labrador.

Harry was enjoying a morning pipe of peace, with his darky embryo Vikings playing round the door. This was my reward for a Sunday visit. For it is as easy to catch a weasel asleep as Harry with time to burn from midnight Sunday till the next Day of Rest comes round.

A big liner had run ashore close to us only a week before, and was now an abandoned wreck lying well out of water on the north side of Burnt Island, so we fell to talking of wrecks, and the topic of the loss of our mail steamer came up. To my amazement he said, “Yes, I knows about her, doctor, I was fireman aboard when she was cast away.”

“You? What have you to do with steamers?”

“Oh, they shipped me and poor Cyril Manstock as they couldn’t get men south. I’d acted runner before, but it was Cyril’s first voyage, and he died after of consumption, as you know. They says it was that chill did it.”

“Tell us about it, Harry. We heard that a dog saved all hands by carrying a line ashore. I’ve been crazy to get the facts from an eye witness.”

“I wasn’t much of an eye witness till we were high and dry, but I saw the dog do his bit, doctor, and he certainly did it all right.”

“We knew below decks by six o’clock—that’s just at dark—that it would be a fight for life,” he began. “What was left of our coal was all dust, and we’d had trouble keeping steam with it even in smooth water. We were anchored then, right on the straight shore, landing some freight for the village at Cowhead. The wind was already rising and the sea beginning to make.

“My watch was from eight to twelve. But I was a new hand and wanted to give her every chance, so I went on at six to watch that the fires were kept clear and a good head of steam when we made a start. It did seem an awful time delaying, and I wished a hundred times that we would throw that freight overboard.

“I guess I was a bit excited. But when at last the bell did go, we were all ready below. It was a hard fight, however, from the first. For the boat was small and we knew she couldn’t do much in a dead hard sea. Her propeller comes out and she races, and it’s no soft job trying to fire at the best of times. She wasn’t so bad first out in the spring either. But like everything else, she had run down with hard usage and at the end of the long season she couldn’t do her best by a long way. However, as I said, we had a full head of steam when the gong rang at last and, for a time, it looked as if we might make it by standing right out to sea.

“The fierce dust in the stokehole from the powdery coal, and the heavy and quick rolling soon made our eyes blind and our throats dry, and before my watch was out at midnight I just had to go up for water. I found the doors were all sealed up with ice, so had to crawl out through a ventilator to get that drink. I hadn’t been up two minutes, it seemed, before the chief sent for me to hurry down again, as the steam was going back. I was only second fireman really on my watch, but the first, a Frenchman who had been at it seven years, was an oldish fellow and was getting all in. At midnight watches were called but both of us stuck to it for we were losing steam again. Water was now washing up over the plates of the engine room, and we were wet and badly knocked about by the ship rolling us off our legs when we tried to shovel in coal.

“At two o’clock the old man gave in altogether and went up, and I never saw him again until it was all over. Cyril was in as trimmer, and he came in to help me. Every time I opened the fire box door Cyril would grab me by the waist and hold on hard, but in spite of it I got thrown almost into the fire one time by the ship diving as I let go to throw the coal in.”

Harry here showed me a big scar across his arm and one on his face. “I got these that time,” he remarked, “just to remember her by.

“The water was rising then in the engine room, and the pumps had got blocked so we couldn’t pump it out. We didn’t think she was leaking but we heard after some port holes had been stove in, and she took in water every time she rolled. We got the pumps to work again after a while. But the doors being frozen up above we had no way to get rid of our ashes, and they were washing all around in the engine room, and it was impossible to keep the runways clear.

“The worst of it was that now the water was in the bunkers, and mixed up with the coal making it into a kind of porridge. It was just like black mud to handle, and you couldn’t get it off the shovel until you banged the blade against the iron firebars.

“So steam began to drop again, and went so low that our electrics nearly went out and we got repeated orders from the bridge for more steam and more steam. It appears we were making no headway at all with only 80 pounds pressure and, in fact, were slowly being driven sideways into the cliffs. We worked all we could, but things went from bad to worse, the water rose and splashed up against the fire box making clouds of steam, so though the dust was laid, what with the steam and the darkness, and the long watch, we couldn’t keep her going. Moreover it seemed as if we would be drowned like rats below there, and I tell you we wouldn’t have minded being on deck, cold as it was.

“We heard afterwards that one of the stewards had been fishing on this part of the coast. He knew every nick and corner, and said there was a little sandy cove round St. Martin’s Cape, where a small head of rock might break the seas enough to let us land, for they knew on deck now that the ship was doomed. For my part I knew nothing, but that work as we would the steam gauge would not rise one pound. Beyond that, what happened didn’t even interest us. We hadn’t time to worry about danger.

“One sea did, however, make us madder than others. Something had been happening on deck. The heavy thumps like butting ice had reached us down below. It turned out to be the lifeboat that had been washed out of davits and went bumping all down the deck, clearing up things as it went. Anyhow something came open and as we were getting coal from the lea bunkers a lot of icy water came through the gratings and washed us well down, sweaty and grimy as we were. Somehow that seemed to set my teeth again, and we had the satisfaction of seeing the steam crawl once more to 100 pounds.

“The bridge must have got on to it at once and noticed we were making headway again. The fact was we were now rounding the Cape called Martin’s Head. We knew they knew, for they again called us for still more steam—thinking we had got the top hand. It so happened that a long shoal known as the whale’s back was now the only barrier we had to weather. But till this spurt hope of doing it had almost gone. Well, all I know is that suddenly there was a scrape—a bumpety, bumpety, bump, and then a jump that made us think we were playing at being an aeroplane—and then on we went as before. She was making water more rapidly, but beyond that we knew nothing. It was rising now to our knees, nearly, and any moment might flood the fires. We had actually been washed right over the tail end of the whale-back reef, the tremendous ground sea having tipped us right over, almost without touching.

“They say it was only ten minutes or so more to the end—it seemed hours. The motion had changed and we knew we were before the sea. Then suddenly there was a heavy bump, that made us shiver from deck to keel on, then she seemed to stop, take another big jump, and then do the whole thing once more. We were on the beach and the water was flooding into the hold.

“Cyril had gone some time before, played out. I could see nothing for steam but waded towards the ‘alloway’ into the engine room. There also everything was pitch dark but I knew by feeling which way to go. It seemed a long while, but at last I found the ladder, and made a jump to hustle out of the rising water. My head butted into something soft as I did so. It was our second engineer—he had been at his post till the end.

“There was only one chance now for escape. It was the ventilator. I was proud I had learnt that in the night. It did not take me long to shin up through it and drop on the companion clinging onto the edge.

“The icy wind chilled me to the bone and sheets of spray were frozen over everything. A sea striking her at that moment washed right over me, but before the next came I was behind the funnel, hanging on for life to one of the stays. Another dive between seas landed me in the saloon and from there I dropped down, and climbed to the foc’sle to get some dry clothes.”

“That’s all you know, I suppose?”

“About all,” he answered, “except that I had to go some miles when I landed to get shelter, and got no food till next night.”

“Did anyone thank you for your work?”

“Not yet,” he answered with a smile.

“What steam had she when you struck the last time?” I asked.

“A full hundred pounds,” and a gleam of joy that endures lit his eyes—that joy that assures us of the real significance of life.

I was admiring the church at Wild Bight this fall—having blown in—in one of our periodical medical rounds. Nothing was further from my mind than the wreck of the previous winter when suddenly I noticed the familiar features of old Uncle Joe peering at me from behind a pillar. In a moment I saw him again, leaving the harbor with his precious baby, and I wondered how it had all ended.

“Well you see, Doctor, about daylight the ladies’ cabin got flooded out and they were all driven out of that; all the passengers that could crowded into the little saloon on deck. The baby did not seem to mind it at all and as there was no use going on deck, even if we had been able, that’s where I took it. After we struck, however, and the seas were washing partly over the ship I went out to see if there were any chance for us. The captain, who had never left the bridge, was there. His cheeks were all frostbitten. He had already launched a boat and was trying to get some men landed.

“It was broad daylight, a little after midday, and we were right under a big cliff, so close that you could almost touch it. The projecting head of the cliff sheltered the forepart of the vessel fairly well, but a thundering surf was beating on the beach. The boat was soon glad to be hauled in again. She was smashed and filled, and the men had nearly been lost. So we all fell to it, and tried to get a line ashore.

“There were men there now from the shore who had seen us. They were watching us from above the breakers, and evidently understood what we were doing. For when at last we flung the line into the water, they rushed down and tried to get it. But the backwash carried it always beyond their reach. One of them ran up to a cottage near-by and came back with a jigger, and as the seas washed the rope along, tried to fling it over, and hook the line. But they somehow couldn’t do it.

“Then I suddenly saw there was a big dog with them, rushing up and down, and barking as they tried for the line. All of a sudden, after they seemed to have done their best and failed, the dog rushed down into the sea, held the rope in his teeth till the tide ran out, and then backed with it till the men grabbed it. They took the line up the cliff, and I helped rig a chair on it in which we tied the passengers, and so sent them every one ashore safely. No, I didn’t even get my feet wet myself. You see I had my rubbers on. The baby? Oh, I tied the baby up in a mail bag and sent him ashore by himself. They told me when they opened the bag to see what was in it, the baby just smiled at them, as if it had only been having a bit of a rock in the cradle of the deep.

After they seemed to have failed, the dog rushed down into the sea, held the rope in his teeth....

“We were home for Christmas after all. And somehow, Doctor, I had my mind made up to how it would be about that when I said good-bye to them that morning at Wild Bight.

“The folks all got together and gave that dog a hundred dollar collar but the poor owner had to sell the dog, collar and all, a little later to get food.”