Haunted Harbours (2 page)

“Go on,” Garnet said. “You're too young to call yourself a storyteller.”

“Do you think so?” I asked.

“If I'm wrong, prove it,” Garnet said.

I recognized a challenge when I saw it.

“Come here,” I said. “Let me show you something.”

I took him over to the map case and unrolled a great old map of Halifax.

“Look here,” I said. “See that beach? It's called Black Rock Beach.”

“If you're telling a story,” Garnet warned, “don't stop at one. I crave me an earful.”

“An earful you shall have.”

And I stood there in the heart of the Nova Scotia Archives, and began to tell the tale of Black Rock Beach…

1
THE PIECEMEAL
GHOST OF BLACK
ROCK BEACH
HALIFAX

A local expert in Halifax legal history told me that Halifax's central gallows were once located at the foot of what is now called George Street, very close to the modern-day ferry terminal. There was also a gallows on the South Common, now the site of the Victoria General Hospital, that was erected back on July 30, 1844, specifically for hanging a gang of convicted pirates.

For a very long time, a set of military gallows, complete with flogging post, stood in the heart of the Citadel Hill parade ground. It was the sight of this gallows and flogging post that prompted Prince Edward's lover and mistress, Julie de Saint-Laurent, to demand that he build her a separate manor, far away from such ugliness. Prince Edward responded by building the famed Prince's Lodge, where footpaths spelled out Julie's name and a brook chuckled merrily down into a heart-shaped pond.

There are still pieces of the public gallows stored at the Old Halifax Courthouse on Spring Garden Road. However, this story concerns another gallows that was erected at Black Rock Beach.

Black Rock Beach is a small open cove at the mouth of the Halifax Harbour, visible from the waterfront parking lot that overlooks Point Pleasant Park. The beach is too shallow to land anything larger than a sloop, but early Halifax settlers found another use for this particular promontory.

Black Rock Beach was the site of one of Halifax's earliest public gallows. The location was chosen because of its visibility. The gallows was a warning sign to sailors on any ship entering the harbour – this is Halifax, don't break the law here.

In 1762, Halifax was a pretty lawless place. France was one year away from ceding Canada to Britain, following their defeat in the Seven Years' War. It was a time of fear and harsh punishments.

A young man stood in the fringe of larch trees overlooking Black Rock Beach, staring at the Black Rock Beach gallows as if he could see his future there. His name was Patrick Tulligan. He was lean, in the way of young men who burn hot and fast. His hair was a wild tangled snarl, caught and knotted by the cold Atlantic wind. He stood in the woods overlooking the beach, staring at the gallows, the timber stark and silhouetted by the setting sun like black burnt bones.

The gallows were a new addition. Before that, the constables had simply dangled criminals from the branch of a standing beach oak. Hangings were more common than you might imagine. One man was hanged for stealing a silver spoon from a downtown tavern where he worked. A year later the spoon was found, beneath the tavern sink where it had fallen.

In fact there were an awful lot of ways to earn yourself a Halifax hanging back in the late 1700s. You could be hanged for offences as varied as murder, treason, rape, manslaughter, arson, highway robbery, polygamy, major theft, firing a gun with intent to injure, cutting a leak hole in a dyke, or unlawful impersonation of another person at a bail hearing. Occasionally, first-time offenders were simply branded with a letter burnt onto the ball of the right thumb. Second-time offenders were automatically hanged.

Patrick stood and stared as any wild young man might, wondering to himself if some day he'd be standing a whole lot closer to that gallows than he'd like.

“You're looking at your doom, Patrick me lad.”

Patrick turned. He'd been startled by the sudden voice so close to his ears.

It was Mad Meg, who walked the woods with a rope in her hand, searching for a milk cow who'd run off six years past. She was said to have the evil eye, for her one milky yellow left eye stubbornly stared in the wrong direction.

“Are you looking for your cow then, Meg?” Patrick said, unconcerned.

“Aye. She's not far gone. Just over the hill, I'll wager. I heard her lowing in the woodlands, and I'm close to catching her.”

Patrick laughed. Not a cruel laugh, but the laugh of a young man who rarely thinks things through.

“Meg, your cow's been gone for six long years. It's naught but bones and tangleweed, rotting in the dirt somewhere, or chewing fat grass in some farmer's pasture, or rendered down to night soil in the bottom of a thieving beggar's privy.”

Meg fixed him with her yellow eye, pointing at the gallows.

“Look long on that swinging collar of hemp, young Patrick, for you'll wear it as a forget-me-knot before the last summer wind blows the first leaf of autumn.”

Patrick laughed harder. Meg had been mad long before her cow had wandered off, and few paid her actions any heed. Still, it was whispered that she had the gift of second sight. Some swore she had the evil eye and could jinx anyone she didn't care for.

“You'll hang for three long decades and linger longer, I'll war-rant.”

He touched his fingertips to his collar, feeling the stubborn knot of his Adam's apple quivering beneath his outstretched thumb. Her words scared him, but he laughed to mask his fear. “Ha!” he scoffed. “How long can a rope hang?”

Meg wrapped her bit of cow-rope about her neck and curtseyed. “Long as memory. Longer than time. Longer than the tail of the wind.”

And then she turned and ran like an out-of-control windstorm. In a beat of a bird's wing she was gone, vanished like smoke up a chimney hole.

If he was rattled, Patrick wouldn't show it. He'd hand-hauled codfish and had nearly died in a half a dozen storms at sea. He'd stood and scrapped toe to toe with the biggest sailors this side of the Atlantic. Some he'd beaten and some had beaten him, but none ever dared call him a coward.

He walked the long path back to Halifax with the straps of his gunny sack chafing against his work-hardened shoulders, not realizing how soon it would be that he'd walk this path again and in what manner he would be forced to walk it.

Back then, as now, the streets of Halifax all rolled down to the sea to the harbour front, where the nastiest taverns poured the thinnest of ales and the women's laughter sounded like the clatter of coins. Halifax was a port city. Like today, there were plenty of places for a sailor to spend his money. Folks came and went like the passing of the tides. Everybody expected a profit.

Patrick had a girlfriend named Belinda Marywell, better known as “Belle of the Isle.” Belinda was born and raised on McNabs Island. He'd been seeing her for three months, a long time for a lad who'd once sworn he'd never be tied down.

“You'll stand before a preacher, yet,” Belinda swore.

“I'll face the hangman first,” Patrick allowed.

That night Patrick danced a jig, and not feeling the dark eyes of the innkeeper hanging upon the two of them, stole a kiss from Belinda.

The innkeeper, one Thomas Tanner, was a fat man with an evil disposition. He'd set his heart on the beautiful Belle of the Isle, and vowed she'd be his wife. But Patrick was too tough and had too many friends for Tanner to risk an open confrontation. Besides, there were better ways to get around an obstacle like Patrick.

“You'll dance your next jig on a higher dance floor than this,” Tanner swore.

One summer day a ship was robbed and sunk just off Devil's Island. The magistrates searched every tavern for likely suspects. It was an election year, and they were taking no chances. Thomas Tanner was more than glad to help them out. Palms were greased and strings tugged, and Patrick was sentenced for piracy.

Now everyone knew that Patrick, though a wild boy, was certainly no pirate. But the magistrates closed ranks about Tanner's testimony and would hear not one word in young Patrick's defense.

“You shall be whipped at the cart's tail to Black Rock Beach, where you will hang by the neck until death,” the judge pronounced, yet all Patrick could hear was the laughter of old Meg taunting him with her prophecy.

The town guard led Patrick down to Black Rock Beach with his hands tied to the back end of an ox cart, whipping him with a great long leather lash. They beat him every step of the way down to the gallows, a guardsman following behind Patrick's cart, laying his whip across Patrick's bare back. Down at the beach they slid the noose about Patrick's throat, snugging it closely to be certain that the knot would snap his neck properly.

Patrick looked wildly about in the crowd that had gathered to watch him drop, searching in vain for the long auburn tresses of his Belle of the Isle. She was nowhere in sight. All that he saw was the crowd, headed by the fat and smirking Thomas Tanner— and high on the slope of the hill looking down on the scene was Mad Meg. She waved her cow rope like a goodbye hankie at young Patrick. The last sound Patrick heard was Meg's laughter rising up like the call of the seagulls over the ever-returning tide.

As Patrick dropped through the trap door, the first leaf of autumn, coaxed by the late August wind, fell from the oak tree above the gallows. Some swore it was a sign that the good luck had run out of Halifax Harbour, but before the sun had fallen the beer mugs were raised in the waterfront taverns and folks forgot about the fate of the young late Patrick Tulligan. Yet across the harbour, Belle of the Isle watched from the shores of McNabs Island, her tears falling down and mixing with the salty Atlantic waves.

After the hanging, the hangman decided that it would be a fine idea to build a cage of iron about the boy's body and let him swing and hang there as a warning to sailors passing into Halifax Harbour.

Patrick hung in his cage with no one but the ravens to keep him company. His bones grew black and fungus stained them blacker still. After a time, even the flies found nothing to feast upon.

The years passed. The Halifax townsfolk forgot Patrick's name. It became a dare for young boys to run up the dark rock and touch the cage. It was whispered that if you got too close to the iron bars, a pair of black withered hands would reach out and grab you and drag you into the cage.

And all this time Belle of the Isle walked the beach of McNabs Island, gazing across at the withered remains of her long-lost lover. She never married, and her long auburn hair ran white as the foam-tossed waves. The passing sailors swore you could hear the sound of the wind running through her hair, the call of her lonely keening haunting the ocean air.

As Patrick's remains slowly rotted, Halifax continued to grow. Houses were built around Black Rock Beach, and those who lived within eyeshot began to complain about the gallows sticking out like a canker in the mouth of the harbour. It seems that old Patrick was bad for real estate values.

The city council decided it would be better to move the gal-lows to McNabs Island. Being good frugal Scots they dismantled the Black Rock Beach gallows piece by piece and rowed them by dory across the harbour to McNabs Island where they were reassembled. Nearly two hundred years later, in 1966, Thomas Raddall wrote a tale of Peter McNab and his family that centred around these very gallows. He called it “Hangman's Beach,” but that is a tale for another time.

The three R's, reduce, reuse, and recycle, were known even then, and the authorities decided to take Patrick with them to a new home on Hangman's Beach. But the bones that had hung for thirty long years were brittle with age. By the time the cage reached the dory, Patrick had fallen to pieces. His bones, broken and scattered too fine and too far to bother picking up, were left upon the beach for the crabs to pick over.

Even now, the fishermen say that on long lonely August nights you can hear Belle walking the McNabs Island beach line, calling out soft and low to her long-lost lover – “Patrick, oh, Patrick.”

And on certain August nights, a figure of a young man has been seen stooping and bending on Black Rock Beach, picking up pieces of something from the ground.

So if you're out there, on Black Rock Beach when the moon is hanging over the waters like a fat rotted pumpkin, and some strange fellow walks up to you and asks “Can you give me a hand?,” I believe I'd run if I were you.

2
THE RESTLESS
SPIRITS OF
DEVIL'S ISLAND
DEVIL'S ISLAND