The Boat Who Wouldn't Float (11 page)

In order to regain our mooring at the government wharf we cut off the gas while well off shore, let the engine die, and then used our little dory to tow the schooner ignominiously to her berth.

The skipper of the
Jeannie Barnes
diagnosed our trouble in a wink. “Your checks is wore out,” he told us.

We politely asked what checks were and he explained tolerantly that they were small brass valves which controlled the water circulation through the cooling system.

“Where,” I asked, “can we get new ones?”

“Well, I suppose you got to go to St. John's, me son. Only place you're likely to find 'em.”

There seemed to be a conspiracy on foot to send us back to the grey capital of Newfoundland.

Fortunately Trepassey possessed a telegraph station from
which I dispatched a long, somewhat garbled but urgent
S.O.S.
to the one man in St. John's upon whom I knew I could depend. His name was Mike Donovan and he was then the Director of Provincial Library Services. While stationed in Holland after the end of the Second World War Mike Donovan stole a German v-2 rocket. After painting it blue, building a wooden conning tower on it, and brazenly calling it a one-man submarine, he shipped it back to Canada as a glorious souvenir. I felt that a man of Donovan's talents could surely help us out of our dilemma.

Mike delivered true to form. The following day, the inhabitants of Trepassey were electrified to see a small pickup truck come bucking across the caribou barrens behind the village. It made its way erratically in leaps and bounds to the government wharf. A very drunken, very Irish, very voluble little man tumbled out of it and identified himself as “a friend to old Mike, ye know.”

He was also a friend to us. At considerable risk to life, limb, and his precious little truck, he delivered to us two sets of checks and the nine bottles remaining out of the case of rum Mike had entrusted to him.

We did not grudge the little man his cut. He had earned it fair and square.

The skipper of the
Jeannie Barnes
shared some of the rum with us and in turn repaired our engine and presented us with several very old and incredibly dirty charts. He also gave us compass courses designed to keep us clear of Cape St. Mary's and to assist us in crossing the wide mouth of mighty Placentia Bay although, as he unnecessarily pointed out:

“They won't be all that much good to you without you find a compass better'n that bate-up old piece of junk you got.”

Despite his pessimism about our chances, we were grateful to him and we were sorry to see him go when, late one afternoon, he cast off his lines and his boat went grumbling off into the fog, trusting to her battered radar set to show her the way to her next port-of-call.

We never saw her or her crew again. Three weeks later the
Jeannie Barnes
was missing. The body of the red-headed little boy was picked up in a cod net a few miles off the Southern Shore. The bodies of the skipper and the mate were never found. The Barnes had been returning to St. John's in heavy fog, with her old radar out of order, when she disappeared.

Probably she was cut down by a foreign dragger which had been taking advantage of the fog to fish inside the three-mile limit—but only the unanswering sea will ever know what really happened.

 

10.
The foggy, foggy dew

W
E SPENT
five days waiting for good weather before reaching the conclusion that to wait was vain. Good weather and Trepassey did not go together.

So early on the sixth day we cast off our lines, started the bullgine, and steamed off into the fog. We now had a definite destination in mind, if not in view. We had given up our original intention of sailing to the tropics because it was clear from a scrutiny of our log that, even if we maintained our current rate of progress, it would take us sixteen months
to reach the Caribbean; twenty-nine months to reach the Azores; and seven and a half years to reach the South Pacific. We did not have that much time. Consequently we chose as our alternative the island of St. Pierre.

While hardly tropical in character, and able to boast of no brown-skinned
wahines
, this little island did offer certain compensations. It was a foreign land, flying the French flag. It was, and remains, famous for having the cheapest and most abundant supply of alcohol to be found anywhere on or near the North American continent. But perhaps St. Pierre's greatest attraction for us was that it lay no more than one hundred and twenty miles to the westward of Trepassey and only a few miles off the south coast of Newfoundland. We felt we had at least a chance of reaching St. Pierre before winter closed in upon us.

Visibility in Trepassey harbour itself was surprisingly good as we set out. We
almost
saw the fish plant, and we certainly knew where it was because the wind was blowing from it to us. Once, as we thundered through the harbour channel, we caught an indistinct glimpse of land off the port bow. It may have been Powles Head, the entry landmark. If so, it was the last landmark we were to see for a long time to come.

Trepassey Bay was black with fog. We had gone no more than a mile when, faint-heart that I am, I decided it would be hopeless to proceed.

“Jack,” I said as firmly as I could, “we'll have to put back
to harbour. There isn't a chance we're going to find St. Pierre in fog like this. Considering the state of that bleeding compass, we're more likely to end up in Ireland instead.”

Jack fixed me with a cold stare and there was no mistaking the threat of mutiny in his voice:

“The hell you say! Mowat, if you turn back now I swear I'll do an Enos. I'll leave you to rot in Trepassey harbour to the end of your born days! Besides, you silly bastard, how do you think you're going to
find
Trepassey again? I'm going below to work out a course to clear Cape Pine. You keep this boat heading as she is or else…!”

He vanished and I was alone with my thoughts. I had to admit he had a point. Although we had found Trepassey harbour once in heavy fog we weren't likely to be as lucky a second time, and the rocks and reefs on both sides of the entrance were particularly fearsome and unforgiving. Also I was pretty sure Jack would make good his threat, supposing we did regain the harbour, and the prospect of being marooned alone with
Happy Adventure
in Trepassey was too horrible to contemplate. The lesser of two evils would be to continue out to sea. I held the little vessel “steady as she goes,” but with my free hand I pulled out my own personal bottle of rum from its hiding place in the lazaret, and poured a good dollop overboard for the Old Man.
Happy Adventure
puttered blindly on into the dark and brooding murk and I was soon fog-chilled, unutterably lonely, and scared to death. Since rum is a known and accepted antidote for all three conditions I took a long, curative drink for each separate ailment. By the time Jack reappeared on deck I was much easier in my mind.

By 1000 hours we had run the required distance to clear Cape Pine (distance run was measured on an ancient brass patent log towed astern of the vessel), and were ready to alter course to the northwest, to begin the twenty-mile crossing of the mouth of St. Mary's Bay. But now a problem arose—we did not have the faintest idea what our compass error was on such a course. All we could do was alter ninety degrees
to the north and hope we were actually sailing northwest despite what the compass had to say about it.

The knowledge that we were by then in close proximity to St. Shotts did nothing to bring me peace of mind. Having once been to St. Shotts by land, as a visitor, I had no desire to return to it unexpectedly by sea, as a piece of business. The bare possibility gave me such a bad attack of shivering that I had to send Jack down below to check the pumps while I took another cure.

It was a curious thing, but whenever I felt a pressing need to reach for the bottle Jack seemed perfectly willing, and even anxious, to nip below and give me privacy. Sometimes he even anticipated my need. At the time I thought this was only happy coincidence. But at the conclusion of the passage when I was cleaning up in the engine room, I found, under a pile of rags, a bottle that was the twin of the one I kept hidden in the lazaret. Like mine, it was completely empty.

The crossing of St. Mary's Bay began uneventfully. There was not a breath of wind. There was very little sensation of movement because there were no reference points for the eye to find. We seemed poised and immobile in the centre of a bowl of calm and leaden water a hundred feet or so in circumference.

This was a region where we knew we could expect to encounter other vessels, particularly draggers and fishing schooners, with the consequent danger of collisions. Being without radar we had to rely on other boats to spot us and keep out of our way. Nor could we have heard their fog-horns above the roar of the bullgine. We ourselves did not need a fog-horn-the engine made more noise than any horn could have done.

Just after noon the fog to starboard suddenly grew black as the shadowy shape of a vessel came into view about fifty yards away. She was a big power schooner on a converging course with us and her rail was lined with gesticulating figures.

We were so glad to see other human beings in this void that we ran close alongside and stopped our engine. The big
schooner did likewise and the two vessels drifted side by side. “Where you bound, Skipper?” someone called across to us.

“St. Pierre,” I cried back. “Heading to clear Cape St. Mary's with a five-mile offing.”

There was a long thoughtful silence from our neighbour. And then:

“Well, byes, I don't see how you're going to do it steering the course you is. Unless, that is, you plans to take her up the Branch River, carry her over the Platform Hills, and put her on a railroad train. If I was you, I'd haul off to port about nine points. Good luck to ye!”

The diesels of the big vessel started with a roar and she pulled clear of us and disappeared.

We altered
ten
points to the southward just to be sure. The lubber line on the compass now indicated we were steaming south into the open ocean on a course for Bermuda. As the hours went by we found this increasingly unsettling to the mind. Was the schooner skipper correct, or was he wrong? The compass insisted he was very wrong indeed. We stewed over the matter until mid-afternoon, by which time we had lost all confidence in compass, schooner skipper, and ourselves.

At this juncture the bullgine took our minds off our navigational problems. It gave a tremendous belch. A huge cloud of blue smoke burst out of the companionway. I plunged below and grabbed for the fire extinguisher, expecting to find the entire engine room aflame. However all that had happened was that the exhaust stack had blown off at its junction with the engine, allowing exhaust gases and bits of white-hot carbon to fill the little cabin. The engine continued to run, if anything, a little better, since there was no back pressure from the stack.

There was also no longer anything between the hot exhaust and the bilges of the boat in which floated a thin but ever present scum of gasoline.

I held my breath, screwed my eyes tight shut, groped for the ignition wire, and pulled it off. Then I fled back on deck.

The bullgine wheezed to a stop and Jack and I sat in the
ensuing, overwhelming silence and discussed our situation. It was not a cheerful prospect that we faced.

There was no way we could repair the exhaust stack without access to a welding torch. There was no wind and we could not sail, and so without the engine we would be doomed to sit where we were until something happened. That might be a long time but when something
did
happen we could be pretty sure it would be the wrong thing. There was apparently nothing for it but to restart the engine and hope she would not backfire and blow us all to Kingdom Come.

Leaving me to cogitate upon the problem Jack took advantage of the silence to slip below and turn on our small battery radio in an attempt to get a weather forecast. We could not use this radio while the engine was running because it was impossible to hear the tinny, indistinct sound that came out of it. Now, by pressing his ear against the speaker. Jack could hear the strains of cowboy music from Marystown Radio across Placentia Bay. Because it served a fishing community Marystown Radio gave the weather at frequent intervals.

Happy Adventure
lay as silent as a painted ship upon a painted ocean—one painted in unrelieved tones of grey. After five or ten minutes Jack reappeared on deck.

“Farley,” he said quietly, too quietly, “you aren't going to want to believe this, but they're putting out a general storm warning. There's a tropical storm coming in from the southwest and it's due here in ten hours, more or less. They're predicting winds of sixty knots!”

We got out the charts, spread them on the deck, and pored over them. First Jack would pour, then I would pour. This made us feel better, but it did not do us a great deal of practical good because we did not know exactly where we were. In truth, we didn't have a clue as to where we were. However assuming we had cleared Cape St. Mary's and were crossing the mouth of Placentia Bay—a fifty-mile-wide traverse—we found by the chart that we could not be less than
eighty miles from St. Pierre. Under full engine power
Happy Adventure
could manage five knots. In ten hours' time this would have put us thirty miles short of the haven of St. Pierre and we knew that if the tropical storm arrived on schedule, thirty miles might just as well be three hundred.

The nearest port in which we could hope to find shelter appeared to be Placentia Harbour, twenty-five or thirty miles to the northward of Cape St. Mary's, on the east coast of the great bay.

I was rather afraid to suggest we try for Placentia Harbour, expecting another mutinous response from Jack. But he appeared to have had his fill of excitement, and he agreed
that, yes, perhaps we should put in there for the night.

He went below and cautiously started the bullgine. We reset the patent log to zero and put the vessel on what we trusted (trust was all we had) was the correct course for Placentia Harbour.

It grew bitter cold and the fog began to close in tighter and tighter until it was so black that, had my watch not denied it, we could have believed night had fallen. Jack and I huddled together in the steering well, as far away from the engine room as we could get. We had also taken the precaution of hauling the dory up close under the stern so we could leap directly aboard it in an emergency; and we had stowed the dory with our last communal bottle of rum and a bag of sea biscuits. There was no room for anything else and, indeed, there was no room for us if it should come to that. We hoped it wouldn't come to that.