August Gale (18 page)

“It's alright, son; here, let's read from yur Bible together.”

Frankie nodded, and Reid read from the passage stained by the boy's tears. Reid and other Catholic fishermen knew the psalm well, St. Mark, verse 4:39, “And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was great calm.”

Reid rubbed the boy's shaking back and urged the lad to recite the Lord's Prayer. Frankie uttered the words, his voice trembling, “Our Father, who art in heaven . . .”

“Keep 'er going, Frankie. I'm going on deck for another look for yur Da and the rest of the crew.”

Frankie nodded and reached for Trey. The dog whimpered as the schooner creaked and shuddered, pummeled by the waves striking her sides. In the galley, mugs, plates, and pots flew from shelves. Trawl tubs rolled and bounced in the hold, dorymen's boots tumbled end over end, and precious keepsakes—pictures of wives and daughters, sons and mothers—fluttered like confetti from cabin walls.

Outside, the wind roared like a church organ and the waves grew taller than a vessel's mast. On schooners and dories along Newfoundland's southeastern coast, captains lashed themselves to the rigging and the deck bolt below the wheel. Dorymen clutched lifelines and marked crosses over the giant combers, beseeching the Lord to calm the seas. Waves tall as three-story houses struck decks, breaking masts in two and sweeping men and everything else on deck into the raging sea. Vessels large and small foundered in the hurricane-ravaged waters.

Fifty miles east of the
Annie Anita
, the crew aboard the
Jane and Martha
struggled to stay upright. Waves crashed over the deck and battered the vessel with such force the schooner pitched on its side; its masts nearly flattened to the sea. The wind howled and the rigging shrieked. Captain James Bruce warned his crew “Get ready, boys, 'tis going to be a dirty long and god-fearing night.”

Fishing since he was eight years old, the skipper had weathered many storms, but this gale would prove to be the captain's most fearsome challenge in his fifty-four years at sea. A few hours before midnight, the full force of the hurricane roared overhead. The winds gusted to sixty, seventy, and eighty miles an hour, battering vessels and splintering them to pieces. Belowdecks, Bruce's crew braced themselves in their bunks and prayed they would live to see morning. By dawn, the seas still heaved, and the winds continued to knock fishermen off their feet. Hoping to make it into harbor, Captain Bruce ordered the crew to rig the sails. As they headed for shore, they came upon a schooner in distress. She rolled back and forth in the giant breakers, exposing her keel before she righted herself. A Marys-town man on board the
Jane and Martha
recognized the vessel.

“It's the
Mary Bernice!
”

The schooner's deck was stripped bare; her dories and sails had been washed overboard. Bruce searched unsuccessfully for the vessel's captain and crew. Caught crossways in the sea, walls of water pounded the schooner.

Oh God, b'y
, James Bruce thought.
Those poor fellows are doomed
.

The skipper and his men watched as the schooner pitched and rolled. Slammed onto her starboard side, the
Mary Bernice'
s anchors and chains hung from her bow. Bottom up with the weight of her anchor holding her down, she'd have no way of righting herself now. Bruce knew the schooner's crew had no chance a'tall. If they weren't swept into the sea before the vessel capsized, they were certain to be drowned now, their bodies floating in the cabin, their lungs gasping for air as they begged the Lord for mercy upon their souls.

Bruce and his men whispered their own prayers as the schooner named for Paddy's lost child, Mary Bernice, disappeared in the roiling sea.

W
e do not get far from Paddy's house before a blue Toyota pulls up to our rental car. A red-haired man shouts out the window at us.

My father, Joanie, and I stand in the street wondering who the stranger is.

“Hello,” he says with a broad smile. “I'm your cousin, Tom Reid.”

Tom Reid as in Tom Reid, Paddy's second hand?

“I hear you are Paddy Walsh's relations,” he tells us. “My grandfather, Tom Reid, sailed on the
Annie Anita
with Paddy's crew.”

I nod and compare my mental image of Tom Reid to his grandson who now stands before me. Reid was stocky, tall, and like Paddy, known for his fierce, stern gaze. The younger Reid bears few of his grandfather's traits. He is shorter, bearded, and jovial, chatting with us as if we are neighbors and good friends. A barrel-chested man like his grandfather, he gestures to a buff-yellow dory in the bay, a boat Reid rows when the weather is fair. In his mid-forties, Reid is a few years younger than his grandfather was during the
Annie Anita'
s 1935 journey.

“The Reids lived there on Shoal Point, just before Little Bay,” he says, pointing to a knoll a short distance up the road. “Reid Hill it used to be called.”

George Reid, Tom Reid, John Reid, and Joe Reid built their homes side by side.

Other fishermen who crewed for Paddy lived a stone's throw from Tom Reid's dwelling. At sea, they shared dories and bunks. On land, their homes neighbored one another in a row along the bay. The families of Charles Hanrahan, George Mitchell, Dominic Walsh, and John Brinton grew up within shouting distance of one another. Their children played in each other's meadows. Their wives and mothers waved to one another across fences and comforted each other over cups of tea, hushing away bad dreams and premonitions.

“They had a tough old life,” Reid tells us of his ancestors, “But the fishermen were tough, too; they had no fear a'tall.”

“What about Paddy Walsh?” my father asks.

Reid smiles and shakes his head.

“Paddy was vicious. He'd go out to sea in anything; it didn't matter what storm was coming. He wasn't afraid of nothin'. He thought he was grander than God.”

His grandfather, Reid tells us, also had a fierce nature. Like Paddy, Reid had no use for fear, the rules, or the law. In the woods behind Reid's home, he and the skipper made moonshine. Under the cover of night, they boiled molasses and yeast in stills, contraptions which occasionally blew up due to carelessness or too much consumption.

“They were big drinkers,” Reid says, “and the best of buddies—until they fought. Paddy was a tough Irishman and my grandfather was rough Scotsman. They'd fight each other over anything.

“Hard men, they were. But they trusted each other. They knew they could count on one another at sea.”

I imagine Reid strolling down the dirt path from Reid Hill, a duffle over his shoulder and a song on his lips. He is eager to sail, to make a good catch before the winter cold sets in. On his way to Paddy's wharf, he stops by to reassure Lillian. “I'll look after Frankie, and Paddy will keep an eye on Jerome,” he tells her before boarding the
Annie Anita
.

Did Paddy ask Reid to stop by, to utter those encouraging words to calm his fretting wife's nerves?
There was no one Paddy trusted more than Reid, his second hand. On that August evening, when the ocean tide ran like a river and the wind started to blow, the skipper knew Reid would do his best to keep Frankie from harm. But how do you keep such a promise when the seas grow higher than a schooner's mast and the sky turns black as coal?

Wishing us good luck with our gale research, Reid shakes our hands.

“I'll be glad to help ye in any way I can,” he says, sharing his phone number and a hearty wave before disappearing up the road toward Reid Hill.

Tom Reid is not the only one in town aware of our visit. It seems we are well-known and much talked about. As we travel in our blue rental car along the back roads of Marystown and Little Bay, strangers wave to us like we are long-lost family. They know we hail from the States, and in the local coffee shop they swap details about our arrival.

“Did ye hear? Paddy and Ambrose Walsh's relations are here. They're wanting to know about the gale, the August Gale of '35.”

It seems we are connected to most of the town. Our expansive Newfoundland family tree makes my head spin. Not only are we related to the numerous Walshes, we are kin to the Reids, the Clinches, and the Brintons. My father is either a first or second cousin to nearly everyone we meet. Several of the relations are quick to note that my father reminds them of Ambrose. They watch him wave his hands in the air as he speaks, and in their minds, they see Paddy's younger brother, the charming young man who sought adventure and a new life in the Boston States.

“You bear a strong resemblance to him,” they say.

As Tom Reid explained when he took in the sight of my dad's dark eyes and hair, “I could tell you were a pure Walsh.”

Reid's words echo in my thoughts as we drive along the water, looking for the home of Jim “Pad” Kelly, a doryman caught out in the August Gale. We know little about Kelly before we step foot into his home, but we will later learn he is a bit of a legend in Marystown. Stories are told and retold in kitchens throughout the small town about his courage and might.

As most of the men who fished from the small dories, Kelly often found himself separated from the schooner, blinded by curtains of relentless fog. On two of those occasions, Kelly rowed more than a hundred miles home from the Grand Banks fishing grounds. For seven days, he pulled the oars, sustaining himself with little more than hardtack and sips of water. During one of the journeys, the winter wind blew and the cold numbed the doryman's hands. After rowing five days, Kelly's dorymate dropped the oars in exhaustion.

“I can't go on,” the younger man cried.

“Well then give me yur damn mitts!” shouted Kelly, who had lost his own. “Because I'm not ready to die.”

We find Kelly's house at the end of a dead-end road. Expecting our visit, Mrs. Kelly invites us into their kitchen where her husband waits. Eighty-five years old, Kelly's chest is still broad from years of rowing dories at sea. His hair, once thick and dark, is now white and thinned with age. His hands are large, palms that gripped dory oars for more than four decades.

Kelly was seventeen in 1935. He is one of the few survivors who can offer a firsthand account of the gale, and though his memories of the storm are vivid, his hearing is limited. On this June afternoon, my father, Joanie, and I are mesmerized by the fisherman's voice as he recounts the night the August Gale struck the southeastern coast of Newfoundland.

“You need to talk loud,” his wife whispers to us. “He can't hear very well.”

My father and I find ourselves hollering, trying to pull details from the doryman's memory to recreate the night the “devil” descended.

“It was my first year fishing,” he tells us. “That was a bad old night. We were out on the
Hilda G. Reeves
. She was a schooner with three dories.”

Kelly knew Paddy and James Walsh were out in their vessels, too.

“James was behind us in Placentia Bay, and Paddy was over by Cape Pine.”

Kelly and his dorymate Bill Hanrahan had set their trawl west of Cape St. Mary's in Placentia Bay. Hanrahan, an eighteen-year-old man from Little Bay, was a greenhorn, too. He had never been to sea before.

“We set the lines, and our buoys got pulled with the tide. Not long after she breezed up, our boat busted an anchor cable. It was time to get out of there.”

Kelly had never felt such a force.

“We had some job,” he says, “getting back to the schooner. If we'd a'waited any longer, I don't think we would 'ave made it.”

For the next two hours, the two men struggled to row back to their vessel. Neither spoke as they pulled the oars. They had a mile to row, and it seemed like twenty.

“When we got back to the schooner, all hands were on board. We pulled anchor and ran before the wind. We come right down the middle of Placentia Bay.”

Kelly would never forget the walls of water and the shrieking wind when the brunt of the gale hit sometime after midnight. “If ye were on deck, ye had to have a rope around ye. The waves, they were going over the mast.”

His hands carving an imaginary crest in the air in front of him, Kelly explains, “The schooner she'd go up 'em, then come down and pop out over the waves.”

“Did you see the
Perfect Storm?
” my father hollers to Kelly, referring to the movie about the 1991 hurricane that killed several Gloucester fishermen off Newfoundland's coast.

Kelly nods.

“Were the waves as big as in that movie?”

Kelly nods again, this time with a grin. At one point, he tells us, a monstrous wave rolled toward the sixty-foot vessel. Kelly shouted to his dorymate, Hanrahan, who was also tied to the rigging. Hanrahan's eyes grew wide at the sight of the giant comber thundering toward them.

“He nearly had a heart attack,” Kelly says. “The water rushed in at us, mountains of water. We were some lucky to get in that night.”

Shaking his head, Kelly adds, “A lot of the crowd didn't get in. It was a rough old night. Plenty has been said of them that got in out of the gale. Ye didn't have no equipment. All ye had was a big sail and the weatherglass. Ye didn't have much of a chance. Not a'tall.”

Kelly falls silent, his blue eyes focused on something we cannot see.

“No,” Kelly whispers, “a lot of the men, they never was seen no more.”

T
hunder rumbled, and lightning lit up the bay outside the Sacred Heart Presbytery. From his parlor window, Father McGettigan eyed the whitecaps and the waves that pounded the shore. The sea surge pushed past the fish wharves, tearing dories and schooners from their anchors. The priest sipped rum from his glass and shuddered. If the gale was this fierce inland, eight miles from the sea, McGettigan could only imagine the hellish conditions offshore.