Silk Sails (20 page)

Bridget Mahoney, married woman of Bay Roberts, was the sole owner of the 26-ton schooner
Birch Hill
when it was totally lost at Batten's Rock, Labrador, on October 14, 1915. Another report says that the loss occurred during a storm at Stag Harbour Run, Fogo Island. The vessel had 240 quintals of fish on board, though another report says it was only 140 quintals. The Certificate of Registry was lost with the vessel, as were all the belongings of the crew members. The St. John's newspapers from October 16th to 23rd, and again in the following February, raised the spectre that this may have been a case of barratry, that is, the ship may have been deliberately cast away by the crew, which consisted of Bridget's father, husband and brothers, as well as other crew members. The matter went before the courts in a magisterial inquiry which lasted from February to May 1916 and ended in a judgment of barratry and a heavy sentence of two years imprisonment for each of six men, including “one old man.” Since it was judged to be a case of barratry, the question then must be asked: Was Bridget knowingly a part of a possible criminal case? A newspaper report indicates that there was a crew of eight, “including a woman.” This would almost certainly have been the cook, and most likely Bridget.

A well-known merchant of Notre Dame Bay in the 1910s and 1920s had a large fishing operation at Battle Harbour, Labrador, and used to trade along the northern Newfoundland and Labrador coast. He was described to me by a man who knew him as “a domineering tyrant and a price fixer.” Though he had a wife, he also kept a mistress in a nearby town and took her with him
for holidays in the United States. Both his wife and mistress were present in the house as the merchant lay dying. The wife stayed involved in the shipowning business; it is not known what happened to the mistress, except that she was well provided for, according to my witness. The witness further added a macabre postscript; the dogs dug up the merchant's grave after he had been buried.

Sarah Vigus, wife of merchant James Vigus of Burin, was in 1919 a mortgagee for a vessel, the
F. W. Mitchell
, which had been re-possessed under a writ of
fieri facias
in 1916. In 1928, under a new owner, the High Sheriff of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, again under a writ of
fieri facias
, seized the vessel a second time and sold it to a local merchant. Sarah apparently held the mortgage until her death in 1922. In a somewhat similar case, Frances Winsor, married woman of St. John's, bought the
Sylvia Joyce
, through Leonard T. Stick, a dealer at Bay Roberts, when the owner and builder of the vessel, Chesley Samuel Davis of Trinity, Bonavista Bay, went bankrupt in 1953.

When Norman Hatcher, owner of the
Topsail Girl Second
, died without a will in 1945, Letters of Administration were granted to his widow, Hattie Hatcher of Rose Blanche. She sold the vessel six months later. I was told by people on the south-west coast that Norman was killed in Nova Scotia and that later, a Nova Scotia man confessed to the killing.

As I visited homes and talked to people on the street in south coast towns, I was told stories of smuggling and rum-running, and that there were at least a few women who played a role in these activities. I had lived previously in two south coast towns and realized that smuggling from nearby St. Pierre was generally regarded as an innocent activity or even as an occasional challenge to outwit the authorities. Rum-running was a different activity, both highly illegal and dangerous, and sometimes with dire consequences. John P. Parker in
Sails of the Maritimes
describes the origin of this trade and its dangers: “In the dawn of the 1920's, however, a new trade developed which brought a measure of
relief to some of the schooner owners. Prohibition in the United States, and later in Canada, created a thirsty population ready to pay any amount of money for ‘real hard liquor.' As the domestic sources dried up and import restrictions were brought into effect, a new commercial enterprise in supplying ardent spirits, the ‘rum runners' came into being.” The two supply centres were the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon and the British and Foreign West Indies. Many shipowners quickly developed a new kind of ship charter to pick up liquor at the legal ports and carry it to the outside limits of American waters. Several Canadian vessels were involved in the trade and shipowners cautioned their captains to abide by the law and never to run the risk of losing the ship. There were serious risks involved in the trade and several vessels were captured when they either deliberately or inadvertently entered territorial waters. Captured vessels were either laid up or sold at auction.

I was told of at least one woman on the south coast whose vessel was involved in rum-running in the mid-1920s. The base for her vessel was a small town on the south coast; and when her husband bought a vessel during the same period he gave a Halifax address. He was described to me as “the king of the rum-runners.”

The only clear reference I found in the ship registers to a woman having insurance on a ship was that of Mary Wilmot Sheaves, widow of Channel. When her vessel, the
Lucille M. Colp
, went ashore and was declared a total loss in May 1949, advice was received from both the owner and W. A. Munn Insurance Ltd. of St. John's. However, the fact that women insured their ships is demonstrated by the fact that when the 74-ton
Lady Green
was insured in 1929 for $2,500 in the Conception Bay Mutual Marine Insurance Co. Ltd., it was owned by Mrs. George Barbour of Newtown. Evelyn Ruth Hann, married woman of Wesleyville, became owner of the
Redwing Chief
in 1952, and the previous
owner, Jesse Hann, had been an insurance underwriter who died in 1951. It is virtually certain that Evelyn Ruth would have continued the insurance on her ship. The ship registers are almost totally lacking in this kind of information, though I am convinced that many other women carried insurance on their ships. Only one specific reference was found in the Newfoundland records to minors owning shares in a ship. Julia Kelligrew, wife of William of St. John's, held 11 shares each in trust for her two young sons, John William and William George, in the ship
Ann
in 1853. There are three references to students owning shares in ships, but it is impossible to determine their ages. The ship
Ariel
was sold to Samuel Piercey Evans, student of Grand Bank, in 1948. Joseph and Laura Gertrude Delurey of Riverhead, St. Mary's, sold 5 shares each to their three sons who are designated students in 1956. And Annie Northover Berkshire, married woman of Spencer's Cove, sold 10 shares in 1959 to David Keith Berkshire, student.

There are other curiosities. Three women owned ships that were involved in the seal fishery. One was the brigantine
William Stairs,
which was owned by Catherine Walsh, widow of St. John's. This vessel was “lost at Seal fishing in 1862.” Catherine had owned the ship for five years. Charlotte Lee's ship
Mary Jan
e, sometime between 1846 and 1862, was involved in the seal fishery, as was Emily Jane Butt's ship
Fiona
about 1909. Mrs. George Barbour's husband was a well-known sealing captain, and he may well have been master of the
Lady Green
(mentioned above) when it was insured by his wife in 1929. The
Lady Green
was likely a fourth woman's ship involved in the seal fishery.

Another curiosity: Why did Fanny Isabel Ryan Fiander, married woman of Trinity, buy the
Gertrude Jean
, a “crude oil screw” in 1937? It was undoubtedly built for someone else to operate, so this may be another example of a woman staking a man.

The only Labrador woman shipowner found in the ship registers was Joyce Allen, married woman of Rigolet. In 1978 she bought the
Sea Flower
from the Minister of Fisheries. She was designated
managing owner of the ship and took two mortgages in the first two years and these were discharged a few years later.

There were other women shipowners whose names did not find their way into the ship registers but who have been reported to me as having been legitimate shipowners. Edith Brooks, whose husband Nathaniel was a merchant at Bay Bulls and possibly St. John's, owned ships, but the time period is not known. Jasper “Jap” Chaulk of Carmanville, owner of schooners for many years, died in 1937, and his wife inherited his ship
Mollie
, which had been built at Lunenburg and bought by him in the early 1930s. She was going to sell the ship but then decided that she would continue to oversee the operation by hiring a captain, which she did until her son Ross was able to take over the business in 1940. The ship ran ashore at Grates Cove in 1944.

Mrs. Ralph from St. John's owned the schooner
Linda Tibbo
in the 1940s; the ship sprung a leak and was lost with a load of salt in Harbour Buffett. I have heard also that Lillian Bouzane's grandmother or great-grandmother owned “a fleet of ships” and gave each of her sons a ship of his own when each became old enough to operate it. Her name was Philpott, and she may have lived in Coachman's Cove. This could not be verified from the ship registers, but Richard and John Philpott of Green Bay owned the ships
Mary Ann, Flora
, and
Lily Dale
in 1847, 1866 and 1891, respectively. Green Bay in those early years was taken to include Notre Dame Bay.

There were a few cases in which it was difficult to distinguish whether a name was male or female. Evelyn was judged to be a male name in the one instance where it was found. Also Celestine, Lorin, Wilga and Verdena. Their combinations with other names, as well as the owner's designation as “fisherman,” leads me to believe all these were male. The one instance where Abigail was found (also spelled Abagail), designated clearly as “fisherman” was Abigail Horwood of Harbour Le Cou. This was an error in the register. Abigail was a merchant and her partner was a fisherman. For more details on Abigail see Appendix A under Joint Owners.

Although all of these women made significant contributions to the economic and social life of their communities and to the colony, and then province, of Newfoundland, there were several women worthy of special mention in the history of Newfoundland, such as Marie Smart Penny, Ada Annie Petite and Debbie Petite of the south coast. Charlotte Pratt Harris of Grand Bank was the sister of the famous poet E. J. Pratt and daughter of the Rev. John Pratt. Harriet Inkpen of Burin had already been honoured by the governor of Newfoundland for her bravery in trying to rescue three of her students from drowning before she went on to a distinguished career in Toronto as administrator of the St. Clair Gardens.

Myra Grimsley came to Newfoundland from England as a nurse in 1921, married Angus Bennett at Daniel's Harbour, and became “the nurse” along 200 miles of the west coast of the island, and was the subject of a book by H. Gordon Green,
Don't Have Your Baby in a Dory
. Several of the women of St. John's were noteworthy: Lady Mitchie Ann Crosbie, daughter of Josiah Manuel of Exploits, Burnt Islands, and wife of Sir John Crosbie; Henrietta Harvey, after whom the building that houses the Maritime History Archives at Memorial University is named; Isabella (Whiteford) Rogerson, the published poet; Louisa A. Whiteley (whose husband invented the cod trap); Margaret Eliza Duder; Elizabeth Vallance Wakeham; the Tessier women; Mary Herder; and Elizabeth Pitts.

And finally, “Big Allie” Murphy of King's Cove is worthy of special mention. According to Aidan Maloney, Alice Murphy “dominated the social life of King's Cove from 1840 to the 1890s.” When the merchant James McBraire retired at King's Cove in 1821, he returned to Scotland with an accumulated fortune of 80,000 pounds sterling and left his son, John Joseph McBraire, in charge. After John Joseph died in 1839, Michael Murphy took over the business. Michael married Alice Denief of Fogo in 1841. “Big Allie” or “Big Mrs. Murphy” was 6 ft. 2 in. tall and “stout withal also.” Michael was “a little Irishman,” so they must have made an odd couple. Maloney writes: “When it is considered that after her husband's death in 1854 she continued to manage the business through good years,
through fishery failures, and tragedies at sea it can be understood that the tributes to her ability, generosity and caring spirit are well deserved.”

Newfoundland females experienced the sea from the time they were infants; 1300 outports were scattered along the many miles of coastline and these had been originally located there to be near the fishing grounds and to wrest a living from the sea. In the early periods, when fishing was over for the season, many families left the outer islands or coastal villages to move into the interior, usually at the heads of bays where they had a ready supply of wood and food and areas ideal for hunting and winter fishing. The practice was called “winterhousing” and families erected temporary dwellings called tilts. Often the entire winter was occupied with the building of another ship for their own use or for sale.

As girls grew older, usually 14 or 15, they often went to the Labrador on the family fishing venture to act as cooks and domestics for the summer. Surplus daughters were sometimes hired out to other ships' crews as well.

Though it is known that some Newfoundland women went to sea with their captain husbands, I have been unable to find any diaries or journals from these voyages. Hattie Matthews of Burgeo, whose husband was William Matthews, sailed with him for about 10 years in the 1920s and 1930s when he was captain of the
General Laurie
. Hattie was the daughter of Captain George May, who had been a foreign-going master for many years. The
General Laurie
sank in the Mediterranean Sea, and presumably Hattie was aboard for that venture.

When Campbell & McKay's 372-ton, three-masted ship
Attainment
sank off Bear Cove, Digby, Nova Scotia, in a severe storm in April 1920, Captain Shepherd's wife was on board and, accompanied by a Portuguese sailor, she was sent ashore in a basket called a
breeches buoy, as the sea was running “mountains high.” Whether she ever recorded her memories of that event is unknown. All the crew were rescued in this fashion.