The Boat Who Wouldn't Float (22 page)

We also met again a certain robust pair of brothers from Hermitage Bay who were the only men actively fishing in Bay d'Espoir. Whenever we ran across them, which was often, they came alongside and loaded us up with redfish, lobsters, salmon, cod, and big sea trout. They also solved the problem arising from the absence of a convenient liquor store.

Bay d'Espoir fed us surpassingly well. In Harbour le Gallais we would strip off at low tide and wade about collecting blue mussels, horse mussels, soft-shelled clams, and dainty scallops, or we would borrow a few lobster pots and use them to catch a meal of crabs.

There was one particularly memorable occasion when we were moored in a glorious little harbour at Raymond Point. Late at night Claire and I were lying cosily on our bunks reading by lamplight. Albert had gone ashore and was sniffing and snoofing at the water's edge. We heard a mighty splash and a few moments later his claws clattered on the deck. He dropped something squishy in the cockpit, then went ashore, and again we heard a splash.

Curious, I climbed the companion ladder with a flashlight and was in time to meet him coming back aboard with a two-foot-long squid squirming in his mouth, its tentacles flailing in futile protest and curling limply around his ink-bespattered muzzle.

Great schools of squid were then running up the bay and Albert, being a fishing dog without prejudices, had decided to catch a mess of them. His procedure was to sit on the end of a nearby abandoned wharf and wait for the phosphorescent flash as a squid surfaced close to him. Then he leapt, a full-bodied dive that carried him far under the surface. He did not
get every squid he tried for, but before I went to bed he had caught seven of the strange, big-eyed beasts.

It seemed a shame to waste them so the next day Claire cooked a Bay of Spirits dinner. It consisted of grilled trout followed by roast squid stuffed with minced clams, accompanied by tiny, sweet, wild peas. For dessert there were deep bowls of wild raspberries. That there was a shortage of supermarkets in Bay d'Espoir was a matter of no concern to us.

In September the question arose of where we would winter. Claire, who can be as adamant as
Happy Adventure
, refused to consider wintering in the bay. It was not that she didn't like the place but, as she pointed out:

“If we keep retrogressing every year we'll end up back at Muddy Hole; and how would you like that!”

The point was well taken. Furthermore, both Claire and I had become fond of our little house in Burgeo, and of the people of Messers Cove, and we felt it would be no hardship to spend another year there. I put the matter to
Happy Adventure
on the basis of a mutual compromise. I explained to her that we would not make any attempt to take her west of Burgeo (“this year,” I added, under my breath) if she would just agree to return to Messers Cove.

However she remained suspicious of my motives, and distinctly unco-operative. After two false starts (during which we did not even get as far as Pushthrough) I put Claire on the coastal steamer for Burgeo and sent an urgent s.o.s. to Jack McClelland. Jack, ever loyal, flew to Gander, chartered a float plane, and joined me. Then he proceeded to bring
Happy Adventure
to heel. Jack can be a driver when his dander is up, taking no account of risks to life and limb. He made it very clear to the little schooner that she was either going to go to Burgeo, or she was going to go to the bottom of the sea in deep, deep water from whose icy embrace she could never again hope to emerge. I don't know how
she
felt about his do-or-die attitude, but he scared the living daylights out of me! We took risks that I don't like to think about even in retrospect, and in the end we beat our way into Messers Cove,
all three of us looking as if we had engaged in the battle of the century.

It was a small victory, and it was not indicative of the way things would go in future.

During the succeeding four summers,
Happy Adventure
held me to a stalemate. My cry was “Westward Ho!”—and hers was, “Westward No!” She would go east like a lamb, but west she would not go under any circumstances. After the second summer we all but gave up trying. We gradually settled into Burgeo ways and became, perforce, real outport residents. Memories of the mainland began to dim. We forgot how and why we had come to Burgeo in the first place. We three sailed
Happy Adventure
along the coast—to the eastward—exploring the mighty fiords that split the rock face of that iron-bound seaboard. I even went so far as to build a slip at Messers upon which the schooner could be hauled each winter. She, and we, were putting down roots. She gave us almost no trouble during these years. She did not sink a single time, and her leaks and other crotchets remained manageable. She was apparently content and, it must be admitted, so were we—until the spring of 1967.

 

18.
Good-bye Messers

D
URING
the late winter of 1967 rumours began to reach Burgeo that Canada was celebrating her Centennial; the anniversary of the Act of Confederation which made a nation out of the northern British colonies of North America. Most residents of Burgeo found these rumours quite perplexing. As far as they were concerned. Confederation took place in 1949 when Canada was belatedly admitted into union with Newfoundland. As Uncle Dorman Collier, an elder of the village, explained to a group of men gathered in his fish store one afternoon: “A cen-teen-ial is supposed to be one hunnert year. 1949 to 1967 be more like sixteen year. Anyway 'tis nowhere nigh a hunnert. They fellows on the mainland must be some short on larnin'.”

Nobody got very excited about the Centennial, but it was different when Burgeo heard about Expo 67 which, if the reports were to be believed, was going to be the biggest blowout Canada had ever had. Everyone was going to be there. All the major nations were going to build pavilions. Countries like New England, Cuba, Texas, Quebec, and Mali were all going to have their own pavilions. It was these pavilions that caught the interest of the people of Burgeo.

No one knew what a pavilion was until Dorman took it on himself to find out. He looked it up in an ornate calf-bound
dictionary that had been brought to Burgeo by Captain Elisha Fudge on his return from a voyage to Portugal with salt cod in 1867. Dorman had inherited this dictionary and he made good use of it, despite the fact that it was printed in Portuguese and Dorman did not know any Portuguese. The way he solved this problem was to make a list of all the words he wanted to look up and then wait for the arrival of a Portuguese dragger, two or three of which called at Burgeo every year for emergency supplies. When one arrived, Dorman would carry his list and dictionary on board and find a member of the crew who could translate for him.

The first Portuguese dragger of the year put in to Burgeo on May twenty-eighth. She was the Santa
Jorge
, fifteen weeks out of Lisbon, and about thirteen weeks out of alcoholic stimulants. When Dorman boarded her with his book and a bottle of contraband alky, he was royally received.

I met him a few days later at the Cottage Hospital. He said he had found out what a pavilion was, but he couldn't tell me right then because he didn't think it was “fitten” for the ears of the nurses. He said he would write it out for me and send it to Messers in a sealed envelope.

He was as good as his word.

Dear Skipper Mowat
.

A pavilion is a sort of a tilt, like a tent only bigger. Mostly it is made of canvas and silk with pictures
painted onto it. It was built by Kings mainly in lonely spots where nobody would know what was going on into it. I would not tell you what was going on into it but I guess you can guess Ha Ha Ha
.

Yrs respectfully,
Dorman
.

When this explanation of what a pavilion was percolated around the village it generated a mass movement to attend Expo. The two ministers were against it, and so was the majority of the women. Madge Kearley was in favour. Madge was what you might call a working spinstress. She had worked hard all her life and didn't have much to show for it except thirteen children. Madge said that a bunch of kings would be a nice change from a bunch of Portuguese sailors who had been out from Lisbon fifteen weeks, Madge said she was going to go to Expo if she had to swim and if she missed any pavilions it wouldn't be for want of trying.

The excitement about Expo had its unsettling effect upon almost everyone in Burgeo, and Claire and I and Albert were not immune. We talked about it and one evening Claire suggested that we try to sail
Happy Adventure
to Expo. When I laughed hollowly, she replied:

“No, Farley. I really mean it. There'll never be a better time to go.”

I knew what she meant.

In February an incident had occurred which had ruptured the even tenor of our Burgeo ways. A female fin whale weighing about eighty tons, and heavy with calf, had become trapped in a salt-water pond near the settlement. Here she provided an irresistible target for the guns of a handful of Burgeo men until I interceded and stopped the shooting. Unhappily it stopped too late. The whale died from the wounds she received and the press, radio, and television across much of North America thereupon unleashed a barrage of contumely upon the whole of Burgeo. The bewildered residents were at first stunned by this attention from a world they did not know; and then became bitterly resentful. As was to be
expected, much of the resentment was focused on me, and it was demonstrated in no uncertain manner when the rotting body of the monster was towed to a little harbour adjacent to my house (shades of Pushthrough), and left there, presumably as a suggestion that I mind my own business in future.

By the end of May the dead whale was only poisoning the atmosphere in the harbour proper, but I knew what to expect during the hot summer months, when eighty tons of meat and blubber would begin to decompose in earnest.

It did indeed seem like an appropriate time for us to depart from Burgeo.

The problem was how to persuade
Happy Adventure
to agree. One day I received a press release describing how the seafaring heritage of the Atlantic provinces was to be represented at Expo by a replica of the famous Nova Scotian schooner,
Bluenose
. Now Newfoundland and Nova Scotian schooners have always been arch rivals. I took the release down to the slip where
Happy Adventure
drowsed and I read it to her, not once but three times, and slowly, to make sure she understood. And then I ruminated aloud about this intolerable affront to all Newfoundland vessels. Finally I suggested that the situation could be remedied if we voyaged to Expo ourselves.

“We'll show them,” I said cheerfully as I slapped her buttocks, “won't we, old girl?”

If she understood, she gave no sign. I could only hope I had gotten through.

We kept her on her slip while we prepared her for a voyage of just over fourteen hundred nautical miles. I hired Dolph Moulton, who was a sound shipwright, to help me put her in shape and the two of us, assisted at sundry times by every able-bodied man in Messers, laboured over her as few ships have ever been laboured over.

We left nothing to chance. We hawsed out all her seams and recaulked them. We stripped off and replaced every plank that seemed the least bit dubious. Then we coated the entire hull with a space-age epoxy glue, bedded canvas into it, applied another layer of epoxy, and gave the whole vessel a second layer of brand-new, one-inch, pine planking. We caulked this new outer planking, and applied three coats of copper paint below the water line and four coats of black paint above it. When we finished, the hull was about three inches thick and so strong the little vessel could probably have been dropped by a crane without spraining a rib.

There was no way she could leak. Nevertheless I played it safe. One Saturday I hired a score of little boys with buckets to fill her up with sea water while she stood on the slip. The job took them all day. In the evening Dolph and I and Uncle
Josh and Uncle Art and a dozen other men sat around under her hull and watched for drips. Not one drop came through.

The satisfaction we felt was expressed admirably by Dolph.

“Tight me son? She's tight as a maiden's drum!”

She seemed tight all right, but I had been fooled so many times before that I was taking no chances. I had sent for, and we had installed two brand new pumps. One was a modern impeller pump of fabulous capacity, driven by a belt from the engine. Even if, by some freak of devilishness, she did manage to leak a little, I would be able to circumvent her suicidal tendencies.

We launched her off the following evening at high tide. She took the water sweetly and bobbed out to her mooring, where she lay lightly on the harbour looking as pretty as a tickle-ass (the local name for a kind of gull). When I rowed
out to check her at ten o'clock there was no more than a pailful of water in her bilges. I went to bed that night to a sound sleep, confident that
Happy Adventure
would sink no more.

I was awakened early the following morning. Dorman Collier's charming daughter was standing in our kitchen making throat-clearing noises. Sleepily I pulled on my trousers and came out to see what she wanted.

“Oh, Mr. Mowat,” she said, and there was a catch in her voice that showed she was close to tears, “Father says you'd best come quick. '
Appy Hadventure
's going down.”

From the kitchen window I could see my little ship. I could see her masts, her red-painted cabin trunk—and about six inches of her hull. Several dories surrounded her and her deck was alive with men and boys armed with pails, dancing a wild fandango. A curtain of flung water hung prettily about her.

By noon we had bailed her out to the bottom of the engine which we drained and refilled with oil. Being a good English diesel it started without trouble, and the impeller pump took over,, sending a fire-hose stream across the harbour.
Happy Adventure
had been foiled again—but only for the moment. It was now all too clear what her answer was to my hopeful suggestion that she might be willing to make the voyage to Expo 67.

We hauled her again, and went over her so carefully that I believe we actually checked every single nail hole. We found no indication of where the water was getting in. Completely baffled, Dolph suggested that we launch her off, stand pump watch on her, and wait for her to “take up”—and at those words a memory came surging through my mind. I remembered Enos Coffin standing on the end of the stage at Muddy Hole:

“Southern Shore boats all leaks a drop when they first lanches off…but once they been afloat awhile, why they takes up….”

We launched her off, and she took up the whole of Mes
sers Cove during a ten-day period, and we pumped it all out of her again. By the end of two weeks we had begun to wear her down. The leaks grew smaller until, by the end of the month that it took to complete preparations for the trip, she was only leaking her normal fifty gallons a day.

Reactions to our proposed voyage varied considerably. The Newfoundland Establishment, which had found me something of a thorn in its side both at the municipal and at the provincial level, sent me encouraging messages of which this one is typical:

OVERJOYED HEAR YOUR PLANS STOP MY GOVERNMENT ANXIOUS ASSIST ANY POSSIBLE WAY EXPEDITE YOUR DEPARTURE

THE ONLY LIVING FATHER

The signature was a playful allusion to the fact that, as a result of Newfoundland's late entry into Canada, Premier Joey Smallwood was indeed the only surviving Father of Confederation. The rest of them, including my own great-great uncle Oliver Mowat, had been decently buried for seventy years or more.

On the other hand my real friends were appalled at my intentions. Jack McClelland, who had long since concluded that
Happy Adventure
was little more than a floating coffin, sent me a wire which (although I did not know it for some months) originated as: