Dr. Grenfell's Parish: The Deep Sea Fisherman

So the captain took the ship out to sea. Men say that she went out of commission the next day, and that it cost the company a thousand dollars to refit her.

“A dunderhead,” say the folk, “can cotch fish; but it takes a man t’ find un.” It is a chase; and, as the coast proverb has it, “the fish have no bells.” It is estimated that there are 7,000 square miles of fishing-banks off the Labrador coast. There will be fish somewhere – not everywhere; not every man will “use his salt” (the schooners go north loaded with salt for curing) or “get his load.” In the beginning – this is when the ice first clears away – there is a race for berths. It takes clever, reckless sailing and alert action to secure the best. I am reminded of a skipper who by hard driving to windward and good luck came first of all to a favourable harbour. It was then night, and his crew was weary, so he put off running out his trap-leader until morning; but in the night the wind changed, and when he awoke at dawn there were two other schooners lying quietly at anchor near by and the berths had been “staked.” When the traps are down, there follows a period of anxious waiting. Where are the fish? There are no telegraph-lines on that coast. The news must be spread by word of mouth. When, at last, it comes, there is a sudden change of plan – a wild rush to the more favoured grounds.

It is in this scramble that many a skipper makes his great mistake. I was talking with a disconsolate young fellow in a northern harbour where the fish were running thick. The schooners were fast loading; but he had no berth, and was doing but poorly with the passing days.

“If I hadn’t – if I only hadn’t – took up me trap when I did,” said he, “I’d been loaded an’ off home. Sure, zur, would you believe it? but I had the berth off the point. Off the point – the berth off the point!” he repeated, earnestly, his eyes wide. “An’, look! I hears they’s a great run o’ fish t’ Cutthroat Tickle. So I up with me trap, for I’d been gettin’ nothin’; an’ – an’ – would you believe it? but the man that put his down where I took mine up took a hundred quintal[2 - A quintal is, roughly, a hundred pounds. One hundred quintals of green fish are equal, roughly, to thirty of dry, which, at $3, would amount to $90.] out o’ that berth next marnin’! An’ he’ll load,” he groaned, “afore the week’s out!”

When the fish are running, the work is mercilessly hard; it is kept up night and day; there is no sleep for man or child, save, it may be, an hour’s slumber where they toil, just before dawn. The schooner lies at anchor in the harbour, safe enough from wind and sea; the rocks, surrounding the basin in which she lies, keep the harbour water placid forever. But the men set the traps in the open sea, somewhere off the heads, or near one of the outlying islands; it may be miles from the anchorage of the schooner. They put out at dawn – before dawn, rather; for they aim to be at the trap just when the light is strong enough for the hauling. When the skiff is loaded, they put back to harbour in haste, throw the fish on deck, split them, salt them, lay them neatly in the hold, and put out to the trap again. I have seen the harbours – then crowded with fishing-craft – fairly ablaze with light at midnight. Torches were flaring on the decks and in the turf hut on the rocks ashore. The night was quiet; there was not a sound from the tired workers; but the flaring lights made known that the wild, bleak, far-away place – a basin in the midst of barren, uninhabited hills – was still astir with the day’s work.

At such times, the toil at the oars, and at the splitting-table[3 - A “clever hand” can split – that is, clean – thirty fish in a minute.], whether on deck or in the stages – and the lack of sleep, and the icy winds and cold salt spray – is all bitter cruel to suffer. The Labrador fisherman will not readily admit that he lives a hard life; but if you suggest that when the fish are running it may be somewhat more toilsome than lives lived elsewhere, he will grant you something.

“Oh, ay,” he’ll drawl, “when the fish is runnin’, ’tis a bit hard.”

I learned from a child – he was merry, brave, fond of the adventure – that fishing is a pleasant business in the sunny midsummer months; but that when, late in the fall, the skiff puts out to the trap at dawn, it is wise to plunge one’s hands deep in the water before taking the oars, no matter how much it hurts, for one’s wrists are then covered with salt-water sores and one’s palms are cracked, even though one take the precaution of wearing a brass chain – that, oh, yes! it is wise to plunge one’s hands in the cold water, as quick as may be; for thus one may “limber ’em up” before the trap is reached.

“’Tis not hard, now,” said he. “But, oh – oo – oo! when the big nor’easters blow! Oo – oo!” he repeated, with a shrug and a sage shake of the head; “’tis won-der-ful hard those times!”

The return is small. The crews are comprised of from five to ten men, with, occasionally, a sturdy maid for cook, to whom is given thirty dollars for her season’s work; some old hands will sail on no ship with a male cook, for, as one of them said, “Sure, some o’ thim min can’t boil water without burnin’ it!” A good season’s catch is one hundred quintals of dry fish a man. A simple calculation – with some knowledge of certain factors which I need not state – makes it plain that a man must himself catch, as his share of the trap, 30,000 fish if he is to net a living wage. If his return is $250 he is in the happiest fortune – richly rewarded, beyond his dreams, for his summer’s work. One-half of that is sufficient to give any modest man a warm glow of content and pride. Often – it depends largely upon chance and the skill of his skipper – the catch is so poor that he must make the best of twenty-five or thirty dollars. It must not be supposed that the return is always in cash; it is usually in trade, which is quite a different thing – in Newfoundland.

The schooners take many passengers north in the spring. Such are called “freighters” on the coast; they are put ashore at such harbours as they elect, and, for passage for themselves, families, and gear, pay upon the return voyage twenty-five cents for every hundredweight of fish caught. As a matter of course, the vessels are preposterously overcrowded. Dr. Grenfell tells of counting thirty-four men and sixteen women (no mention was made of children) aboard a nineteen-ton schooner, then on the long, rough voyage to the north. The men fish from the coast in small boats just as the more prosperous “green-fish catchers” put out from the schooners. Meantime, they live in mud huts, which are inviting or otherwise, as the women-folk go; some are damp, cave-like, ill-savoured, crowded; others are airy, cozy, the floors spread deep with powdered shell, the whole immaculately kept. When the party is landed, the women sweep out the last of the winter’s snow, the men build great fires on the floors; indeed, the huts are soon ready for occupancy. At best, they are tiny places – much like children’s playhouses. There was once a tall man who did not quite fit the sleeping place assigned to him; but with great good nature he cut a hole in the wall, built a miniature addition for his feet, and slept the summer through at comfortable full length. It is a great outing for the children; they romp on the rocks, toddle over the nearer hills, sleep in the sunshine; but if they are eight years old, as one said – or well grown at five or seven – they must do their little share of work.

Withal, the Labradormen are of a simple, God-fearing, clean-lived, hardy race of men. There was once a woman who made boast of her high connection in England, as women will the wide world over; and when she was questioned concerning the position the boasted relative occupied, replied, “Oh, he’s Superintendent o’ Foreign Governments!” There was an austere old Christian who on a Sunday morning left his trap – his whole fortune – lie in the path of a destroying iceberg rather than desecrate the Lord’s day by taking it out of the water. Both political parties in Newfoundland shamelessly deceive the credulous fisherfolk; there was a childlike old fellow who, when asked, “And what will you do if there is no fish?” confidently answered: “Oh, they’s goin’ t’ be a new Gov’ment. He’ll take care o’ we!” There was a sturdy son of the coast who deserted his schooner at sea and swam ashore. But he had mistaken a barren island for the mainland, which was yet far off; and there he lived, without food, for twenty-seven days! When he was picked up, his condition was such as may not be described (the Labrador fly is a vicious insect); he was unconscious, but he survived to fish many another season.

The mail-boat picked up Skipper Thomas of Carbonear – then master of a loaded schooner – at a small harbour near the Straits. His crew carried him aboard; for he was desperately ill, and wanted to die at home, where his children were.

“He’s wonderful bad,” said one of the men. “He’ve consumption.”

“I’m just wantin’ t’ die at home,” he said, again and again. “Just that – just where my children be!”

All hearts were with him in that last struggle – but no man dared hope; for the old skipper had already beaten off death longer than death is wont to wait, and his strength was near spent.

“Were you sick when you sailed for the Labrador in the spring?” they asked him.

“Oh, ay,” said he; “I were terrible bad then.”

“Then why,” they said – “why did you come at all?”

They say he looked up in mild surprise. “I had t’ make me livin’,” he answered, simply.

His coffin was knocked together on the forward deck next morning – with Carbonear a day’s sail beyond.

The fleet goes home in the early fall. The schooners are loaded – some so low with the catch that the water washes into the scuppers. “You could wash your hands on her deck,” is the skipper’s proudest boast. The feat of seamanship, I do not doubt, is not elsewhere equalled. It is an inspiring sight to see the doughty little craft beating into the wind on a gray day. The harvesting of a field of grain is good to look upon; but I think that there can be no more stirring sight in all the world, no sight more quickly to melt a man’s heart, more deeply to move him to love men and bless God, than the sight of the Labrador fleet beating home loaded – toil done, dangers past; the home port at the end of a run with a fair wind. The home-coming, I fancy, is much like the return of the viking ships to the old Norwegian harbours must have been. The lucky skippers strut the village roads with swelling chests, heroes in the sight of all; the old men, long past their labour, listen to new tales and spin old yarns; the maids and the lads renew their interrupted love-makings. There is great rejoicing – feasting, merrymaking, hearty thanksgiving.

Thanks be to God, the fleet’s home!

IX – On The FRENCH SHORE

Doctor Grenfell appears to have a peculiar affection for the outporters of what is locally known as the “French Shore” – that stretch of coast lying between Cape John and the northernmost point of Newfoundland: it is one section of the shore upon which the French have fishing rights. This is the real Newfoundland; to the writer there is no Newfoundland apart from that long strip of rock against which the sea forever breaks: none that is not of punt, of wave, of fish, of low sky and of a stalwart, briny folk. Indeed, though he has joyously lived weeks of blue weather in the outports, with the sea all a-ripple and flashing and the breeze blowing warm, in retrospect land and people resolve themselves into a rocky harbour and a sturdy little lad with a question – the harbour, gray and dripping wet, a cluster of whitewashed cottages perched on the rocks, towards which a tiny, red-sailed punt is beating from the frothy open, with the white of breakers on either hand, while a raw wind lifts the fog from the black inland hills, upon which ragged patches of snow lie melting; the lad, stout, frank-eyed, tow-headed, browned by the wind, bending over the splitting-table with a knife in his toil-worn young hand and the blood of cod dripping from his fingers, and looking wistfully up, at last, to ask a question or two concerning certain old, disquieting mysteries.

“Where do the tide go, zur, when ’e runs out?” he plainted. “Where do ’e go, zur? Sure, zur, you is able t’ tell me that, isn’t you?”

So, in such a land – where, on some bleak stretches of coast, the potatoes are grown in imported English soil, where most gardens, and some graveyards, are made of earth scraped from the hollows of the hills, where four hundred and nineteen bushels of lean wheat are grown in a single year, and the production of beef-cattle is insignificant as compared with the production of babies – in such a land there is nothing for the young man to do but choose his rock, build his little cottage and his flake and his stage, marry a maid of the harbour when the spring winds stir his blood, gather his potato patch, get a pig and a goat, and go fishing in his punt. And they do fish, have always fished since many generations ago the island was first settled by adventurous Devon men, and must continue to fish to the end of time. Out of a total male population of one hundred thousand, which includes the city-folk of St. Johns and an amazing proportion of babies and tender lads, about fifty-five thousand men and grown boys catch fish for a living.

“Still an’ all, they’s no country in the world like this!” said the old skipper. “Sure, a man’s set up in life when he haves a pig an’ a punt an’ a potato patch.”

“But have you ever seen another?” I asked.

“I’ve been so far as Saint Johns, zur, an’ once t’ the waterside o’ Boston,” was the surprising reply, “an’ I’m thinkin’ I knows what the world’s like.”

So it is with most Newfoundlanders: they love their land with an intolerant prejudice; and most are content with the life they lead. “The Newfoundlander comes back,” is a significant proverb of the outports; and, “White Bay’s good enough for me,” said a fishwife to me once, when I asked her why she still remained in a place so bleak and barren, “for I’ve heered tell ’tis wonderful smoky an’ n’isy ’t Saint Johns.” The life they live, and strangely love, is exceeding toilsome. Toil began for a gray-haired, bony-handed old woman whom I know when she was so young that she had to stand on a tub to reach the splitting-table; when, too, to keep her awake and busy, late o’ nights, her father would make believe to throw a bloody cod’s head at her. It began for that woman’s son when, at five or six years old, he was just able to spread the fish to dry on the flake, and continued in earnest, a year or two later, when first he was strong enough to keep the head of his father’s punt up to the wind. But they seem not to know that fishing is a hard or dangerous employment: for instance, a mild-eyed, crooked old fellow – he was a cheerful Methodist, too, and subject to “glory-fits” – who had fished from one harbour for sixty years, computed for me that he had put out to sea in his punt at least twenty thousand times, that he had been frozen to the seat of his punt many times, that he had been swept to sea with the ice-packs, six times, that he had weathered six hundred gales, great and small, and that he had been wrecked more times than he could “just mind” at the moment; yet he was the only old man ever I met who seemed honestly to wish that he might live his life over again!

The hook-and-line man has a lonely time of it. From earliest dawn, while the night yet lies thick on the sea, until in storm or calm or favouring breeze he makes harbour in the dusk, he lies off shore, fishing – tossing in the lop of the grounds, with the waves to balk and the wind to watch warily, while he tends his lines. There is no jolly companionship of the forecastle and turf hut for him – no new scene, no hilarious adventure; nor has he the expectation of a proud return to lighten his toil. In the little punt he has made with his own hands he is forever riding an infinite expanse, which, in “fish weather,” is melancholy, or threatening, or deeply solemn, as it may chance – all the while and all alone confronting the mystery and terrible immensity of the sea. It may be that he gives himself over to aimless musing, or, even less happily, to pondering certain dark mysteries of the soul; and so it comes about that the “mad-house ’t Saint Johns” is inadequate to accommodate the poor fellows whom lonely toil has bereft of their senses – melancholiacs, idiots and maniacs “along o’ religion.”

Notwithstanding all, optimism persists everywhere on the coast. One old fisherman counted himself favoured above most men because he had for years been able to afford the luxury of cream of tartar; and another, a brawny giant, confessed to having a disposition so pertinaciously happy that he had come to regard a merry heart as his besetting sin. Sometimes an off-shore gale puts an end to all the fishing; sometimes it is a sudden gust, sometimes a big wave, sometimes a confusing mist, more often long exposure to spray and shipped water and soggy winds. It was a sleety off-shore gale, coming at the end of a sunny, windless day, that froze or drowned thirty men off Trinity Bay in a single night; and it was a mere puff on a “civil” evening – but a swift, wicked little puff, sweeping round Breakheart Head – that made a widow of Elizabeth Rideout o’ Duck Cove and took her young son away. Often, however, the hook-and-line man fishes his eighty years of life, and dies in his bed as cheerfully as he has lived and as poor as he was born.

X – SOME OUTPORT FOLK

It had been a race against the peril of fog and the discomfort of a wet night all the way from Hooping Harbour. We escaped the scowl of the northeast, the gray, bitter wind and the sea it was fast fretting to a fury, when the boat rounded Canada Head and ran into the shelter of the bluffs at Englee – into the damp shadows sombrely gathered there. When the punt was moored to the stage-head, the fog had thickened the dusk into deep night, and the rain had soaked us to the skin. There was a light, a warm, yellow light, shining from a window, up along shore and to the west. We stumbled over an erratic footpath, which the folk of the place call “the roaad” – feeling for direction, chancing the steps, splashing through pools of water, tripping over sharp rocks. The whitewashed cottages of the village, set on the hills, were like the ghosts of houses. They started into sight, hung suspended in the night, vanished as we trudged on. The folk were all abed – all save Elisha Duckworthy, that pious giant, who had been late beating in from the fishing grounds off the Head. It was Elisha who opened the door to our knock, and sent a growling, bristling dog back to his place with a gentle word.

“Will you not – ”

“Sure, sir,” said Elisha, a smile spreading from his eyes to the very tip of his great beard, “’twould be a hard man an’ a bad Christian that would turn strangers away. Come in, sir! ’Tis a full belly you’ll have when you leaves the table, an’ ’tis a warm bed you’ll sleep in, this night.”

After family prayers, in which we, the strangers he had taken in, were commended to the care and mercy of God in such simple, feeling phrases as proved the fine quality of this man’s hospitality and touched our hearts in their innermost parts, Elisha invited us to sit by the kitchen fire with him “for a spell.” While the dogs snored in chorus with a young kid and a pig by the roaring stove, and the chickens rustled and clucked in their coop under the bare spruce sofa which Elisha had made, and the wind flung the rain against the window-panes, we three talked of weather and fish and toil and peril and death. It may be that a cruel coast and a sea quick to wrath engender a certain dread curiosity concerning the “taking off” in a man who fights day by day to survive the enmity of both. Elisha talked for a long time of death and heaven and hell. Then, solemnly, his voice fallen to a whisper, he told of his father, Skipper George, a man of weakling faith, who had been reduced to idiocy by wondering what came after death – by wondering, wondering, wondering, in sunlight and mist and night, off shore in the punt, labouring at the splitting-table, at work on the flake, everywhere, wondering all the time where souls took their flight.

“’Twere wonderin’ whether hell do be underground or not,” said Elisha, “that turned un over at last. Sure, sir,” with a sigh, “’twere doubt, you sees. ’Tis faith us must have.”

Elisha stroked the nearest dog with a gentle hand – a mighty hand, toil-worn and misshapen, like the man himself.

“Do your besettin’ sin get the best o’ you, sir?” he said, looking up. It may be that he craved to hear a confession of failure that he might afterwards sustain himself with the thought that no man is invulnerable. “Sure, we’ve all besettin’ sins. When we do be snatched from the burnin’ brands, b’y, a little spark burns on, an’ on, an’ on; an’ he do be wonderful hard t’ douse out. ’Tis like the eye us must pluck out by command o’ the Lard. With some men ’tis a taste for baccy. With some ’tis a scarcity o’ salt in the fish. With some ’tis too much water in the lobster cans. With some ’tis a cravin’ for sweetness. With me ’tis worse nor all. Sure, sir,” he went on, “I’ve knowed some men so fond, so wonderful fond, o’ baccy that um smoked the shoes off their children’s feet. ’Tis their besettin’ sin, sir – ’tis their besettin’ sin. But ’tis not baccy that worries me. The taste fell away when I were took from sin. ’Tis not that. ’Tis worse. Sure, with me, sir,” he said, brushing his hand over his forehead in a weary, despairing way, “’tis laughin’. ’Tis the sin of jokin’ that puts my soul in danger o’ bein’ hove overboard into the burnin’ lake. I were a wonderful joker when I were a sinful man. ’Twas all I lived for – not t’ praise God an’ prepare my soul for death. When I gets up in the marnin’, now, sir, I feels like jokin’ like what I used t’ do, particular if it do be a fine day. Ah, sir,” with a long sigh, “’tis a great temptation, I tells you – ’tis a wonderful temptation. But ’tis not set down in the Book that Jesus Christ smiled an’ laughed, an’ with the Lard’s help I’ll beat the devil yet. I’ll beat un,” he cried, as if inspired to some supreme struggle. “I’ll beat un,” he repeated, clinching his great hands. “I will!”

Elisha bade us good-night with a solemn face. A little smile – a poor, frightened little smile of tender feeling for us – flickered in his eyes for the space of a breath. But he snuffed it out relentlessly, expressed his triumph with a flash of his eye, and went away to bed. In the morning, when the sun called us up, he had come back from the early morning’s fishing, and was singing a most doleful hymn of death and judgment over the splitting-table in the stage. The sunlight was streaming into the room, and the motes were all dancing merrily in the beam. The breeze was rustling the leaves of a sickly bush under the window – coaxing them to hopeful whisperings. I fancied that the sea was all blue and rippling, and that the birds were flitting through the sunlight, chirping their sympathy with the smiling day. But Elisha, his brave heart steeled against the whole earth’s frivolous mood, continued heroically to pour forth his dismal song.

Twilight was filling the kitchen with strange shadows. “We had disposed of Aunt Ruth’s watered fish and soaked hard-bread with hunger for a relish. Uncle Simon’s glance was mournfully intent upon the bare platter.

“But,” said Aunt Ruth, with obstinate emphasis, “I knows they be. ’Tis not what we hears we believe, sir. No, ’tis not what we hears. ’Tis what we sees. An’ I’ve seed un.”

“’Tis true, sir,” said Uncle Simon, looking up. “They be nar a doubt about it.”

“But where,” said I, “did she get her looking-glass?”

“They be many a trader wrecked on this coast, sir,” said Uncle Simon.

“’Twere not a mermaid I seed,” said Aunt Ruth. “’Twere a merman.”

“Sure,” said Uncle Simon, mysteriously, “they do be in the sea the shape o’ all that’s on the land – shape for shape, sir. They be sea-horses an’ sea-cows an’ sea-dogs, Why not the shape o’ humans?”

“Well,” said Aunt Ruth, “’twas when I were a little maid. An’ ’twas in a gale o’ wind. I goes down t’ Billy Cove t’ watch me father bring the punt in, an’ I couldn’t see un anywhere. So I thought he were drownded. ’Twere handy t’ dark when I seed the merman rise from the water. He were big an’ black – so black as the stove. I could see the eyes of un so plain as I can see yours. He were not good lookin’ – no, I’ll say that much – he were not good lookin’. He waved his arms, an’ beckoned an’ beckoned an’ beckoned. But, sure, sir, I wouldn’t go, for I were feared. ‘’Tis the soul o’ me father,’ thinks I. ‘Sure, the sea’s cotched un.’ So I runs home an’ tells me mother; an’ she says ’twere a merman. I knows they be mermans an’ mermaids, ’cause I’se seed un. ’Tis what we sees we believes.”