Newfoundland Stories (2 page)

They pressed their bodies tightly into the face of the cliff to keep from falling backward, as their numbed fingers guided their way in the darkness. In places, the cliff face was impossible to surmount, and the duo had to retreat or move laterally to try another approach. Frequent rests were needed to conserve their strength. Spracklin doubted that any of the others left on the schooner would have been capable of scaling this part of the cliff. Finally, sensing that they must be near the top, the two men marshalled the last of their waning energy for the final push to the summit. To their great relief, they were able to grasp the branches of the windswept spruce trees that overhung the edge of the cliff and pull themselves over the top. It had taken them almost half an hour to scale a height of five hundred feet.

Their job, however, was not yet done. They now had to find their way to a community and try to organize a party of rescuers. This presented Spracklin with another dilemma, for he didn't know which way to go. He had already made a fatal error in allowing the
Waterwitch
to drift so close to the shore. He knew that if he guessed incorrectly now the people he had left behind would surely be doomed. The responsibility weighed heavily on his mind. He believed that his vessel had come ashore somewhere in the vicinity of Pouch Cove, but he wasn't certain this was actually the case. If they had passed Pouch Cove before crashing and he went north, there was nothing but Cape Francis. If, on the other hand, they hadn't quite reached Pouch Cove, and he went south, they would have to follow the cliffs all the way back to Shoe Cove, a distance of several miles. Both of these scenarios would be disastrous. His only chance of success rested on them getting to Pouch Cove.

Realizing that every minute was crucial, the captain wracked his mind. His gut told him south. After a quick exchange with Ford, they decided that this was the way they would go. This time his decision would prove correct.

The
Waterwitch
had been driven ashore about a mile from the community of Pouch Cove, a distance which can be comfortably covered in twenty minutes or less in normal conditions. Though in the obscuring storm, it took Spracklin and Ford almost twice that long to reach the most northerly house in the community. Fortunately, even though it was now well past midnight, a light still shone in its window.

Eli Langmead was startled by unruly pounding on his door. He hesitated briefly before answering, fearful of the mischief makers that might be afoot at this late hour. When he did open the door, he was shocked by the two storm-battered men who stood there. He saw immediately that they were utterly exhausted and on the verge of collapse. Spracklin poured out his story and implored Langmead to help him.

Within minutes, Langmead, with the fatigued sailors in tow, was raising the alarm in the community, knocking on almost every door he passed to recruit men for the rescue attempt. Among those he collected were Christopher Baldwin, William Langmead, William Nose worthy, Christopher Mundy, and Alfred Moores. These five men, along with Langmead himself, would play a dominant role in the events that unfolded over the next few hours.

Armed with lanterns and ropes, the men, led by Spracklin, hurried back toward the sea and the wounded
Waterwitch
.

“Sounds like they came ashore in Horrid Gulch,” Langmead suggested to Moores as they made their way toward the cliffs.

“Yes,” Moores replied. “I believe you're right.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “They couldn't have picked a worse spot.”

That, indeed, was the case. Horrid Gulch, aptly named, is a narrow inlet just northeast of Pouch Cove that is bounded by a 600-foot sheer precipice on the north and a 500-foot cliff on the south that is not quite as steep yet still extremely treacherous. The fishermen of the area always gave the gulch a wide berth because the sea thundered in there with such force that, even on the calmest of days, anyone entering ran the risk of being swept up by the inrushing tide and crushed against the rocky crag. It was on the south side of the gulch that the
Waterwitch
was grounded.

It was well after midnight when the rescue party reached the cliffs overlooking Horrid Gulch. Although they knew that the stricken schooner lay somewhere below them, in the darkness and the swirling snow, they could not pinpoint its exact location, nor, from where they stood, could they hear the cries of the marooned seamen. They hurriedly discussed their options and tried to decide the best way to proceed. Finally, Eli Langmead concluded, “There's only one way to do this. One of us has to go down to find them.”

Alfred Moores, a forty-three-year-old Pouch Cove fisherman, had come to the same conclusion. He wondered who might step forward to volunteer. He was familiar with Horrid Gulch, having spent many hours of his youth roaming the cliffs between Pouch Cove and Cape St. Francis in search of berries and birds. He remembered that, as boys, he and his friends had often dared each other to venture partway down the cliff, and how, on the one occasion when he had foolishly attempted it, the dizzying sheer drop to the rocks below had prompted him to scramble back up again as quickly as he could. As a fisherman, he was familiar with the gulch from water level as well since he had to pass it every time he made his way to the fishing grounds, and he had often noted that it was probably one of the most dangerous spots on the coastline.

A large man in the prime of his life, Moores was arguably one of the strongest men there that night. His occupation and daily exposure to the elements had long since hardened him against the worst that Newfoundland seas had to offer, and when no other man stepped forward to volunteer to be lowered down over the cliff, he felt compelled to speak up. He wondered what his wife would say in the circumstances. With a family depending on him for support, he could not afford to take any unnecessary risks. Suddenly, he felt the same fear as when he'd rashly listened to the dares of his buddies years earlier. But, despite his reservations, the plight of the stranded people facing imminent death below, if indeed they hadn't already perished, was too much for him. Before he had any time to reconsider, he muttered, “I guess that'll have to be me.”

A thick rope was hitched around a tree at the top of the cliff and its other end fitted around Moores' waist. Then, while a number of the other men supported the rope, he was lowered over the cliff into the swirling darkness of the night. As he swung outward, he felt his heart beating wildly in his chest, and he closed his eyes and held on tightly until he managed to get his fears in check. He prayed for strength to carry out the treacherous task he had embarked upon. He would need his full concentration, for he knew that even the slightest misstep could prove fatal. He was glad for the darkness; he couldn't see down into the terrible abyss beneath him.

He searched with his feet for a suitable route to make his descent, until he finally found a crevice in the cliff face that he thought might lead him to the ledge that he knew existed somewhere farther down. Tugging three times on the rope to signal the men to lower him, he gradually made his way downward over the precipice, trusting implicitly in his fellow rescuers to keep him from plunging to the rocks below. Eventually, his feet told him that he had reached the ledge he was seeking four hundred vertical feet from where he had started, and he felt a great sense of relief at being on solid ground again. The fact that he was in the right place was reinforced by the feeble cries from the shipwrecked people directly below him, which he now heard for the first time. In the first grey light of dawn, he could faintly see them. Sometime after Spracklin had left them, they had all miraculously been able to make their way off the vessel onto the ledge where they now huddled together, clinging for dear life to their precarious perch.

With enough light to see at last, Baldwin, Noseworthy, Mundy, and William Langmead were also lowered down the cliff to form a relay team that could assist in the rescue operation already in action. Eli Langmead stayed at the top to make sure that the rope remained firmly fastened to the tree.

Moores shouted down to the survivors to make them aware of his presence. When he had their attention, he threw down the hand rope he had brought with him. It missed on the first try and he had to haul it up again. He kept throwing it down and retrieving it until it was finally caught by one of the men below. The rope was fastened around the body of one of the survivors, a small middle-aged man named Iveny, who then cautiously began his zigzag ascent up the winding ledge. Moores kept the rope taut and pulled gently to assist the man's nervous crawl up the steep incline and shouted down encouragement and instructions to guide his progress. He had to coordinate his pulling of the rope with the pace of the man's ascent for fear of dislodging him, or indeed himself, from the narrow ledge. When, despite hesitation, Iveny finally reached the section of ledge upon which Moores stood, he took one look at the remaining section of cliff that he would have to scale and balked. Ignoring Iveny's panic, Moores fastened a second rope, one that had been passed down to him some time earlier, around the man's waist and ensured that it was firm and tight.

He then gave him the advice that he would repeat for each successive survivor: “Trust the men up there and don't look down. Use your legs to keep off a bit and just let them pull you up. There's nothing to fear.”

With no other alternative, the man, supporting himself on the rope as Moores had instructed him, was hauled up. Along the way he was assisted and encouraged by Baldwin, Noseworthy, Mundy, and William Langmead in their relay positions in the crevice, and eventually arrived unharmed at the summit where he collapsed into the arms of the waiting crowd. In this manner, over a period of two hours, the remaining ten survivors of the
Waterwitch
were brought up one by one, first to the ledge where Moores was, some hundred feet above the sea, and from there pulled up the remaining four hundred feet by the strong arms of the Pouch Cove fishermen positioned at the top. None of the survivors was accustomed to such heights and the fear of falling to the rocks below was paramount in their minds. Yet they all kept coming, until only Alfred Moores himself was left down there. He was exhausted and his strength sapped from more than two hours of straining on the rope. His entire body ached. Bracing himself against the cliff face for such a long period of time as he assisted each person's ascent had left his limbs heavy and clumsy. Then, following his own advice, he too was pulled up into the welcoming and aching hands of his fellow rescuers.

By then, it was almost full daylight. The weather had abated somewhat and the sea, while still angry and dangerous, was beginning to calm down. The bodies of some of the victims could be seen tossing about in the surf at the bottom of the cliff, to be recovered later that day.

The survivors, despite the dreadful night they had spent huddled together at the bottom of Horrid Gulch, were none the worse for their harrowing experience, except for the few scrapes and bumps from being pulled up the rough cliff. Emotionally, however, they were devastated by the loss of loved ones and relatives. Many more had lost provisions and all their worldly possessions. They were brought to Pouch Cove where they were taken generously into houses and their needs catered to until arrangements could be made to have them transferred to their homes.

As might be expected, the brave fishermen of Pouch Cove who had carried out the rescue became overnight heroes in their own community, and as the details of their heroic deed were carried by newspapers and word of mouth, their fame spread to every corner of Newfoundland and Labrador. For his part in the heroic rescue, Alfred Moores would be awarded the prestigious Silver Medal of the Royal Humane Society of England. The others – Baldwin, Noseworthy, Mundy, as well as the two Langmeads – would receive bronze medals from the society for their brave actions. Later, in 1965, ninety years after the loss of the
Waterwitch
, the bravery of Alfred Moores was further commemorated with the erection of a plaque on the public highway at Pouch Cove, not far from Horrid Gulch, the scene of the heroic rescue.

The eleven people who were rescued from the wreck of the
Waterwitch
owed their deliverance to a number of factors, not the least of which is that their schooner came to rest on the south side of Horrid Gulch. If they had crashed onto the north side, rescue would have been virtually impossible. The men on board the schooner, even if they had made it from the vessel onto the cliff, could never by any stretch of the imagination have scaled the sheer vertical cliff on that side of the gulch, nor would rescue from the top of the precipice have been possible. They owed their lives to the grit and determination of Samuel Spracklin and Richard Ford who scaled the south cliff of Horrid Gulch and sought out the help that eventually resulted in their rescue. And thirdly, and foremost, they owed a monumental debt of gratitude to the courage and daring of Alfred Moores and the rest of the Pouch Cove fishermen, all of whom placed their own lives in great danger to save them. These six brave men, by their courageous deed in the early morning hours of November 29, 1875, earned for themselves an honoured place alongside the many other heroic men and women whose courage has so greatly enriched the history of Newfoundland and Labrador over the past five hundred years.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The information inscribed on a commemorative plaque erected at Pouch Cove in 1965 differs slightly from the account of the rescue published in the December 4, 1875, edition of the St. John's newspaper,
The Courier.
The former indicates that nine people were lost when the
Waterwitch
was driven onto the rocks of Horrid Gulch, while
The Courier
states (correctly) that twelve people died in the disaster, including four women.