CHAPTER 9.
WILLIAMSPORT
DAWN BROKE SUNDAY under a wild northern sky. The fishing boat,
Island
Voyager, fired up her diesels just as the sun appeared above
the rim of the hills to
the east. As the engines rumbled to life, Derrick Day stepped
to the door of his
wheelhouse, announcing that he and his brothers were ready to
leave the pier.
I started the sailboat's engine, ducked my head below, called
for my crew.
Moments later, I watched with a certain amusement as first
Amanda, then Nat,
then Liz step onto the deck and move gingerly past me,
shielding their eyes and
squinting with obvious pain into the clean morning light. On
the fishing boat,
two of Day's brothers emerged from the fo'castle wearing the
same agonized
expressions. Somehow, these five managed to disentangle
Brendan's mooring lines and shove the boats clear of one
another.
As the sailboat pulled out into the harbor, I began to wonder
about Richard.
Where was he? Had he come back to the boat--or had his
shipmates left him ashore under a tree somewhere to sleep off
the effects of the evening‘s festivities? I was about to pull
the engine out of gear and initiate a boat-wide search when I
glanced down to see a haggard face, gray as a corpse, emerging
from the cabin. “Feeling... a little... sick,” Richard
muttered, staggering toward the rail. I averted my eyes and
tried not to listen as he deposited his entire portion of the
Kin Barsok into St. Anthony harbor.
The seas were choppy beyond the harbor mouth and the northeast
breeze
was cold. Richard finished his business at the rail and
retreated into the cabin
without another word. The others managed to hoist the mainsail
and the working
jibs before they, too, asked if they might return to their
bunks. Amanda was the
only one who remained on deck--and only for a few moments.
“I'll give a holler if
I need you,” I lied, steering her toward her cabin.
I jammed my cap down around my ears as the sailboat pulled out
of St.
Anthony Bight, and I zipped up the collar of my foul weather
jacket. The truth
was that I was not at all disappointed to be left on my own up
here today. I
had known, ever since Derrick Day had started talking about
the party, what sort
of condition my shipmates were likely to be in this morning.
But like Day, I
didn't care. For I realized I had sixty miles to sail
today--just as he realized he
had a hundred and thirty miles to steam. For both of us, this
translated into one
of those experiences that we went to sea to find: a solitude,
an interlude
between here and there, a segment of time that didn't need to
be justified or
tallied or accounted for.
The passage south from St. Anthony began with a transit across
the
mouth of Hare Bay, a distance of about seven miles, followed
by an easy run along a series of skerries and pinnacle rocks:
Little Cormorandier, Massacre Rock,
Great Cormorandier, Great Verdon, Fichot Island. A few miles
beyond these,
at Saint Julien Harbor, the coast became bold and steep-to,
with deep water of
fifty fathoms (three hundred feet) and more right up to the
shore. With the
wind moderating and backing into the north, the sailboat was
able to run along
this coast barely half a mile from the rock, and I was treated
to a profusion of
form and texture, shadow and light, crowned by a sky so clear
and empty that it
appeared almost black.
As I sat behind the helm watching the shore and guiding the
boat across
greygreen seas, I found myself thinking about some of the
people I had met in
the past few weeks, some of the lives that had intersected,
however briefly, with
my own. Every one of them--fisherman or no--had seen his life
affected in
profound and indelible ways by the cod collapse--this was
something I had
expected from the outset. But a surprising number--especially
here on the Great
Northern Peninsula--had also seen their lives affected by this
new fishery, the
northern shrimp. Jock Gardener and his sons David and Michael
were out there right now in the Hawkes Channel, dragging for
their share of the new quotas. Derrick Day and his brothers
were steaming north, about to do the same. Donna Whalen,
Calvin and Mabel's daughter, was back at work in a shrimp
processing plant that had recently opened in a community near
Flowers Cove. Bern Bromley was in the midst of negotiating a
deal to bring a new shrimp plant to his community--and thus to
save it, at least for a few more years, from economic ruin.
I felt myself in something of a dilemma this morning as I
thought about
these people--friends, many of them, good people, hard working
people. I found
myself hoping against hope that they had found a
solution--that they weren't just
making the same mistake that so many had made with the
cod--that somehow,
this time, the voices of reason and good judgment would
prevail. Yet in light
of what I'd seen and heard in the past few weeks, I couldn't
help wondering: was
it wise, the way this new fishery was being pursued? Did it
make sense for so
many to be entering all at once? Was the fishery sustainable?
Would it be the
salvation of northern Newfoundland, as some were claiming? Or
was it just
another chapter in the same sad story--another instance, like
the northern cod,
of thinking for the short term, ignoring warning signs,
disrupting ecosystems,
driving yet another species to the brink of collapse?
One of the people that I thought might be able to answer such
questions
when I had talked with him last winter was DFO fisheries
manager Don Parsons,
for he was the man at the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre
in St. John's who
was in charge of putting together stock assessment data and of
issuing stock
status reports for northern shrimp for the entire east coast
of Newfoundland and
Labrador. Surprisingly, however, even Parsons seemed to be at
a loss for
answers.
“The shrimp fishery in the Hawkes Channel area is essentially
new, with
very little historical data for establishing baselines and
making comparisons.
DFO scientists have only done one full scale stock
assessment--during a pair of
multi-species research surveys in 1995-96. There isn't another
full survey planned until early next century. In the mean
time, all we have to go on are reports from the fishermen
themselves, estimates of fishing effort, actual tonnages being
landed, that sort of thing.”
When I asked him about the sustainability of this fishery over
the long
term, Parsons remained similarly tentative. “Right now,
there's a lot of
shrimp. We think the current quota of eighty-four million
pounds is well within
the limit for sustainable yield--probably less than ten
percent of the total
biomass. The question is, how long will the high abundance
last? There are
indications, for instance, that the survival rate for shrimp
larvae on the
Labrador shelf was particularly high during the cold
conditions of the late
1980's and early 1990's--but that it may have dropped off
during the middle
years of this decade. In this case, with a species that takes
about six years
to mature, we may be looking at a significant reduction in
shrimp populations
some time in the not-too-distant future.
“If you want to know my own personal feelings,” said Parsons
with a look
of concern on his lean, bearded face, “I'm worried about the
amount of capital
outlay that has been taking place in this fishery--both by the
fishermen and by
the communities. There are a lot of people out there spending
a lot of money
gearing up for this thing--money that many of them can't
afford. I guess I find
myself hoping, along with everybody else, that their optimism
turns out to be
well-founded.”
“But aren't you--or your department--a big part of the reason
for that
optimism?”
“Read our stock assessment report for last year. It's all
there, everything
I've just told you--the short history of the fishery, the
sparsity of the survey
data, the uncertainty of our measurements, the difficulty of
predicting what's
going to happen next. Believe it or not, fisheries managers
have learned
something important since the collapse of the cod. We've
learned to talk about
our uncertainties--to include them in our forecasts, not just
sweep them under
the table and pretend they're not there.”
“But you've doubled the quotas on northern shrimp--twice in
the last two
years. Doesn't that fact alone serve as an invitation for
everybody who can to
jump on board?”
The fisheries manager closed his eyes and drew a long, slow
breath.
“We set the quotas where we think they belong. That's our
job--we just try to
do it the best we can.”
“And if you find out later that the stocks are not as large as
you
thought...?”
“If we find out the stocks are smaller, we reduce the quotas.”
“What if that means that hundreds of fishermen and small
communities
get squeezed out of the picture again...?”
“I don't like to think about that. It's a situation nobody
needs to... a
situation nobody wants to contemplate right now.”
“So you just ignore it?”
“You do your job.”
“And hope that you're right?”
“Yes. And hope to merciful God that you're right.”
As the sailboat traveled south past Croc Harbor, Cape Rouge,
Conche,
Boutitou Rock, Englee, Canada Head, the coast became
progressively higher and
steeper. Palisades rose seven hundred, a thousand, twelve
hundred feet straight
out of the sea, interrupted every few miles by narrow,
steep-sided fiords that
sliced like knife-wounds into the interior.
By late afternoon--just as my crew began to show some signs of
life
below--we drew abeam of one such fiord whose name, according
to the chart,
was Fourche Harbor. A pair of bold capes guarded the mouth. A
small group of
humpback whales rolled and blew in the approaches. A pair of
eagles rode a
column of rising air above the southern cape, while in the
darkness beyond, a
series of waterfalls perforated the fiord walls, glistening
like silver thread
against the rock.
Amanda appeared on deck just as the sailboat moved under the
shadow
of the land, followed a few moments later by Nat and Richard
and Liz. After a
brief series of greetings, all four set to work helping to
jibe the mainsail and
stow the jibs. They worked without talking. Their eyes,
however, betrayed the
surprise that all must have felt as they tried to comprehend
the cavernous vista
that opened in the rock before them.
As the sailboat moved into the fiord, the wind fell strangely
silent. Odd
currents swirled in unpredictable eddies under the keel. A
swell entering from
the sea hissed against the base of the rock, while overhead,
clouds of seabirds
rose from their nests to cry out their displeasure at the
trespassers below.
Two miles inland, the sheer granite walls continued to soar to
almost a
thousand feet. As the distance between them narrowed, the
shadows at their base grew darker and the surface of the water
became inky black. For an instant,
this place began to feel like an alien world, so empty and
inhospitable that it
was hard to imagine another human being having ever set foot
here. A few
moments later, however, this illusion was shattered as a
narrow cove opened on
the right, revealing the broken fishing stages and the
crumbling buildings of a
deserted outport.
I turned the sailboat into the cove, looking for a place to
anchor, while
the others dropped and stowed the mainsail. The closer we
approached this
village, however, the more desolate it appeared. Most of the
buildings had been
stripped of their doors and windows. Several of the roofs had
collapsed. The
church--or what was left of it--had no belfry. The churchyard
was a jumble of
broken fences and toppled grave markers. The waterfront was
lined with
dismantled piers and fishing stores, and in a meadow beyond, a
row of wooden
dories lay like rotting corpses, their bones exposed to the
empty sky.
I felt the hair begin to tingle at the base of my neck as I
wheeled the
sailboat around and pointed her bows back out into the fiord,
looking for a
happier setting somewhere ahead to anchor for the evening. No
sooner had we
left this cove, however, than we were confronted with a scene
of even greater
devastation. For around the next bend, scattered along the
banks of a small
river delta, were the remains of what could almost have been a
bombed-out city:
a jumble of ruined tanks, ruptured towers, toppled corrugated
roofs, and broken
machinery that seemed so out of place that for a moment I was
unable to imagine
what it was.
“Looks like some kind of abandoned industrial site,” said Nat
as the
sailboat moved past.
Suddenly a synapse closed in my brain, and I realized exactly
what it was
and what sad and ill-fated place my crew and I had stumbled
upon.
“Williamsport,” I muttered.
“Say again?”
“Williamsport... it has to be. The chart calls this place
Fourche Harbor,
but that's just the old French name. Williamsport is what
modern Newfoundlanders
call it. I've read about what happened here--I've listened to
people's stories.”
“Then what is this ruin we're looking at?” asked Nat.
I paused, staring at the mass of broken, twisted metal,
decomposing with a
slow, cold fire, returning, imperceptibly, to a state of
equilibrium with the huge,
impersonal landscapes that surrounded it.
“It's the ruin of Newfoundland ...or one of them. It's the
ruin of the
human enterprise.”
Once the sailboat was anchored for the evening, about a mile
to the west
of the ruined commercial site, Amanda and the others launched
the rubber boat
in preparation for a late afternoon foray ashore. Nat and I
were eager to return
to the ruin--a place that I explained had once been a whaling
station, then a
factory for manufacturing liquefied fish. The others, less
curious perhaps, or
simply more in need of physical exercise after their recent
misadventures, opted
for an hour's hike along the stream bed at the western end of
the fiord.
Nat and I deposited our shipmates at the mouth of the stream,
then
turned back down the fiord. I steered the rubber boat toward
the center of the
ruin and drove ashore on a steep, sandy beach. Nat scurried up
the incline and
tied the boat's painter to a piece of half-buried metal, and I
followed, checking his
handiwork to assure myself that the boat was secure. No sooner
had I given him
the thumbs-up than he mounted an iron catwalk, moved around a
row of rusted
tanks, and climbed to the top of a huge iron boiler. He
gestured for me to follow,
but I declined, preferring to investigate this place at a more
conservative pace.
I turned and moved slowly along the beach, picking my way
among the
wreckage, listening to the crunch of boot against sand. From
this close range,
I had no doubt that this mass of rubble was indeed the old
whaling station that
I had read about--nor did I doubt that the toppled buildings a
mile across the
fiord were the remains of the old outport of Williamsport. At
the end of the
beach I climbed to the top of a rusted platform and gazed
across the fiord,
pondering the sad story of this place and of the people who
strived--and
ultimately failed--here.
It is likely that no one still living remembers exactly when
the village
was first settled--historical records were seldom kept for
this part of the French
Shore, and, except for summer drying stations, permanent
settlements of any
type were considered illegal until the French withdrew their
claim to this coast in
the treaty of 1904. Suffice it to say that by the early part
of the twentieth century there was a village here--and that
soon after the treaty shore was relinquished, it became known
by its English name of Williamsport.
For the next few decades, the village was merely the home of a
few simple
fishermen and their families. In the early 1930's, however, a
Norwegian
entrepreneur, Captain Olaf Olsen, arrived to establish the
first of a series of
commercial ventures on the large, flat river delta on the far
side of the fiord.
Olsen's venture was a whaling station, operated for almost
twenty years under
the auspices of one of his subsidiary organizations, the Olsen
Whaling and
Sealing Company. Early in this venture, Olsen took on a
partner, Chesley (Ches)
Crosbie, the heir of one of Newfoundland's wealthiest merchant
dynasties (and
the father of present-day politician and former fisheries
minister John Crosbie).
Together, these two operated a slaughtering and manufacturing
facility that, for a
time, produced a quality-grade whale oil that was transported
to markets worldwide and that generated a handsome profit.
After Olsen's death in 1945, Ches Crosbie became sole owner of
the
Olsen Whaling and Sealing Company. Despite the advancing age
of the facilities
at Williamsport, he continued to operate the whaling factory
here. During the
next several summers, in fact, he decided to use this place as
a training ground for the young men of his family--his eldest
son, John, his future son-in-law, Gene
Shinkle, and his youngest son, Andrew--to give them a slice of
real world experience as they learned about the Crosbie
business empire.
John, the future politician, was sent to sea for a pair of
summers to work
as a catcher on board one of the whaling ships. “Shink,” as
the son-in-law was
called, was put to work in Williamsport on the slip--the place
where the whales
were drawn up onto the shore to be butchered. Fifteen-year old
Andrew,
meanwhile, was assigned to labor in one of the tryworks--a job
that almost cost
him his life when a furnace where he was working blew up,
boiling his skin and
hair and burning the flesh on one of his arms down to the
bone. A ship was
recalled from the whaling ground to take the boy to a hospital
in Montreal,
where he spent the rest of the summer in the burn unit in
intensive care.
By the late 1940's, Ches Crosbie realized that if his factory
in
Williamsport was going to remain profitable, it was going to
require major
modernization, a process that was made possible by means of a
loan guarantee
from Joey Smallwood's new provincial government in 1952. It
seems, however,
that just as the renovations were being completed, a new
product was introduced
to the world marketplace: vegetable oil. Practically
overnight, whale and fish oils
became obsolete and the bottom dropped out of Ches Crosbie's
whaling business.
Something needed to be done at Williamsport--fast--to somehow
make use
of the newly renovated facility. The idea that Crosbie came up
with was a new
product that he had already experimented with in one of his
factories in St. John's--liquefied caplin--for use as a
fertilizer and animal feed additive. The new process had
proved to be profitable in St John's--but from the beginning,
the conversion of the facility at Williamsport was filled with
problems.
First came the logistical dilemma of providing a steady supply
of caplin to
the north coast facility when most of Newfoundland's caplin
fishery was located
elsewhere. Ches and his brother Bill eventually solved this
problem by contracting
for several ships to steam north to Williamsport loaded to the
gunnels with caplin,
only to discover when they got there that the plant was not
ready for them. It
seemed that before the fish could be “digested,” they needed
to be processed in a huge cooker that had not yet arrived from
the manufacturer. The Crosbies, knowing that the fish would
soon begin decomposing in the ships, decided to try placing
uncooked caplin directly into the steam boilers, where it
should have been forced by 140 inch-pounds of steam pressure
down into the digesters. The uncooked and decomposing fish
began producing ammonia gas, however, and eventually the
reverse pressure from this gas forced the fish back out of the
digesters and into the boilers again, where thousands of
pounds of product were ruined. Shortly afterwards, untold of
tons of rotting fish started doing the same thing in the ships
out in the harbor, creating a foul ammonia gas that drove the
crews out of thei cabins, turned knives and forks black, and
began peeling paint off the bulkheads. Finally, the Crosbies
were forced to dispatch the ships to another of their fishmeal
plants in western Newfoundland before the ships were literally
consumed by their own cargoes.
Soon after this episode, the doors on the plant at
Williamsport were
closed, and although the Crosbie family operated the plant on
a limited basis
for several more years, their business activities here were
effectively ended.
Indeed, the facility itself would probably have been abandoned
for good at this
juncture if it had not been for a period of renewed whaling
activity in
Newfoundland led by the Japanese during the late 1960's.
In the summer of 1966 a large Japanese fishing conglomerate,
Taiyo
Suisat, along with its Nova Scotia-based partner, Fishery
Products Company,
acquired the facility at Williamsport from the Crosbie family
for a try at yet another whaling venture. This time the
product was not to be whale oil, however, but whale meat--to
be used as a protein source for human consumption. To this
end, a shipment of new equipment was installed at the
Williamsport factory and a
converted Great Lakes steamship was towed to the site and
moored out in the
fiord for use as a giant meat freezer. The plan itself
appeared workable, yet
the actual whaling operation, which began in the summer of
1967, was plagued
almost from the beginning with frustration and disappointment.
The first setback for the Japanese whalers came at the hands
of the
Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which refused to
grant them an
export permit. According to the DFO, the product that was to
be shipped back to
Japan was not fish but meat, and as such it would require
inspection by the much
more strictly regulated Department of Agriculture. A series of
high level
negotiations ensued between whaling company representatives
and Canadian
government officials, culminating in an on-site meeting at the
Williamsport
factory. This meeting, however, ended in tragedy, as one of
the chartered
airplanes was lost on the return flight from Williamsport,
killing the pilot and
all five passengers. (The Department of Agriculture,
meanwhile, continued to
enforce stringent inspection and permitting standards for the
export of whale
meat, causing “tremendous problems” for the Japanese whalers.)
As if these troubles weren't enough, tragedy struck once again
at the
Williamsport factory in the early 1970's when fire broke out
on the freezer ship
that was anchored out in the fiord, threatening to destroy the
store of frozen
whale meat that was already on board and to jeopardize the
entire season's
whaling activity. In an attempt to salvage what was left of
their summer,
Japanese company officials commandeered freezer space in small
fish plants in
several nearby communities--a tactic that angered fish plant
managers and
rekindled prejudices that were already smoldering.
The ultimate frustration came for the whalers of Taiyo Suisat
in the summer of
1972, however, when the government of Canada ratified the
International Whaling
Commission’s worldwide ban on commercial whaling, effectively
closing the door on all further activity at Williamsport. This
time there was no alternative. Managers collected company
records and personal belongings. Workers packed up machinery
that could be salvaged and loaded it aboard a company ship for
transport back to Japan. The commercial site, like the village
across the way, was abandoned to the long,purple shadows of
the fiord and the inevitable ravages of time.
The sound of footsteps in the sand startled me out of my
reverie. I turned
around to watch Nat as he made his way across a dry creek bed,
then climbed onto the platform where I stood. He was carrying
several items: a small metal saw
blade, a handful of broken potsherds, a coffee mug, an old
wooden barrel stave.
He approached without a word, and for a time we stood shoulder
to shoulder,
staring out across the fiord.
“It's eerie,” Nat said, kicking at a piece of broken glass at
his feet,
“--eerie being out here alone. There used to be so many
people--it's obvious as
you walk around this place.
“Here, for instance. Here's somebody's morning coffee.” He
handed me
the old tin mug. “And here some hungry fellow's broken dinner
plate. Here's the
saw that the carpenter used to build the dormitory roof... and
here, a piece of an
old barrel with the whaling company's name on it.”
He thrust the barrel stave toward me. I took it and held it up
to the light, trying
to decipher the faded letters that had been branded into the
grain. “Olsen... Whal...ing... and...Seal…,” I read aloud.
“Why look, Nat, you've found a piece of history. It's a relic
from the original whaling factory--from back in the 1930's or
1940's--when they were boiling down the blubber of giant blue
whales out here.”
“It makes me think of a poem I once read in school,” said Nat,
“...about
an inscription carved into a piece of stone in the desert. ‘I
am Ozymandias, king
of kings,’ the inscription reads. ‘Look upon my works, ye
Mighty, and despair.’
Only there's nothing left for anybody to look upon, only wreck
and decay and
empty desert as far as the eye can see.”
“Shelley,” I said.
“Huh?”
“The poem. It's by Percy Bysshe Shelley.”
“I don't think I've ever really understood that poem before,”
said Nat. “But
I think I do now. I think it's about places like this--about
the arrogance of the people who build them.”
Silence. I handed back the barrel stave. I was about to turn
and start
back down the beach when my shipmate stopped me with his hand.
“What about
the people in the village?” he asked. “I understand why the
whalers had to
leave--with so many economic setbacks, then with Canada's
ratification of the
whaling ban. But why did the people in the village leave? Were
they also
involved in the whaling operation? Were they employees at the
factory?”
I explained that this was one part of the story for which I'd
never found a
satisfactory answer. “Common sense would seem to suggest that
while the factory was operating, some members of the local
community must have worked here. Indeed, during the
heyday of the operation, the entire village may have been
dependent in indirect ways on the commercial operation. Then,
in the late
1950's, the Crosbies closed their doors. And by the time the
Japanese arrived
seven years later, Williamsport was empty--the houses were
boarded up--the
people were gone.”
Nat looked across the fiord again at the ruined village. He
seemed about
to ask another question--then turned away, as if he'd had
enough of talking. I,
too, fell silent, humbled by the impermanence of this place,
saddened by its
emptiness, embarrassed by the ease with which it was
decomposing and returning
into dust.
For Nat, the ruins of Williamsport spoke of toppled kings and
crumbling
empires. For me, at that moment, they spoke of our collective
inability
to come to an appropriate balance with the natural systems
that we depend upon
for our survival. The whaling ban, like the cod moratorium,
was a response to a
long and relentless pattern of overexploitation of particular
species--a pattern
whose results were not simply the commercial extinction of
those species, but
also the collapse of the entire social and economic order of
the people who had
depended upon them.
Could the devastation here be a kind of warning signal, I
wondered, for
what might be about to happen in modern Newfoundland in the
wake of the cod
collapse? Might this same scene be repeated in a few more
years in Cow Head or
Port au Choix or Flowers Cove or St. Anthony? The events
leading up to the two
crises were dissimilar in several important respects--and the
willingness of the
Canadian government to subsidize the former cod fishermen was
also different--
yet this place bore mute witness to the unpredictability of
ecosystems and the
tenuousness of the human enterprise.
I glanced across at the village, then down at the sailboat,
anchored a
mile to the west. I was about to begin the long trek back down
the beach when a
noise stopped me: a rush of air, shrill and insistent,
somewhere close at hand. I
stopped where I stood and looked around to see the black
forehead and blowhole
of a humpback whale, crowned by a cloud of watery mist, barely
a hundred yards
away. The rush of air was followed by another, as a second
whale surfaced a
few yards beyond the first--then by the guttural rumble of
inhale echoing against
the rock.
A pair of twin-lobed tails rose in unison, and as they stood
suspended
over the black surface of the water, I thought about the irony
of this moment.
For now, barely thirty years after this fiord had been
abandoned by its human
inhabitants, the whales had returned. Once again they blew and
sounded and
fed in its inky depths, just as they had done for countless
thousands of years.
Once again they were the stewards of this place--and it was
only the human
beings who had disappeared.
