Tuesday, August 30, 1927
Hove Down By Sea –
Thought Time Had Come
Sch. Edith C. Rose Limps Back
to Port After Thrilling Experience in Last Wednesday’s Hurricane
Storm-battered, her dories destroyed, deck stove in and her
bottom leaking, sch. Edith C. Rose, Capt. Manuel
Roderick, of this port, arrived from Boston late yesterday afternoon and tied up
at the Gorton wharf to discharge her fare. The crew brought a story of threatening death
and mountainous waves, which held the schooner underneath the surface while dories were
snatched from their nests, and even the heavy hoisting engine carried aft, twisted and
broken.
The Rose was fishing on Western
Bank on Wednesday last, and when the wind freshened, the only sail set was the foresail.
Today all that is left of the foresail is a piece about a foot wide running along the
boom, the rest having been carried away as though cut with a knife. The crew told a
reporter this morning that the storm hit them so suddenly and with such intensity, that it
was every man for himself and trust to the kind providence of God for safe delivery.
Swinging sharply out of the southeast, the wind increased
to hurricane force, throwing the schooner down so that her hatches were buried. A wave hit
her on the port side, climbed the rail and rushed aft with terrific force, sweeping the
entire port nest of dories down against the starboard nest, splintering 15 of them and
hurling them like chips into the water on the lee side. Four of the dories were left
whole, but are so badly cracked that they will be of no use.
The nose of the schooner went under a huge comber, and the
swordfish pulpit was twisted out. The cradle on the starboard nest of dories was torn
clean of the deck, the smoke pipe went by the board, and the deck was crushed downward
near the forecastle companionway as though one had dripped a tom of iron from aloft.
Small holes were also pounded in both starboard and port
decks forward, and the forecastle and cabin were filled with water. Along the lee side of
the craft swept the mountain of water, carrying nearly everything movable with it, finally
seizing the heavy hoisting engine and bumping it up and down the deck until it was a
twisted and broken affair and useless.
When the foresail parted, it went in one solid sheet of
canvas, starting on the leech and ripping forward to the spar like a piece of paper. The
weight of the water sent the vessel under, until she settled so that the cross trees were
almost washed by the waves. So long did she remain under water that the crew thought she
would never come up, and according to the men themselves, hardy and fearless as they are,
they cried in fear as they thought their time had come.
Finally shaking herself like a duck, the Rose
poked her bow up out of the seas, shed the water from her deck, and found her bearings.
Wednesday night, and well along until daylight Thursday,
the men were forced to bail the forecastle and cabin with buckets, and it was a tired gang
when the sun broke on Thursday and the Rose headed for home.
Capt. Roderick said that the only craft he
sighted on the banks at the time, was a three-masted schooner bound to the eastward, and
she had been damaged. He did not attempt to speak to her, for the seas were still raging
high, and he wanted to get home as his own craft was leaking, just how badly he will not
know, until she is hauled out on the railways after her fish has been taken out. |
