12    For a Decent
Burial

the greatness of the human spirit is never better
demonstrated than when people go to extraordinary lengths to make sacrifices
for the sake of others. The God-like qualities that all men created in His
image are said to possess are never more clearly revealed than when men show
themselves ready to lay down their lives for their friends—and often for
their foes. In war and peace men and women of every nationality display
unmatched courage and self-sacrifice by tossing their very existence into the
scale to save another from death or injury. But to what heights of nobility can
men be said to have climbed when they risk life and limb with no thought or
award or recognition, not to rescue men from drowning, but simply to give
drowned men a decent burial?

This has happened not once but several times in Newfoundland.
Perhaps the most thrilling occasion was in December, 1903. On Friday, December
3rd, the little Danish schooner Sigrid was coming "up the Southern
Shore" heading for St. John's. The 80-ton Sigrid, in command of
Captain N. Petersen, was well-known in the Newfoundland trade, her agents in
the capital being the firm of A. S. Rendell & Company. Already that year
she had brought a load of sugar to the firm of A. H. Murray, and a month later
went to Bonavista to take a salt fish cargo to Europe for the firm of P.
Templeman. She had a good run across the Atlantic, had finished with her fish
cargo in September, and sailed again to Carthagena, Spain. She left there on
November 7th in ballast and three days later was reported at Gibraltar en route
to Newfoundland for a second charter.

From Gibraltar to Cape Race in something over twenty days is good
sailing for a fore-and-aft schooner westward across the Atlantic Ocean in late
autumn and Captain Petersen must have been pleased with his little ship. She
was seen in several places as she cruised along, and the lightkeeper at Ferryland
Head, William Costello, reported seeing the lights of a vessel going past
offshore about eleven o'clock the same night. He saw the lights when the haze
lifted a few moments as the vessel was passing on the back of Crow Island,
which lies between Aquaforte and Freshwater, Ferryland.

About
the same time residents of "The Pool," near Ferryland, said they
distinctly heard the noise of slatting canvas and the bracing of yards, as a
vessel altered course coming out of the haze with Ferryland light in view.
People judged she was then not more than a half or three-quarters of a mile
from the mainland, in which case she must have passed quite close to Crow
Island. Since the vessel was not hailed, and made no signals, it was merely
presumed from what later transpired, that she was the ill-fated Sigrid.

Northeast winds had prevailed on the coast from the end of November, but
suddenly between ten and eleven o'clock that Friday night, the wind veered to
the south-southeast and blew a hurricane. It is assumed—an assumption
based on knowledge of tides, wind and weather and deductions made by fishermen
and ocean-going mariners—that the little Danish schooner was caught on
the bad leeshore by the sudden gale and flung into a gulch in Ferryland Head by
the mountainous seas that quickly rose.

At eight a.m. Saturday, lightkeeper Costello was disturbed to see a
number of barrels and other evidence of a wreck tossing about in the waters of
Ferryland "Motion." At once he spread the alarm through the
settlement and very soon every able-bodied man in the vicinity was hurrying to
the edge of the cliffs overlooking Flat Point, south-southwest of the
light, where the wreck had been located. They brought lines and other
lifesaving equipment to aid possible survivors, but as they looked down they
could see no sign of people in the wreck or on the rocky ledges of the
precipitous cliffs.

The
seas were surging in, buffeting the hulk, and striking the rocks with a force
that sent spray flying over the watchers on the clifftop and drenching them to
the skin. Wind and sea blew and roared with such force and din that the
would-be rescuers could scarcely hear one another speak. Suddenly one man began
to make vigorous gestures and point below. The others craned forward and, as a
particularly big wave receded, they saw a body.

It was wedged-between some boulders about halfway between high- and
low-water mark, and was evidently the body of one of the crew of the
ill-starred vessel. The foreshore on which the body lay sloped gradually upward
for about three-quarters of its distance, then began a steep and rugged ascent.
From the surface of the water to the summit of the cliff the distance and
height was roughly eighty feet, and the seas as they thundered ashore would
surge up the incline, sometimes as far as sixty feet, making a frightening
turmoil below the watchers. Since the man was obviously dead, and no living
survivors could be seen, the Ferryland men might well have been excused for
turning their backs on the sad scene and going home till the weather improved.

But not the Ferryland men! There and then they agreed an effort should
be made to recover the body and give it a decent, Christian burial. Volunteers
were called for the incredibly dangerous task, and were readily forthcoming.
James Keefe, John W. Costello, son of the lightkeeper, and James Keough, son of
the former assistant lightkeeper, instantly stepped forth. All three were
strapping, young fishermen, in the prime of their physical strength and
manhood.

Costello
and Keough were both single men, but Keefe was married with a young family.
They fully realized the risk involved in the undertaking, yet they did not
shrink from the attempt which they plainly regarded as a sacred Christian
duty— to bury the dead. To avoid being hampered in the performance of
that duty they stripped off their coats and vests in the freezing, December
morning, and with ropes fastened about their waists by their neighbours, prepared to make the perilous descent.

The ropes used were second-hand, half-inch bass, the only kind
available; but the knowledge that this was not the strongest material on which
to rest their limbs and lives in no way deterred them from going ahead with
their humane resolve. They were also well aware that, even if the ropes held,
they might easily be caught by the inrushing seas and dashed to death against
boulders or cliffs; they realized the ropes could be cut through by sharp
rocks, and they could be carried away and drowned; they knew the ropes might
burst under their weight and the weight of the corpse while being hauled up the
cliff-face, and the rescuers be killed in the fall. But they did not hesitate.
Not even the thought of the mangled remains they would have to carry up daunted
their bold hearts.

So their noble resolve is implemented, and on the wild, cliff-edge
almost a hundred feet above the storm-tossed ocean the three young men, with
ropes of inferior material under their armpits, wait to be let down into the
abyss. Below them, intermittently buried by the white-lathered surf is the
object of their chivalrous essay—a body—not of a living
man—but a shattered corpse. Their Christian conscience and sensibilities
have spurred them on to recover the corpse so that it may be decently interred.
The body, which they discover later is the captain of the Sigrid, lies
jammed between some boulders, almost midway on the incline of the seascoured
landwash that slopes over fifty feet from cliff-face to low water.

The
men could only be lowered as the seas receded. They had to depend on the
alertness and strength of their friends on the cliff-top to gauge the speed and
power of the waves, and pick the right time. When they reached the slope below
the cliff they had to creep down it over slippery rocks and run back up again
as the waves rushed in. The Ferryland men made over fifty attempts to
reach the body wedged in the crevice, and frequently they were submerged in the
icy water.

Sometimes when they could not move fast enough to escape the reach of
the sea their helpers had to haul up the ropes and hold the men suspended in
mid-air above the surf. But at length the body was secured and brought up. It
was in a dreadful state. Costello, Keefe and Keough were completely
exhausted after their prodigious efforts, and the great risks run, and had to
be taken to their homes to recuperate.

Apparently most of the Ferryland men went home after this recovery, but
a number remained at the scene in the event that other bodies should come
ashore from the wreck. The patience of these watchers was rewarded about three
o'clock in the afternoon. A huge sea tumbled aboard the Sigrid and
as it swept on into the cove, the men saw a body shoot about twenty feet in the
air, and fall in upon the rocks where it remained. Obviously another following
sea might just as easily carry it off again, and the men on the cliff-top made
a quick decision to go down and recover it.

The
new crew of volunteers numbered Thomas Sullivan, Daniel and Robert Keefe who
clambered down the treacherous incline in awesome danger, and reached the body.
Just as they were about to grasp it, another immense wave sluiced up the
landwash and for a fearful moment it seemed that all four—the living and
the dead—would be hurled willy-nilly to their doom. Apparently they went
down without even the doubtful security of the bass ropes for the account says
that a rope was hurriedly flung to them. They seized it, then clutched the body
and held it firmly, as another sea smothered them.

Four other men, James Kavanagh, James Reid, Peter Barnable and Robert
Shannahan, fearing the three heroic rescuers would be lost, scrambled down the
cliff to their aid. With the added assistance they brought up the second corpse
which like the first was horribly mangled. Time passed, the watch on the cliff
continued, and about an hour later a third body was thrown ashore from the
wreck. It was actually only a part of a body that could be seen rolling around
in the surf. It was impossible for the intrepid men to reach it and they had to
use jiggers with great patience for more than an hour till it was also secured.
Handling the remains was a gruesome task and they had to be wrapped in canvas
before being brought up the cliff.

Most of the Ferryland men had been on the cliff since eight o'clock that
Saturday morning without a morsel of food, and drenched and frozen in the
December weather. When darkness closed in and nothing further could be done
they returned home. Early Sunday morning, however, they went out again to the
scene of the wreck where they remained during that day. Late that afternoon
they discovered another body—the fourth—but had to wait till Monday
to try and secure it. Jiggers and grapnels were used but all the lines burst
and William Carter went back into Ferryland and got new Manila rope and more
grapnels. The body was afoul of some wreckage, and they had managed to get it
free when darkness fell and they had to quit. Tuesday they tried again and
succeeded in bringing up the dead seaman.

It
was generally believed that body was the last of the vessel's complement; but
there was one more to come which brought the recovery of the bodies from the Sigrid
to an unparalleled high point of heroism. The fourth and fifth bodies were
located at a different point- of the shore where the cliff was well over two
hundred feet high, and almost sheer, and the fifth corpse was secured by almost
superhuman measures on the part of Daniel Keefe. Jiggers had hooked into the
body but the lines were too frail to bear the weight and it was then that Keefe
showed the kind of man he was. It was simply awe-inspiring to look down the
precipice with the tumultuous ocean beneath, but Keefe volunteered to go. With
a rope under his armpits and a boat-hook in his hands to fend himself off from
the cliff, he boldly went down.

He took a jigger with a light Manila rope attached which, with the lines
already attached to the body, should be able to bear the weight. Keefe was let
down the cliff-face and hooked the jigger into the body which was that of a coloured man. He was then drawn up with the battered remains
using the boat-hook to save himself and the body from being dashed against the
cliff. At last he stood in safety on the top and the task was pronounced
finished.

During
the recovery of the bodies, which covered a period of four days, there were
many times when the older and less agile men v/ere of the opinion that the
rescuers were far too bold, that they were headstrong and even rash. But
fortune favours the brave, or more truthfully
Providence watched over the Ferryland men in their truly Christian—almost
sacrificial—undertaking. Except for a column in the St. John's newspapers
the Ferryland heroes received no recognition for their incomparable feat.

Their
descendants may find some satisfaction in this belated tribute and all readers
cannot help but be moved deeply by the tale of these noblemen (and for once
that is the right use of the word) who risked certain death not to rescue
living men from the sea but to give drowned men decent burial.