Wilfred had already laid up the Strathcona in St. John’s Harbor for the winter, but the cable had piqued his interest. Despite the fact that it was already November 15 and the sea was beginning to ice over, he decided to investigate. He chartered a steam trawler named the Magnific and set out for Smoky Tickle. It was tough going. Fierce winds blew, buffeting the boat, and the crew was kept busy chipping away ice lest she become top-heavy and capsize.
Despite the weather, they made it to Smoky Tickle, where they found the Bessie Dodd aground.
“It looks to me like a crime has taken place,” Wilfred said to the captain of the Magnific as the two grim-faced men stood onshore inspecting the Bessie Dodd.
“Aye,” the captain replied. “What ship runs aground one hundred and fifty feet from the wharf where she’s taken on her cargo of fish? And on a flat, sandy beach no less. And look, the only damage seems to be a broken steering chain.”
Despite the broken steering chain’s being the only damage, the ship’s captain had sold the Bessie Dodd for eighty dollars to Gerry Jewett, the trader whose cargo he had taken on board. When he got back to England, the captain had made a claim to Lloyds for fifteen thousand dollars to cover the cost of his vessel and another twenty thousand dollars for the loss of the cargo he was carrying. And with the ship’s being in such a remote location with winter setting in, the captain had expected Lloyds to pay his claim without investigating the loss.
Using all his skill as a mariner, the captain of the Magnific maneuvered his vessel around, and a towline was attached to the Bessie Dodd. Inch by inch the vessel was pulled off the beach and back into the water. The sailing conditions were foul, and several times Wilfred thought he might have to cut the line and let the Bessie Dodd float freely, but the Magnific and her charge made it back to St. John’s.
The authorities at St. John’s were surprised to see the Bessie Dodd afloat. An investigation was quickly mounted, and the original owner of the vessel was brought from England to stand trial for fraud. When the owner arrived in St. John’s, he confessed that he and Jewett had colluded to defraud Lloyds of London.
Wilfred could not have been happier with this outcome. Jewett had illegally been supplying alcohol along the Labrador coast for years, and this was just the opportunity to be rid of him.
Jewett was immediately arrested and stood trial with the Bessie Dodd’s original owner. Both men were found guilty of fraud and sent to prison. With Gerry Jewett behind bars, Wilfred headed to St. Anthony, where the hospital was now completed, to spend the winter.
Chapter 13
Adrift
By 1905 the work in Labrador and Newfoundland was growing by leaps and bounds. The mission council had dropped any plans to have Wilfred return to England and carry on his work with the mission there. Wilfred Grenfell was now as much a part of the Labrador coast as any fisherman who had been born and raised there, and he never wanted to leave the place again.
With the hospital at St. Anthony now well established, Wilfred had made that community his winter headquarters. During the summer months he took the Strathcona and served the fishing fleet and those living in the most remote areas of Labrador and Newfoundland. The hospitals at Battle Harbor and Indian Harbor were extended, and a string of nursing stations was established along the coast. A hardy nurse manned each station through the winter, and a succession of volunteer medical students and nurses staffed them in the summer. These volunteers were Wilfred’s pride and joy. He called them WOPS, which stood for “workers without pay.”
Every time Wilfred went on a speaking engagement to Canada or the United States, hundreds of people asked him how they could help. He always invited them to come to the mission and use whatever skills they had, and by 1905 hundreds had taken up the challenge. At times the number of volunteers overwhelmed the full-time workers and tensions rose between the two groups, but it never bothered Wilfred. He was glad to introduce young people to the rigors of missionary service, and their enthusiasm and skills pushed the mission into new and exciting areas.
One such volunteer was Jessie Luther, whom Wilfred met when he was on a lecture tour in New England. He visited a hospital in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Jessie showed him around. Sometime before, she had been a patient at the hospital and was amazed at how boring a hospital stay could be. When she got well, she persuaded a doctor to allow her to start craft classes among the patients. She brought in weavers, knitters, and woodcarvers to teach the patients their skills. The doctor soon noticed that these busy patients were happier and healed faster. When Wilfred saw what Jessie had achieved, he invited her to come to St. Anthony and bring her ideas with her.
Jessie did come, and soon the hospital at St. Anthony had an industrial department attached to it that taught hooked-rug making, ivory and wood carving, weaving, moccasin and glove making, and the cutting and mounting of semiprecious stones. Soon the local people became involved too, and many housewives learned new skills and were able to supplement their families’ incomes through the long winter months.
Wilfred’s concern for the children had taken on a new form too. An orphanage was opened at St. Anthony, and Wilfred had the words of Jesus, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me,” painted in large white letters along the roofline. An English volunteer, an old friend of Wilfred’s named Eleanor Storr, came to Newfoundland to look after the first six children who were housed in the orphanage.
The only thing that could pull Wilfred away from the Labrador coast was the necessity to undertake speaking tours to raise increasingly larger amounts of money to keep the mission going.
It was Easter Sunday, April 19, 1908, and Wilfred was just leaving church in St. Anthony when a man came running up to him across the snow.
“Dr. Grenfell, Dr. Grenfell,” the man called.
Wilfred stepped forward.
“Dr. Grenfell,” the man said again, out of breath, “we have come from Brent Island in Hare Bay. T’boy you operated on two weeks ago is very sick. It be blood poisoning, I believe. You must come there and help him.”
Wilfred remembered the boy; he had operated on him for osteomyelitis. He immediately swung into action. “I will get there as quickly as I can,” he said as he ran off to his house to gather up his things for the journey. Brent Island was sixty miles to the south, and it would take two days to get there.
Once his eight dogs had been attached to his komatik, Wilfred was on his way. He also took with him his retriever, Jack, a small black spaniel. Jack bounced along beside the komatik as they set off. It was agreed that the men who had come from Brent Island would stay and rest themselves and their dogs before setting out again.
By nightfall Wilfred had made it to the small village of Lock’s Cove on the northern shore of Hare Bay. He spent the night with a family before setting out early the following morning.
During the night a stiff wind from the northeast had sprung up, causing the ice pack on the bay to break up into ice pans. Normally Wilfred would have set out with his komatik and dogs across the bay, taking the most direct route to Brent Island, which lay close to the south shore of Hare Bay. Since his route across the ice pack was blocked, Wilfred made his way down the shore of the bay.
Wilfred was several miles down the coast when he noticed that an ice bridge to a small uninhabited island in the bay was still intact. If he took the ice bridge to the island and then crossed the narrow sheet of ice between the island and the shore, he would cut a number of miles off his journey and arrive to treat his patient sooner. Wilfred called to his lead dog, Brin, who veered in the direction of the ice bridge, leading the other dogs behind him.
Soon Wilfred, riding on his komatik, was speeding across the ice bridge toward the island, the dogs barking as they raced along. All was going well until Wilfred noticed that they had ventured onto sish ice, a thick, gooey layer of ice formed when ice pans were buffeted together by the wind and small pieces broke off the edges. Suddenly the komatik began to sink into the sish ice, making it almost impossible for the dogs to pull the sled. As the dogs slowed down, they, too, began to sink into the sish ice.
Wilfred knew he had to do something, and fast. In an instant he leaped off the komatik, pulling out his knife at the same time. With a swish of his knife, he cut through the walrus-hide traces that held the dogs to the sled. The dogs pulled free, and Wilfred grabbed the cut traces and held on as tightly as he could. The dogs pulled him through the sish ice until finally Brin scrambled up onto a pan of ice. The other dogs followed, dragging Wilfred along with them.
Shivering and wet to the bone, Wilfred clambered onto the ice pan. He knew he did not have time to think about how cold he was—not if he wanted to survive. The ice pan they were on was too small and was already beginning to sink with him and nine dogs on it. To make matters worse, the wind had shifted. It was now blowing from the northwest and was blowing the ice pans out to sea and away from the coast.
Wilfred spotted another, larger ice pan about twenty yards away. If only we could make it there, he muttered to himself as he tied the dog traces around both wrists. He threw Brin into the water in the hope that he would swim to the larger ice pan and lead the other dogs there, pulling Wilfred with them. But Brin merely climbed back onto the ice pan he had been thrown from. Wilfred tried again and again, with the same result. Brin did not understand what Wilfred wanted him to do. Then he remembered Jack, his black spaniel retriever. Wilfred picked up a chunk of ice and threw it onto the larger ice pan. “Go fetch,” he ordered Jack.
The spaniel sprang into action, sloshing its way across the sish ice to the ice pan.
“Stay,” Wilfred commanded when the animal was safely across.
Seeing Jack standing on the ice pan, Brin suddenly got the idea. He leaped into the sish ice, the other dogs following him, tugging Wilfred along. A few minutes later they were all safely standing on an ice pan about ten feet by twelve feet.
Wilfred would have liked to make it to an even bigger ice pan another twenty yards away, but by now he was too cold, and he knew he had to get his body temperature up if he was to survive. He pulled off his wet clothing and wrung out each item. Then he put on one layer of clothing at a time and sat, trying to use his body heat to dry the various items of clothing. While he did not get them completely dry this way, he managed to get them to where they were damp but not sopping wet. As he sat drying his clothes, Wilfred took his fur moccasins that reached all the way up to his thighs and cut the tops off them just above the ankles. Then with his knife he split them open, and using some of the walrus hide from the dog traces, he stitched together a kind of cape that he could drape around his shoulders for warmth.
As he worked, the ice pan continued to be blown out across the bay. Wilfred knew that if it were blown all the way out to sea, he would never be rescued. The ice pan would be pounded to pieces by heavy sea, dumping him and the dogs into the frigid ocean and certain death. As it was, Wilfred knew his chance of survival was slim. Not only was cold now his greatest enemy, but the coastline of Hare Bay was uninhabited between Lock’s Cove to the north and the coastal islands to the south. Even if the ice pan stayed in the bay, it was unlikely that anyone would see him and rescue him. But Wilfred would not let himself dwell on such things. Right now he needed to do all he could to survive.
The afternoon wore on, and with it, Wilfred’s attempt to dry his clothes as much as he could. Then, as afternoon shadows stretched long across the bay and the temperature began to plummet, Wilfred knew he had to do more to stay warm. It dawned on him that he would have to do the unthinkable. He would have to kill some of the dogs and use their hides as a blanket against the biting cold. Wilfred thought about the grisly task for a while, but he could see no way around it.
