Wilfred and Paul continued their trip north. Their next stop was Rigolet, and then they steamed on to Hopedale, where they planned to rendezvous with the Albert once again. The voyage to Hopedale was eventful. At one point the Princess May found herself in a maze of reefs. Strong winds buffeted the vessel, and night began to fall. Wilfred prayed for wisdom as he shinnied up the mast in search of a way through the maze. With some deft maneuvering, he managed to reach the leeward side of an island. But Wilfred knew that the Princess May would not be safe there overnight. As he and Paul wondered what to do, they were relieved to see three skin-covered Eskimo boats bobbing their way toward the Princess May. Wilfred grinned at the Eskimos who manned the boats and threw his bowline to them. The Eskimos skillfully guided the Princess May into a narrow channel between the rocks where she would be safe until the buffeting winds subsided.
Wilfred transferred to one of the skin boats, which took him ashore. The Eskimos, recognizing him from his previous visit along the coast the year before, brought their sick to see him in his tent. Gangrene had set into one man’s toe as a result of frostbite, and Wilfred amputated the toe on the spot. Other people had lung problems or cuts and bruises. When he had treated them all, Wilfred held a service in the tent. He knew very few words in the Inuit language, but Wilfred knew he was among the Christian converts of the Moravians, and he was glad for the unspoken fellowship.
The following morning the wind had dropped, and Wilfred was able to get back aboard the Princess May, where Paul had spent the night, and they continued their journey northward.
When they finally reached Hopedale, over one hundred fishing schooners were at anchor, along with the Albert. Eliot Curwen was already busy tending to the fishermen’s medical needs, so Wilfred visited the Moravian missionaries and held services on shore. By now Wilfred Grenfell, at age twenty-eight, was something of a legend along the Labrador coast. Everyone wanted to meet him and hear him preach. Wilfred found the biggest meeting room in Hopedale and announced a meeting that night. The room was so packed that Captain Trezisse had to hold an overflow service in a nearby building.
While Wilfred was in Hopedale, he heard news of a tragedy at sea. A schooner, the Rose, had headed out of St. John’s carrying far too many passengers and crew—sixty-two people in all. While sailing through dense fog, the vessel had hit an ice pan and crushed her bow. The Rose sank to the bottom eight minutes later. Men, women, and children were forced overboard into the icy water. Thankfully, another schooner soon arrived on the scene, and fifty people were rescued. But eight men, two boys, and two girls perished in the icy water.
Wilfred was furious when he heard of the tragedy, which was so avoidable. He had seen the Rose moored in St. John’s. Not only was she an old, poorly maintained schooner but also she was far too small to carry sixty-two people. Wilfred extended his notes to include “Ways the Government can help reduce carnage at Sea.” He noted that the schooners should be forbidden to carry too many passengers and that proper lifeboats and emergency equipment should be required for all those on board.
When it was time for Wilfred to leave Hopedale, one of the Moravian missionaries, a Danish man, asked if he could go along as a pilot. Wilfred readily agreed, and so the Moravian man, Paul Legget, and Wilfred all set out northward. The waters they were headed into were totally uncharted, so as a precaution Wilfred borrowed a ladder at Hopedale that he lashed to the mast so he could climb it for a better view of the treacherous reefs they would encounter.
They made it 160 miles north, all the way to Okkak, until reluctantly Wilfred turned the Princess May around. The water was beginning to look oily, a sure sign that it was reaching freezing point.
By the time they reached Hopedale again, most of the schooners had already headed south, and the Albert was pulling up anchor. Wilfred followed the Albert’s route, stopping in at the tiny settlements where the Liveyeres were preparing to winter.
The Albert and the Princess May met up again at Battle Harbor. Wilfred was delighted to hear that the doctors and nurses at the hospital there had been kept busy all summer. Now it was time for them to close the hospital for the winter and all head back to St. John’s. Wilfred and Paul headed south in the Princess May, while the others traveled in the Albert. They had planned to rendezvous at St. Anthony Harbor, Newfoundland, before continuing to St. John’s. However, they ran into foul weather, and the Princess May lost her mast, which was washed overboard along with the mission flag it was flying.
When he finally reached St. Anthony Harbor, Wilfred waited for several days for the Albert to arrive. When she did not come, he steamed out of the harbor and headed for St. John’s, all the while wondering what had happened to his coworkers. When he steamed into St. John’s Harbor, Wilfred saw that the Albert was already anchored there.
“They’re alive! The doctor’s alive!” The shouts went up from the pier as the Princess May drew closer to shore.
Wilfred soon learned that the Princess May’s mast and flag that had washed overboard had been found floating off the coast, and everyone assumed that the launch had been swamped in the storm and sunk. The Albert herself had been damaged in the storm, and Captain Trezisse had made the decision to head straight for St. John’s without nearing land again.
To Wilfred’s dismay, news of his “death” had already been published in the Times of London newspaper, and memorial services were being planned. A telegram announcing that Wilfred was alive was dispatched immediately, and Wilfred hoped that his mother was not too distraught at the erroneous story of his death.
Wilfred and his friend Arthur were soon on the move again. They had decided to visit Canada to raise money for their work in Newfoundland and Labrador. It was already growing, and Wilfred knew that the National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen in England could not financially sustain it much longer. He hoped to interest the Canadian government in providing five thousand dollars to build a third hospital at the inner end of Belle Isle Strait, an area within Canada’s borders.
After seeing Eliot Curwen and the two nurses off to England aboard the Albert, Wilfred and Arthur boarded a passenger steamer for Halifax, Nova Scotia. When they arrived on December 3, 1893, they had little idea of how to proceed. They took a room in a hotel and tried to decide what to do. Eventually they settled on a simple plan. They would visit all the leading people in Halifax—government officials, the president of the board of trade, clergymen, and military officials—and ask for help. While Wilfred fretted that this approach was too direct, without contacts or introductions it was the best they could think of to do.
The visits were more successful than Wilfred had hoped. He and Arthur were well received everywhere they went, and their message was listened to with interest. By the end of the week, a public meeting had been set up, with both the Anglican bishop and the Canadian prime minister agreeing to attend. The meeting went well, and a committee was formed to “assist the work of Dr. Grenfell.”
Emboldened by the success of their time in Halifax, Wilfred and Arthur traveled on to Montreal, where they hoped to meet with Sir Donald Smith, the last resident governor of the Hudson Bay Company in Canada. As a young man, Sir Donald had been the company’s manager at Hamilton Inlet, and Wilfred was sure that he was aware of the perils of living on the Labrador coast. Sir Donald had become an extremely wealthy man and was known to be interested in funding medical work.
Once again Wilfred met with success. Sir Donald agreed to meet with him and Arthur. The men talked together for several hours, swapping stories about people and places along the Labrador coast. Sir Donald introduced Wilfred and Arthur to other wealthy men, who promised to consider supporting the mission. In the meantime, Sir Donald gave Wilfred and Arthur two first-class tickets on the Canadian Pacific Railway so that they could continue their fundraising efforts all the way to Vancouver Island, on Canada’s west coast.
Everywhere Wilfred and Arthur went, they were greeted by interested and enthusiastic people willing to band together to sponsor a hospital bed or a berth aboard one of the mission ships. When they got back to Montreal, good news awaited them. Sir Donald was ready to provide eighteen hundred dollars to purchase another steamer for the mission, and another man was willing to pay for a smaller sailboat. Wilfred was glad to have this news to take home with him to England.
By early March Wilfred was back in Gorleston, once again overseeing the work of the mission in the North Sea. Many things had changed in the nine months he had been away. For one thing, the copers, the small boats that supplied alcohol to the fishermen at sea, had been outlawed. In addition, more and more steam-powered trawlers were showing up on the North Sea. These new trawlers were no longer dependent on the wind to trawl and so could fish almost continuously.
As Wilfred prepared for another summer on the Labrador coast, he received some disappointing news. Arthur Bobardt announced that he was joining the navy as a surgeon, and Eliot Curwen went off to be a missionary in Peking, China. Wilfred hated to lose these two doctors, who by now knew so well the needs and conditions in Labrador, but he was relieved when two new recruits stepped forward: Dr. Fred Willway, who was on loan from the London Missionary Society, and Dr. John Bennetts, who hoped to become a permanent member of the mission.
The two new doctors, along with nurses Celia Williams and Ada Carwardine, sailed for St. John’s aboard the Albert. However, the mission committee had decided that the Albert would not be staying on the Labrador coast that summer, since she was needed back in the North Sea. Instead, two new boats would be brought into service alongside the Princess May. The first of these new vessels was named the Sir Donald, after Sir Donald Smith, who had provided the money to buy her. She was a seventy-five-foot-long, fourteen-foot-wide steamer, and it was hoped that she would be fitted out and ready for service when Wilfred arrived in St. John’s. The Sir Donald was built for the rough conditions off the Labrador coast, and she was a great improvement over the Princess May. The Princess May had been built as a river steamer, and the conditions off Labrador had pushed her beyond her limits the previous summer. By the time she had made it back to St. John’s, her boiler pipes were leaking and the propeller shaft once again was bent. As a result the Princess May was now in dry dock undergoing a complete overhaul.
The second boat was named the Euralia MacKinnon. She was a sixteen-foot-long, half-decked sailboat that one of Sir Donald’s associates had donated the money to buy. She had been purchased in England and would be transported to St. John’s by steamer.
On June 12, 1894, Wilfred set sail for St. John’s from Liverpool aboard the SS Monica, the Euralia MacKinnon stowed safely in her hold. Traveling with him was Dr. Robert Wakefield, another of Wilfred’s recruits for the summer. They arrived in St. John’s twelve days later, where Wilfred was met with the now familiar rousing welcome.
The Princess May was still in dry dock being overhauled, and Wilfred soon learned that the Sir Donald was not yet ready for duty. Wilfred was anxious to get on his way up the coast, but he was forced to exercise patience. It was not until August that the Sir Donald was finally ready to put to sea. Eagerly Wilfred got up steam in the vessel, and they headed north. Dr. Wakefield, who was mechanically minded, served as engineer, and John Harvey, a Newfoundland captain, would serve as pilot.
Their initial destination was Battle Harbor. The Albert had deposited a doctor and nurse at the hospital there and at the hospital at Indian Harbor. Wilfred was anxious to see how things were progressing at both hospitals.
