The Rock In The Box

Gus (Eric) Blackwood

The Blackwoods of Bonavista Bay are famous for being good fishermen on the Labrador. Eric Blackwood is from this family and is retired and living in Hare Bay. When the family gets together there are many tales told over a drink. One such tale is the story of The Rock In The Box.

I'VE HEARD THE STORY ever since I was big enough to remember, and I've seen the rock.

That's the story of my grandfather, Ned Blackwood. The story is, he went to St. John's to ship his fish to Baird & Company.

Now the old man, he had a schooner that carried about 900 or 1,000 quintals of fish. He knew his schooner so well that he knew he wasn't getting the weight for the fish that was coming out. When they had her unloaded, he figured he wasn't getting the weight that he should be getting.

It got on his nerves. In those days, when they weighed the fish, the weights were all put in a box and it was locked. There'd be a hundred and twelve pounds in the box.

The old man knew there was something wrong. He asked the weighmaster to see the weights but he wouldn't unlock the box.

In those days they used to wear what they called pigskin boots, big old leather boots. The old fella got mad and he up and kicked the box. He shattered the weight box, and besides the hundred and twelve pounds, out fell this rock. The rock was a pound and three-quarters or two pounds, something like that, that they had put in the weight box extra. So for every quintal of fish they were gaining about two pounds. And no doubt about it, he figured right.