Chapter 5

STRANDED

Lost In The Fog

By Gordon Brown
Researcher: Christopher Poole

In August of 1974, I went over to Indian Cove in motorboat to get some supplies to build a new house. It was a nice day so I took my wife, Cora, my 2 year old daughter, Effie, my sister-in-law, Bernice, my brother, Lindsay, and Glenys Burden of Port Hope Simpson with me. It was a beautiful day and I saw no harm in taking them along for a ride.

We had a nice ride over to Indian Cove and there was hardly any wind. Once in Indian Cove we picked up all of our supplies and loaded them aboard the boat. While we were shopping the fog rolled in and the wind had picked up. I thought to myself, "Fox Harbour is only across the bay and I can make it home without any trouble." When we were getting ready to leave Sam Rumbolt gave me a compass. He told me to steer the boat northeast and that would bring us right into Fox Harbour.

We left Indian Cove and I steered northeast. Little did I know that we were heading out the bay towards Black Point. That was the first time I ever used a compass so I didn't know if I was going in the right direction or not. The fog was thick and you could not see a thing. The wind had struck from the southern and it began to rain. We were steaming for about two hours and still didn't see any sign of land. I knew then that we were lost because we should have been in Fox Harbour by then. I turned off the motor and let the boat drift. It was no good to keep on steaming along if you didn't know where you were going. There we were out in the middle of the ocean with a load of building supplies and a boat half full of people and we didn't have a clue where we were. The wind was blowing a gale and the rain was beating down which made it all the worse.

I never threw out the anchor because it was blowing too hard and the head of the boat would be thrown under the water where we had a load of supplies onboard. So we drifted all night and went where the wind blew us. I never went to sleep that whole night. I stayed awake in case we ran ashore or ran into an iceberg. I remember during the night my daughter Effie woke up. She was sick and she wanted to go home and get an aspirin.

It was a long and wet night but morning finally came. There was still no let up in the fog. We had drifted all night and I knew we could be anywhere by now. Finally, about 10 o'clock the fog began to lift. I spotted a hill in the distance and I recognized it. It was William's Harbour. Now I knew exactly where we were. I started the boat and we were on our way. I knew where William's Harbour was so I headed in the other direction which would take us to Spear Point. We were a long ways from shore and it took us two hours to reach Spear Point. We were low on fuel so we went into Spear Harbour. We landed at Dave Chubb's wharf. We told him what happened and about the night we had. He took us up to his house and gave us something to eat. He also gave us some fuel to go home with.


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