Shipbuilding in Queens County 1760 – 1925 – Part 3

The dory was now icing badly and the duo was being soaked by raging combers, so they decided to throw out their anchor to hold the dory's bow into the wind to give them a chance to get some of the water out of the boat. "Come on Tom," Blackburn urged his dory mate, "everything over the side except the kegs."

Tom Welch responded as sluggishly as the dory. He'd been cruelly battered earlier in the night when a violent motion of the boat had tossed him face down across the thwart. Still, he managed to help jettison their haul of halibut, pound ice from the gun'les and bail water.

Their anchor failed to hold but did act as a drag and kept the dory's bow into the heaviest waves. But the weight of the anchor also held down the dory's nose, so that the water began to break over the bow. They bailed endlessly to prevent the boat from pitch-poling.

For eight straight hours the sturdy dory struggled up the top of one giant wave after another. The cold became unbearable and bailing was agony. Out of desperation, Blackburn decided to make one last try to row toward the coast. Torture of thirst now plagued him and the younger, stronger Newfoundlander, Welch; but their hunger had not yet reached the acute stage.

The wind and seas worsened so Blackburn decided to break open one of the sturdy, oaken trawl kegs to provide some further drag and serve as a sea anchor. This action was for naught and in the process one oar was lost overboard - and Blackburn's heavy wool mittens went with it.

It was not long before Blackburn's hands were white, seemingly bloodless and without feeling as he knocked them against the gunwale.

He made a fearless decision, quickly knowing he must stay ready to row. With much effort he picked up two oars and, pressing his fingers against his knees, forced them to curl around the handle ends until they held tight. Then he dipped both hands and handles in the icy water in the bottom of the dory and held them up to the freezing wind. In about 15 minutes he had a solid grip - his hands were frozen to the oars.

At twilight on the second day, a wave broke over the boat and Blackburn called for Welch to bail. Welch called back that he "just couldn't." So Blackburn, his hands now in a curving clutch position, started to bail.

By the time he finished, Welch was in a state of exposure apathy ("hypothermia" today) which had paralyzed him. Blackburn tried to shelter his mate and lay down beside him to provide body heat, to no avail. Welch mumbled incoherently, and around midnight he died. Blackburn continued to bail and fight his own drowsiness.

Near dawn of the third day the wind began to drop and by sunrise it was nearly warm.

But by now Blackburn had little hope, feverish through lack of freshwater, no food for 48 hours and hands frozen into claws. Yet, after a few minutes of rest, he positioned his frozen claws to the oar handles, got his oars in those pins and began to row.

Now came the hard and crucial decision: Which way to the nearest land? He set his course and rowed for 10 straight hours without resting, peering anxiously from time to time, searching for some sign he had made the right choice of direction.

At this point in his struggle for life, the Port Medway man might have thought of his boyhood days, sailing and fishing on the Medway River near his home village of Port Medway. He'd done a lot of fishing and sailing in his 25 years and he must have thought now how ironical it was that a month or so earlier it was homesickness for Port Medway that had made him come North from Gloucester, Mass. for the holidays at his old home in Dock Cove.

After hours of rowing, through a settling sun on the western horizon he thought he saw bluish shadows in the east that could be the high hills of Newfoundland... THEY WERE! Oh, how he wanted to get to that dry land. He knew that he was physically unable to row the entire distance, so he pulled in his oars, painfully put out the drag - and drifted.

All night he drifted - the need for sleep was overpowering, if only he could sleep for a few minutes. It was at this juncture in his struggle to survive that his reason saved him. He sat in the bow, clasped his arms around the forward thwart and kept moving backward and forward, backward and forward, without stopping for a moment, for 11 hours. During these exercises the dory had drifted toward shore with the movement of his body and the waves, and he was miles closer to land. He pulled the drag once again and began to row.

Soon he made land on the rockbound coast. Up the mouth of a small river there was a broken down wharf and a small house on a hill above. Blackburn slowly rowed toward the haven.

The house was empty and there was no well. So he ate snow. There was a crude bunk, but Harold Blackburn was feverish and instead of sleeping he paced up and down, thrashing his arms all night long.

The next morning he walked to the wharf to find the dory had sunk beside the wharf. The bottom plug had been knocked loose by the pounding it had taken all night. The discovery would have deterred a lesser man. But Blackburn waded into the icy water and heaved the dory up onto the rocks and replaced the bottom plug. Then he waded in again to retrieve the oars. For the last time he slipped his frozen fingers over them and began to row. During this episode, Tom Welch's body had drifted away.

After searching along the shore all day, he spotted some fishermen at Little River, Newfoundland. He was taken in and nursed while his gangrene infested toes and fingers rotted off.

In the spring, his new-found friends took him to Burgeo where he was treated at a hospital. Later he was back in Gloucester, recovering, where he told his tale.

Blackburn, the fisherman with roots in Port Medway, never left the sea, despite the loss and suffering he managed to endure. He even purchased a small sail boat and sailed across the Atlantic twice alone.