The Chronicle-Herald/The Mail-Star
Published: 10/25/97
McNAMARA, William James - 105, Evanston, died October 24, 1997, in Strait Richmond Hospital, Evanston. Born in Evanston, he was a son of the late Patrick and Ellen (Kehoe) McNamara. In his younger years, he was a fisherman out of Gloucester, Mass., and retired from the CNR. He was a veteran of the First World War, serving with the United States army. He was a member of St. Francis de Sales Parish, Lower River Inhabitants, and was a life member of Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 43, Port Hawkesbury. He was the last surviving member of his immediate family. Surviving are his wife, the former Clara McNamara; daughters, Stella (Mrs. Leonard Sampson), Louisdale; Ellen (Mrs. Roy Hancock), Winnipeg, Man.; Lorraine (Mrs. Gus Arsenault), Fairview; Hilda (Mrs. William Bourgeois), Joan (Mrs. Mike Campbell), Halifax; sons, James, New Brunswick; Gerard, William, Harold, Michael, Halifax; Maurice, Evanston; several nieces and nephews; 43 grandchildren; 43 great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by two children in infancy; sisters, Agnes and Mary King. Visitation 2-4, 7-9 p.m. today and Sunday in Dennis Haverstock Funeral Home, Port Hawkesbury. Funeral 11 a.m. Monday in St. Francis de Sales Church, Rev. Peter MacLeod officiating. Burial in parish cemetery. Donations to St. Francis de Sales Church organ fund.

Cape Breton Magazine      Issue 49         Published by Ronald Caplan on 1988/8/1
Billy James MacNamara of Evanston
 
Billy James MacNamara of Evanston William James MacNamara: They call me Billy- James, yeah. I was born right here at Evanston. It was called Basin River Inhabitants at that time. 1892--June the 23rd.
 
(How did the MacNamaras get here?) Well, they originated from Ireland first, I guess. My great--he'd be my great-great-grandfather--that must have been in the last of the 1700s, or around there. He immigrated from Ireland, as far as I know, by hearing the other, older people tell. And he settled down here on the Eastern Shore-- that's between Halifax there and Canso someplace. He got married there. I think his wife's name was Horne, I'm not certain. Well, he got married there, and he left there, and he went to Boston. And he settled at Charles Town, a place called Bunker Hill--there's where the big battle was fought between the British and Americans in 1776. Some of the family were born there. I know my great-grandfather over here (buried on MacNamara's Island, Cape Breton), he was born there.
 
And then he moved back of here, and he (was) granted an island (MacNamara's Island) --it's about 5 miles out there, pretty near to the mouth of the bay. It was around 350-acre island. He (was) granted that. And he had a big farm there. (Just himself?) Well, I think he had several fellows working with him. But he did it mostly I guess himself. When his family grew up, see-- well, they helped him too, I suppose. Like my great-grandfather, now, and his brothers. He had quite a family. He had a big pile of land under cultivation out there. And he died there. He died, and he's buried on that island. It's called MacNamara's Island. It's got that name yet, I guess. But the MacNamaras don't own it now. They owned it for years. And then some of them moved away, and it went for taxes and everything else.
 
(Is there anyone else buried there?) Yes. I think there are--there's quite a few buried on it. The people that lived there at the time. I think my father had a sister buried there. That's about 75 or 80 years ago or more. As far as I know, there's 10 or 12 or 15 buried there.
 
(Mostly MacNamaras?) Well, yes, but there's... a couple, I think, from Arichat, too, I believe--French names-- that's buried there. But the most of them are MacNamaras because they lived right on to it. And see at that time there were no churches here. The one in Whiteside, I guess, was here--they were just, some kind of little church, starting it then. But the one over there on Lower River wasn't here then. At that time it was hard to get doctors or clergymen or graveyards or anything.
 
(So your great-grandfather....) He was born on Bunker Hill, Boston. And the old man moved down here to the island, see: he came back down here (to Cape Breton). And my grandfather, he was born over there, in his father's older house. And then he moved down here and settled here on this piece of land. And my father was born here. This place here is Evanston now. In those days it was called Basin of River Inhabitants. There's a basin here--the river runs here into a basin on the left, going down that way. And the bay runs out southwest toward Sandy Point there, out the other way, towards Canso. They called it Basin of River Inhabitants. Then they changed it. Of course some of them used to call it Lower River Inhabitants West Side--that's the West Side over there. This is the East Side. They used to have that, too, on the mails: Lower River Inhabitants....Then  they changed it to Walkerville. There was a post office down here--a bunch of Walkers lived down here, quite a settlement of them. So they got a petition up, years ago --being as the post office was there--to change the post office to the name of Walkerville. It's called Walkerville yet.
 
Then after the railroad went through here-- there was a little railroad went through here from Point Tupper to St. Peters-- around a 30-mile railroad. They started in 1901 and finished in 1903. I saw it built, and I saw it tore down again. Now it's gone. They took the tracks up there 7 or 8 years ago, cleaned it out again--no more good. There was a woman, I think, had a share in it. It was a company affair--the government had nothing to do with it. There was a woman, I think, by the name of Mrs. Evans, had some share into it. She used to go up and down often on the road, travelling over it. And they put the railroad station up here then, and they called it Evanston. I guess that's how it must have got its name. That would be around 1914 or '13, sometime like that.
 
I saw that (rail)road built, 1901-1903--I was going to school. And 75 years they ran trains on it, freight trains, and a passenger train. Used to go up in the morning, go into Hawkesbury, come back down in the evening to St. Peters. There weren't too many cars then, and it was handy to travel. I saw that torn down, and they took all the rails up, pretty well.
 
(When you say you saw it built, what did you actually see? You were a young boy when they started it.) Yeah, I must have been around 10 years old, I guess. I was born in 1892, and that was started in 1901. Well, it was kind of an experience to us young fellows, the first train we ever saw. We thought it was a glorious thing to see those old puffers coming into the station. They all ran by coal that time. You could hear them miles away, puffing, coming. We used to go up to the station just to see them there...
 
Well, the biggest part of it was made by dump carts and horses. They had very little machinery. They might have had a little digger, I don't know. But the biggest part of it was horses and dump carts. All those dumps and hollows were all dumped with horses. They had dozens and dozens of horses dumping it. And blowing it, with black powder, blowing up the mud with black powder and dynamite. They might have had a small digger on it, but I don't remember ever seeing any. They could have. But the most of it was all done with pick and shovel. So was the Intercolonial Railroad from Halifax to Point Tupper, when that was first built in 1880 or something like that. When that road was first built, that was mostly done with pick and shovel work and hand work.
 
(Were local people here working on it?) Oh, yeah. A dollar and a dollar and a half a day at that time. It was cheap wages. My father worked at it. In the spring of the year he used to leave to go fishing--he'd make way more money fishing. Out in the bay here: mackerel fishing, lobster fishing, cod fishing, herring fishing. He used to leave. Probably they were through fishing around August--he had no trouble--they were always looking for men. He'd go back again for the winter.... Three years at it.
 
The whole--pretty near every community worked onto it. From other places too--from Inverness, some from New Brunswick, some from different parts of the country. No, there must have been over a thousand, 1500 men worked on it. I saw a piece (in the newspaper) here not long ago, a couple of years ago. It was taken from the railroad, 1901 or '02, at Hastings. "A thousand men wanted." I said to Clara (Billy James's wife) there, "God, there's lots of work-- some of them looking for work now--there's lots of work--I never noticed that much." "A thousand men wanted. A dollar a day for boys"- -1 think it was. "A dollar and a half for older men." And I think, "Two and a half for a man with a dump cart and horse!" ... For the railroad that went through here. It was cut from an old (issue of the) Record, an old paper. But I just skimmed over it, I thought it was happening now, at the time!
 
They built a bridge across the river--the train had to cross. That was the second year, I think. They built a construction bridge across the river for the trains to go back and forth on, while they were building the regular bridge, an iron bridge. They built the iron bridge right alongside of it. But this construction bridge, (they) were going back and forth on it so often--it was only pilings it was on, you know. A piling drove into the river-- the bridge was on that. It started to get shaky and bad. Well, they kept going on it. Kept going on it and going on it. So this morning the work train was waiting across the river there, to bring the crowd of men down that were going to work down towards St. Peters. There were about 40 men in a boxcar. And some more of the men were over on this side of the river, and they were just going to walk across, to go in the boxcar, to come down with her. There was some kind of a holdup.
 
Anyhow, there were two trains--No. 1 and No. 2--two work trains, work engines. I think it was No. 1--I'm not certain. She said she'd take a run out over the bridge, so that the other work train'd go through. About halfway across the bridge, she plunged. She went down. There were only two on her.  There was a fireman on her, and the driver. Both of them belonged to New Brunswick. Well, the driver never came up. But (the fireman) went (to the) bottom in her, and he came to the surface and swum ashore. It didn't take long to go down--maybe 20-ton engine--to go to bottom. Lots claimed he never went to bottom, but he must have, he must have really went to bottom, 'cause he was in her. Well, he was okay. But Carter-- that was the name of the other man, the (driver)--Carter was gone.
 
At that time there weren't too many divers around. At that time, only one here in River Bourgeois, a fellow by the name of Sampson. He came up. And he went down. And there was just a week before Christmas. And the water was muddy in the rivers--rain and snow and everything. It was muddy and he only could see so far. He hunted there for 3 or 4 days, couldn't locate him.
 
Well, that winter was a pretty heavy winter. So in the spring of the year the fishermen here generally used to be putting net out now and then, testing if there was any herring coming in, or any fish of any kind. So there was a Hayes man over here, Roderick Hayes. He went out to set a fleet of net in the spring--it was sometime the middle of April or last of April. And when he was coming back home after setting the net --pretty well under his own shore--he saw this object floating in the water. He thought it funny. He went over to where it was, and here it was a man. And of course he knew all about Carter being drowned, and he suspected it was him right off. So I guess he took him ashore, and they fitted him out there. He waked him there, and (Carter's) people came down and took him home. He must have been under the ice all winter.
 
They (had) lifted the engine up, they brought her up. (But Carter wasn't in it.) No, no. Well, he had gone, see, he was under the ice all winter. And that's away up there, where that bridge is, and it's about 2 miles down to here. He was found away down here in the spring of the year. Over 2 miles. He must have been all winter under the ice. And when the water kind of warmed, in April, see, he swelled up and came to the surface. A man'11 do that. Generally when the water gets warmer, after so much, he'd swell up and float.
 
(What was your grandfather doing for his living?) Well, he was farmer, mostly, and fisherman.
 
(Which was he more, a farmer or a fisherman?) Now, I don't know. Probably more a fisherman than he was farmer at the time. That's where they made their living. This harbour here, if you notice-- there's an old house over there, too--you notice all the front doors were all built towards the waterfront, towards the river. The biggest traffic was in the river here. The vessels coming in with lumber. The vessels coming in in the fall of the year with potatoes, turnips, and oats, all that. The biggest traffic was here. There were no cars here then. And the road here then was only the width of a wagon wheel. Mud road. This road that went down here that time. It was just for wagons and horses. That's all you'd see. There were no cars to be seen at all. The first car I ever saw here was, I think, 1912. Dr. Harold MacDonald, he had her from Port Hawkesbury.
 
(When you say they all faced and used the river--were individual people using the river too?) Oh, yeah. (When I say "using the river," I mean more than just the ships coming in with loads of lumber. That would be for the merchant, I suppose. Or did they bring it to each home?) Well, no, anybody who wanted it. The vessels would anchor out there. Anybody wanted lumber--they were building their barns and building their houses--they'd buy the lumber. I heard my father say that he bought hemlock out there from a fellow that came from New Brunswick with a load of hemlock, (from) Miramichi, for $7 a thousand. That was pretty cheap.
 
(What were some of the other things that they'd have on board.) She was mostly lumber- -if she was a lumber vessel. Some more of them'd come in here with coal, selling coal. And some more in the fall of the year would come in here with potatoes and turnips and oats and miscellaneous stuff like that.
 
(Clothing, anything like that?) No. There were a few stores around.
 
(When you say you'd go out for coal or out for potatoes--what would you take to go out? What did each family take?) Well, they were fishing here then. They all had boats then--2 and 3 boats--they had them. Used to build their own boats. My grandfather and father built his own boats--most of the men here built their own boats. They were 15-, 16-foot--some of them were square-sterners,  and more of them, they called them "stemmers." They were sharp bow and stern. But they were able boats. They were built strong timbers in them and riveted strong-- stronger than you'd get today. You could depend on them not going to pieces. They'd be about 4 feet, 5 feet across--about that width. And they'd be from probably 12 to 16 feet long. Clinker-built--what they call clinker-built. They'd lap the 3/4-inch board over. Some of them were seam-built too.
 
(Were they rowboats?) Rowboat and sail. (Same boat?) Yeah. And you could beat to windward with them too. You could go right head to wind with them.... The majority of the boats, they fished in. See, the bigger boats. They had what they called, in the middle of the boat, a centre board. They'd push it down, when they were beating to windward, see, to hold the boat against the wind. And when they wanted to pull it up, they'd pull it up. It was a good rig, too. With just the sail alone, well you only could sail when you had a kind of a free wind. If not, you'd have to row to windward. But they could sail to windward with that. Make it tack this way, another tack that way. And they could gain ahead all the time, if they didn't want to row.
 
(These were the boats they also used for their fishing.) Oh yes, that's what they fished in, them boats.
 
(How much coal or potatoes could they put in something like that?) Oh, they could put a good bit. They'd take quite a load in those boats. Five or six hundred mackerel, you could put in them, out in the bay. At that time, you see, most Lunenburg fishermen and American fishermen--the Gloucester fishermen and Boston fishermen--there were no freezers here then. No freezers around to freeze frozen bait like they do today. They used to come in and anchor out there in the bay. They'd come in there looking for bait. You'd see hundreds of them going through the strait, some of them going to the Madeleine Islands to get their bait. (Then) they'd go out back to the Banks, fishing. A lot of them came in here in this bay. All the (local) fishermen did, they picked their nets, rowed aboard there, and they'd give them so much a hundred for herring. They'd be buying the bait from the local fishermen. Oh, it was good. In those days, they used to get quite a pile.
 
(So your father, he mostly made his living with the fishing.) Generally, mostly, yeah. He worked on the railroad, he worked on this road here quite a lot. And he worked on the railroad (the Intercolonial), Point Tupper over there, too--he used to work there quite a lot. On the track, and different work. Repairing stations, repairing the platforms around the stations, water tanks. They had carpenters on the railroad; they had carpenters and mechanics and everything, whatever suited the purpose to work.
 
(What about keeping the railroad open in the wintertime? Did they have a plow?) Not in the beginning here. I remember one winter here at this--they've got plows on now, they just push this along the track, piles the thing right off--snowplows. But I can remember here, when that St. Peters line was built. There came a terrible heavy winter- -it was after it was completed; the trains were running back and forth on it. And it blocked everything, pretty well from Point Tupper to St. Peters, a terrible spell of a snowstorm. And the biggest part of it, they shovelled it all out by shovel. Yeah. Men with shovels shovelled the biggest part of it out. They had no plow on it at all, here. They might have had one on the other road, but I don't know. It was nearly all done by manpower that time. Today, men's arms ain't much good to them!
 
(When you were growing up here, what did you think you were going to do?) I suppose, like every other young fellow, I had all kinds of dreams. (Like what?) Like going to sea, was mostly my dream--going to sea, at that time. And I went, too. I went to Gloucester- -Gloucester , Massachusetts. I got the train here at that time in Point Tupper. We went into Saint John, New Brunswick. We took the boat from there. I landed in Boston out of her--for $10 at that time. That's all I paid from Point Tupper to Saint John, New Brunswick, and transferred to the Eastern Steamship Lines, into Boston--$10.
 
(Why did you choose Gloucester?) Well, I'll tell you. My father sailed out of Gloucester for 5 or 6 years. And he brought a book home here with him. It was called The Fisherman's Own Book. It's gone now, years ago. I read that over and over. I read about the stories of the fishermen, what they went through in gales of wind, and how they fell overboard, and some of them survived and got back again. All these stories--most of them were real, true. What they went through. Some of them hove down on their beam ends--their sails in the water, their spars in the water. I don't know what kind of influenced me that I'd like to go through that experience! But there were times when I happened, did get in experiences like that, and I wished I--that book --that I'd never seen it!
 
So that's how I happened to go there. (But was there no opportunity for sailing right from here, then?) Oh, yes. there were. But there wasn't too much money in it. All you'd get there then, much, was around-- those days on the coastal vessels, it was $20 a month. Maybe less than that. But I had it in my mind to get to the States. See, everything went to the States from here, them days. The majority of all the young men, it was either to Bangor, Maine, or Boston or Gloucester, to go fishing. There was an awful flow of people at that time, going to the States. Gloucester and Boston were half full of Canadians, if they ever made a check on it. Especially Gloucester --And Newfoundlanders. The biggest part pf the fishermen out of Gloucester was Nova Scotia men--Cape Bretoners--and Newfoundlanders. And Bangor, Maine, the same, half of them. A big pile of them used to go from here every year to Maine, cutting lumber in the lumber woods. And New Brunswick, too, they used to go there a lot. The Miramichi.
 
(But you chose the sea.) I chose the sea, for 15 years. I went up in 1913. I was around 20, I guess. Well, '13, or '12, I forget which. I had an aunt in Gloucester. I had two aunts in Gloucester. I didn't stay with her when I went there first. I met a friend of mine--he belonged here to Point Tupper--he was there for about 15, 20 years. A fellow by the name of Dan Campbell. They just called him "Navy Dan"--he had been in the American Navy for quite awhile. Anyhow, he took me to board with him at his boarding- house- -Mrs. Cameron's, they called it. A beautiful boardinghouse. He thought he'd get me a chance, within the next (month), on a halibut, deepsea vessel, with a skipper there that he was with. He sent me down to the wharf to see if his dory-mate was going to stay or going to leave. His dory- mate (had) said he was going to leave; it was his last trip. I went down with him. And my God, he came up--"No, he says he's going to stay this trip."
 
I didn't have very much money when I left here and I landed in Boston. I think I had about $35. When I went down to Gloucester, I had less. He put his hand in his pocket, he said, "Here. Here's $10 for you. That'll do you, if you're not taking a chance till I see you again." And I think I had $10 of my own--I thought I was rich.
 
But the best of Gloucester at that time was this: you could go in any boardinghouse there--you had money or no money, at that time--and they'd wait till you made a trip, to come back to pay them. They didn't want any money ahead. That's what made it so easy, there were so many flocked there. It made it so easy. The woman of the boardinghouse would wait till you made a trip and came back.
 
Well, I went down to the wharf, from one wharf to the other. And one of the wharves I went down on, I saw a man coming up towards me. And he stopped me. He said, "Are you looking to go fishing?" I said, "Yes, I am, in a way." "Well," he said, "I'm looking for a man to go fishing." "Well, now," I said, "I'm not an experienced fisherman. I know a lot about handlining. I know about, probably, setting the trawl." I had fished out here with my father, you know, handlining. I had hauled a trawl a couple of times, and baited them up. But not as good as what they could do there. I wasn't a professional fisherman. And I said, "I never was in a dory in my life. I've been in fishing boats down in Nova Scotia." "I know," he said, "I belong down to Nova Scotia too." He said, "You're all right." He said, "We're going single-dory fishing." He said, "Your chance is here. You want to come?" I said, "No, sir, thank you. If it was double-dory I wouldn't mind--for two in the dory, 'cause the other fellow could show me. But a greenhorn in a single dory-- you'd probably go adrift and never be seen!" "Oh," he said, "we'll help you. If you can't get the trawl in, we'll go out and help you to pull your trawl in." He couldn't persuade me, no way.
 
So I kept on going, to the next wharf I went down on. I saw a big vessel down there, drying their sails. She was dead calm. She had just come in from Cape Mary. They were out mackerel-seining. About this time of year--it was earlier than this. They used to go down south, see, first, to meet the mackerel, and then come back and go to the Cape Shore down here, the Eastern Shore, down off of here. And I looked at it. And Christ, I knew him. He was my grandmother's son, here--Capt. Bissett. And he had been down here about 2 or 3 years before that. And he (had) told me, "Never go to Gloucester." He said, "I'll crucify you if I ever see you in Gloucester! It's no place at all for you to go." I said, "You went there, you made pretty good. You're the captain there, anyhow." "Yes, but," he said, "I'm one, maybe. I wouldn't be saying that'd be you."
 
He said, "You must have run away, did you?" I said, "No, I didn't run away." "Oh," he said, "yes, I think Aunt Helen'd never let you go, unless you run away!" My mother was his aunt. He said, "We'll be going out in a couple of days time, and there's a boat down there for you. Go down, get a mattress, and get it fixed up. We'll be going to the Cape Shore."
 
I went with him, the first trip I ever had made. That time, was night fishing. They put me and another fellow, and they came down here and started seeking the mackerel in the night, running after night--right before the wind-- going like the devil, too. We were put in a dory, to tow behind, to pick up a buoy, see, when they dropped the seine, if there was any mackerel. Holy suffering cats! The young fellow was with me--of course he had been fishing a lot--a young fellow from Gloucester, American fellow. There was times the dory was standing right on her end, going like that, and that vessel going full speed! You'd think you'd be swept in the water all the time. I wasn't used to it--it looked worse to me than it did to him.
 
Well, we run out of there a couple of nights, but there didn't seem'to be too much mackerel. The mackerel, see, shows red on water after night. They come up for herring. Mackerel generally circles. They boil up and circle, and then they start to go ahead. There's like a stream--the leaders-- stream leads the rest.
 
We run into a gale of wind, some place off of White Head. And I took seasick. First trip to sea. Oh, pretty near I died. And he couldn't run in with me, it was too rough to run. We were hove to under--just, no sails on her, just hove to, bare spars, just bobbing the sea. He thought I was going to die.
 
Anyhow, the next morning the sea abated. We run in for White Head. I was kind of getting over it a little. I could hardly stand. So some of them said to me, "The best thing you can do is go ashore. When you get on the land, you'll be okay." So I went ashore in the dory with a couple of them. I walked around the beach, and went into a little store, got something. God, I came out around, I felt better. I got over it. But boy, it's a terrible sickness--one of the worst sickness anyone ever had-- seasickness.
 
Then we came out. And we run up here in the strait, across by Sand Point, that night. And we were going to come over here (Evanston, Cape Breton) in the dory in the morning, home. I could see the houses. Walkers' houses, that I only left two weeks before. And lights flashing.. Next morning a little breeze of wind took us out. Took us away out. We run out off of Green Island, off the 3-mile limit. We couldn't fish inside the limit--an American schooner. We'd be caught. We struck a big school of mackerel. We filled the seine full. We had no power. There weren't too many vessels out of Gloucester had power at that time. There were some, but we were one that had none. The mackerel all sunk in the seine, and we thought we we|:e going to lose her. Thank God there was a Lunenburg schooner--there was a little breeze of wind on--a Lunenburg schooner coming in the strait here for bait. He came up alongside of us, and he put 4 of his dories on our seine to keep us from sinking. And he stayed there till we got the mackerel bailed in onto the deck of the vessel. He was going to leave. Bissett told him, "Don't leave. Pull up 3 of our dories here." He said, "You're looking for bait, aren't you?" He said, "Yes." He said, "Pull up 3 of our dories here and fill them full." He gave him 3 doryloads of mackerel "-those big 16-foot dories. He didn't have to hardly buy any bait at all!
 
It was good of him, though. It was worth it. (So you continued fishing?) Yeah, I went at it for about 15 years after that. I used to come here (home) once in awhile, go back again.
 
Well, we were fishing out of Gloucester. We'd go down to the Grand Banks. We'd go down to Banquereau. We'd go down to LaHave Bank. And we'd fish on George's Bank. Done a lot of fishing on George's Bank. All those banks we'd fish. Even the Labrador. Made several trips down there.
 
And there were oil tankers. Running south on oil tankers. And freighters, used to go on some of them sometimes. But I must have fished for about 10 good years, anyhow, or 9 good years.
 
(Did you ever have any troubles on any of those boats?) Yeah, we were hove down on our beam ends. I was on a Boston schooner at that time. Down on the--I think it was Brown's Bank--pretty well near the Gulf. In a hurricane of wind, terrible gale of wind --March--through one of the biggest blows, I guess, probably for years. It was on March the 10th, it was 1915, I think. It was a hailstorm, a clear hailstorm. We had a hard time of it. We drifted out from the Brown's Bank, out in the Gulf. Drifted pretty near 60 miles. We were hove down, too, pretty well hove down. Our spars went right on the edge of the waves. She lay there, but she got back. It was a grim look for a minute. ("Hove down" is when she....) The sea, the heighth of the sea, a mountain of sea hit her, just hove her right down on her side. The spars went in the water. But she came back. She came back without burst? ing anything.
 
There was one down there, years ago, a fishing schooner--she went right over and over, they claim. And I think it's so, because I was on her years after that. Her name was changed, and she was turned into a seiner. Her name was the Helen G. Wells, and I knew the skipper of her--I was shipmates with him after--he was a Newfoundlander. He was skipper of her at the time. His name was Murray. It was a heavy sea struck her. They claim she went down--spars went down in the water, and came up on the other side. (Turned right over!) Lots of fishermen don't believe it, but it must have been done. That happened before I ever went up to Boston at all, a few years before I went up there. And after I went up there, I was in her one summer with Capt. Douglas MacLean, mackerel seining. And the mark of the stove--where the stove left the floor, when she went down straight--the mark of the stove was in the ceiling. So it was pretty hard to contradict--it must have. They claim--there wasn't a man drowned--they claim she went so quick that there was very little water in the forecastle. She just went right over.  Well, the argument was, among a lot of the Gloucester fishermen--how the hell could she go over and over without dismasting? Without the spars coming out of her? Well, I look at it in a different way. When she went down, the force of water, I'd say, would keep those spars up into the grooves they were set in in the bottom (of the vessel). The force of water would keep them up. It was done, it was true. Every man was piled --Murray told me that every man came out of their bunks as if they were piled, onto the floor on top of one another. Just went in the darkness for about a minute. And hardly any water came into the forecastle. He said there was about--I think he said--probably two inches over the forecastle floor.
 
I was on a beam trawler, they call them stern draggers now. I was on one of them out of Boston. We left Boston--that was in June 1930 or '29. I've got part of an old paper upstairs yet, with our pictures and everything in it. On the trawler Surge. We left Boston in the evening, - and that morning we were 40 miles off of Cape Cod. We were running for a place called the South Shoal Lakeship--used to be a great haddock ground there. It was a liner loaded with hard pine--a big liner, the Ozark--coming from New Orleans. It was a straight hit. We were coming from Cape Cod, or coming from Boston. And the two of them collided. They crashed into us. That was about two o'clock in the morning.
 
Me and a cousin of mine over here--he was drowned two years after, too--Edward MacNamara- -used to live right there in that house on the point. He was with us. We were at the wheel, we were steering. We saw her coming in the fog. She was a long ways off, then, about 3 or 4 mile off. But the fog was patchy. That patchy fog--it'd disappear again, it'd come and come in again. We saw her coming. So when we left the wheel, when our watch was up--two more fellows came up and took the wheel--we came down. Generally when fishermen come down after being on watch, the first thing they look up for is a cup of tea. They call it a mug-up. I was sitting at the table, me and Edward. I said to Edward, "I don't know. I've got a bad hunch that that one is going to give us a close call. I hope that they'll keep a close watch on her." The skipper was there, supposed to be there.
 
The word wasn't out of my mouth, boy, when she struck. She struck us right, just below the foremast. That's forward front. Lord God Almighty, she almost--it lifted her out of the water. You could hear the ice pens-- we had her full of ice, you know, for fishing with. When those pens all broke away, it was just like thunder and lightning, the  roaring of them. We weren't long getting on deck. When Edward and I got on the deck, they were coming out of the forecastle in their shirt sleeves, and some of them with hardly any clothes on at all, they were asleep in their bunks. She was right over, pretty near to the stern.
 
And they were dropping down a line (from the Ozark), a hawser. And they were singing out to me to catch it, to catch the hawser, so they'd haul me up on the deck of the liner. I had it in my hand. I looked up-- there was crew and excitement up on the bow of her. I dropped it out of my hand. I let it go, I wouldn't hold on it. The reason why: I was scared, the excitement they were having up there--they were going, they were dropping it, and hauling it up, and dropping it. I was scared I'd swing, maybe go under her propeller or something. So I took chances. I could swim good.
 
Well, that was all right. The first thing I did--I heard the skipper give orders for to heave out the lifeboat. We went up, and she was leaning. She was just 6 minutes afloat, after she hit us. She'd be leaning over about 45 degrees, I'd say. When we came to lift the lifeboat, we couldn't get her out of the chocks. We couldn't get her out. So 3 or 4 of us had to get under her with our shoulders, and lift her out that way. And when she came out, she swung off, see, and came back again against the rail, and cracked--cracked the side of her. And the other one was pretty well up, like a hill, for the vessel, where she was laying down like that.
 
I said to myself, 'I'm going to get a lifebelt." Some had lifebelts, some had none, never thought of them. I ran down in the forecastle. And I had a suitcase. I was trying to get my money out of it. I had $150 in my suitcase. I didn't care for the suitcase. And I had a brand new suit of clothes into it. And I tried to get the money.... I took the keys out of my pockets- -she gave a lurch. She must have gone down about that far. Gave a lurch--she was sinking. And I saw a lifebelt. The first one I grabbed--it was rotten, I tore a piece off it. The next one I saw was white, it was okay. I got it on my shoulders. And I just made it through the forecastle door. Just broke through it. Another inch and I'd have been pinned in. And I waded across the deck to here. (Oh, the water was up to your chest!) Oh, right up to here, when I jumped through the forecastle door. She was going down all the time. But I got across. I got the lifebelt onto me, and got across to the stern, where the lifeboat was.
 
And they had her out. They had her out and they were letting her go. Well, we had no chance to get out. Five or six of us had no chance at all, we had to go down with her. She plunged. We jumped overboard and swum. And the lifeboat--well, there were enough in her anyhow. She'd have sunk anyhow if they put any more in her. They had 12 or 14 in her. And they couldn't row her. They had her jammed up so much they couldn't row. And she was going in the fog.
 
So anyhow, I swum up to the --the first thing I looked, we saw a lifeboat coming from the Ozark. Two lifeboats coming. They were saying, "Hold on, hold on!" But there was one fellow, a fellow that was on the deck with me. When she went down --I was out in the water when she went down--I could see her when she plunged. He was still aboard. He was on the stern. And instead of going down this way--what a lot of vessels will (do), with the weight of the engine and everything--she plunged. As far as I could see, she plunged headfirst. And the smoke--she was coal smoke, then we used--had coal that time. That smoke going up and that steam. And he was on her, and he went down with her. He told me he must have gone down 30 feet, he didn't know. Well, he must have, because the suction of her left a big hole according as she went down.
 
Anyhow, they hauled us in, took us aboard the Ozark.
 
(But your friend now, who went down the 30 feet--he came back up?) He came back up again to the surface, yeah. And he kept swimming. He had a lifebelt on and he kept swimming, swimming, till a boat from the Ozark picked him up. (What about the 12 men in the lifeboat that went off in the fog?) Yeah, they towed them aboard the Ozark. They had them nearly all aboard. There was one fellow missing, the wireless operator. He was still out in the fog. They heard him calling. They went out and they found him. And he was hanging onto a--aboard those trolleys to hold your fish, when you dump the fish out of the (seine) bag. You place boards crisscross like that in squares-- they call them checkerboards--on deck, for to hold your fish, for to clean your fish. There was a checkerboard came down right across him, floating off of the trawler. And he held on that. And there he was holding on that, going this way and that way with the swell of the sea. It happened to be calm. Only there was a swell on. If it would have been a breeze of wind, we were through. There were no chance at all.
 
They got him onto that. He was in the wireless room when she struck. But when she struck, she twisted the wireless room, she twisted the doors, and he could only open it about that far. And he forced himself out. The skin was all tore off his breast and off his knees, where he was forcing himself out, trying to get out. Just the last moment, he jumped overboard, before she plunged.
 
There were 3 lost. And the fireman down in the hold, when she struck, his collarbone was broke, and the other fellow's leg was broke, the other fireman. (What was the name of that vessel?) The Surge....
 
It's got to be luck (surviving). Now I know a fellow--I met him out of Boston--he was cook with us. Fellow by the name of Joe Pitts. He belonged down here to some part of Nova Scotia. I don't know how many accidents he was in and escaped. He was on a fishing vessel, the schooner (sounds like) Fane. And they were coming home from the Banks, and they were some place in the Bay of Fundy. And the Yarmouth boat, coming across from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to Boston- -passenger boat. The first crowd was down eating breakfast in the forecastle. And he said he was warm, he told me he was warm, it was a hot day. And she was laying with her sails just flapping in the wind.
 
He went up, and he said he was laying across the outer part of the main boom, like that, getting a breath of fresh air. And all at once he saw this thing coming, this foam of water. He thought they were in the breakers. There's a breaker there, at Cassius' Ledge. He thought they were into that.
 
That's all he remembered till they picked him out of the water. Just cut her right down, drowned the whole 21. There wasn't (another) man saved.
 
Well, she brought him in, the steamer that picked him up out of the water--they brought him in, him alone. He got over that racket. He went out on another one. He went down on the Banks. And he and his dory-mate got astray in the dory--in the thick-a-fog, they got astray. And the two of them rowed into--I don't know whether they rowed into Nova Scotia or into Newfoundland. But anyhow, they rowed in--it was in the summertime- -and got ashore. And the American consul sent them home to Boston. And he waited for the vessel to come in. She never came in yet. She disappeared. Now what happened to her? There were no gales of wind or anything. She must have been run down by a liner. She was likely cut down and went down.
 
Well then, after that, he started to work ashore, he landed work ashore. He went to work at Mystic Docks. I worked onto it myself, 25 years after. Mystic Docks in Boston there, where the ships come into the naval yard there, to Charles Town. When they went to hang the boom--a 60-foot boom out over the wharf--she'd lift coal, for loading coal ships. The cable broke. And the whole 7 or 8 of them went into the water, and he was the only one saved. That was going some.
 
And something else--I forget what else it was--another mess he was in. Well, he was a long time that none of the vessels would hire him for cook--they were scared of him. They were scared that if they had him aboard, that something would happen. He was a first-class cook.
 
(What finally killed him?) Cancer. He died of cancer.... He never died at sea after. But all he went through. It was certainly something. He was a lucky man for himself. He always came out of it.
 
I was overseas in the war. 1914, I guess I was in the States there, and we heard war was declared. I was fishing. I think, pretty well the first week or the second week that the war was declared--we were down on the nor'west part of the Grand Bank, I think, fishing. I and another fellow, we got astray in the dory, like, this morning. And they never picked us up till the next morning. They happened to--they partly guessed our route--the skipper, he was a pretty good head. And we didn't get aboard that night at dark. Well, he hauled the anchor, he hove the anchor up, and he run to leeward about 15 miles. He figured that we'd be coming that way. And he figured it right. 'Cause we were anchored all night. It was thick-a-fog. It was raining and a little thunder. But it wasn't stormy or nothing. We were lucky. No wind. And we got aboard after that. That was in 1914.
 
Well, when we got ashore we found out (about the war). We had no wireless. (So what did you do?) We came home after that. (What made you go in the army, or what did you do?) Well, I figured out that I'd like to see it, too, like everything else. I hated to see it go by without taking a part in it. There were quite a few of them went into it. I went into the United States Army. (You joined up what year?) I joined up in '17--June the 6th, 1917. We went over in--I think it was the first of November, 1917.
 
I went over on the Tunisian. I think her name was. Landed in Liverpool. (What did they do with the American soldiers? I don't know what you did after that.) We went down to Southampton from there. We stayed there for about two weeks. I was in the hospital there 18 days, black measles. After I got better, our company was ready to go across the Channel. I spent 18 days with black measles and double pneumonia. I could hardly walk when I went across.
 
We went up on the Argonne--they took over that section up there. The Argonne, along the Marne, up along the Verdun sector, along through there. (Was it a lot of time in the trenches, or was it more marching?) Mostly digging. Digging trenches, communication trenches, and digging along the front, along there, was the biggest part. And all--front-line work. It was a short time, but a lot went in it. A lot went up there into it that thought it was a glory, but at the last of it, the glory was dying out. There were some of them in those trenches for 4 years. Four years into it. (Canadians.) Canadians. They were in it a long time. (The Americans came in just near the end there.) At the last. They were one year into it. Just one year.
 
I went to New York after the war. We were discharged in Springhill, Massachusetts. I had an aunt living up in Brooklyn. I went up there and I worked there--the first job I got up there after that was stevedoring. There was good money in stevedoring then, all kinds of it. Couldn't get enough men to unload ships. And then I went to work at a shipyard, the drydocks there. There was lots of work there that time. I worked with a fellow plumbing--not plumbing, but steam- fitting, most of the time I was there. (You were still single, I guess.) Yeah. I only stayed there a couple of years, two years and a half. Then I went back down to Boston fishing again. All kinds of it. Haddock and codfish and mackerel seining and halibuting. Halibut was pretty deepsea fishing. You set trawls, long lines of trawls on the bottom. Probably some of them would go a mile and a half or two mile. Set them out of a dory. (But halibut’s a big fish. How would you haul it in?) Well, if he’s too big, you couldn’t get in. He had to be pretty big when you couldn’t get in though. You carry a stick, they call it a gob stick- -about that long--of hardwood. Right in one end of it is a V. like that. If a big hook is down his throat, you put that down his throat and you turn it around the gengin, they call it--where the hooks hung on- -and you twist it out of his throat, like that. And if he’s too wild, before you haul him in, you beat him over the head, like killing seal- -beat him over the head with that stick--knock him out so be won’t be slashing the dory to pieces with his tail.
 
Some of them weigh up to 100. 200. We brought several in from the Labrador, one year--weighed over 300, 310 pound. (That’s quite a lift.) That’s quite a lift, is right. (So how do you bring that trawl into the...?) Well, where we got them--we hauled them in onto a longliner. But one of the dories got one, a big fellow- -275--he towed him aboard on the stern of the dory. But he took a cruel chance. If a shark ever came up and grabbed him and hauled him down, he’d have hauled dory and all. He took a bad chance of doing it. I wouldn’t do it. I’d cut the line and let him go. The
sharks, you know, when you’re hauling trawl, they’re all the time around: darting under the dory and under the trawl, picking the codfish, smaller fish, and everything.

It was tough work. Tougher than today. (What isn’t?) In those days. that dory fishing was dangerous work. There were an awful lot of men lost out of Gloucester years ego, in dories. And those small vessels too. There were 16 sail in one gale foundered on George’s- -I suppose that’s a hundred years ago--in the one night. They built the vessels, in those days. they were smaller vessels, and flat bottoms. In my time there. years after, they built the schooners with deep keels. They were deep in the water: they were harder to turn over in a heavy sea.
 
(Now, after the First World War, what made you come back here to live?) Well, I was born here, I guess, and I guess I got tired travelling and came back here, I guess. That's the only thing I know! (You were making a living up there?) Yeah. I came down here one summer, and I was around here, and stayed here, and by God, I took the notion to come back again. Of course there were lots--there were good times up there then, around the States, that time.
 
When I went up to the States, they'd coax you to go to work, around Boston. Construction jobs. They'd meet you on the street and ask you if you wanted to go to work. (Now,) I guess it's'like here, work isn't too plentiful there, either. (That's today. But in those days, work was plentiful.) Oh-, lots-- just building her up then. (Then why would you come back here and stay?) Oh, I just took the notion. (Was your father still living?) Oh, yeah. (Was he still fishing?) Oh, yeah, he was working on the railroad when I came home. (So he didn't need you, like that--he didn't need you to come home.) Well, not to a certain extent. He didn't have to. But I.... Work was picking up here pretty good at that time. I went to sea out of here, too. I fished out of here, inshore fishing: lobster fishing and herring fishing. (So you decided to stay.) The wages weren't--the common wages between here and the. States weren't too much in difference. It was a little higher in the States, the common labour here, up till 50, 60 years ago. And wages started to crawl.
 
(So, you worked here, you fished for awhile, and you went....) Oh. I fished here home, and farmed. I worked on the railroad some. Well, I took over this farm here We had cattle here, and we had sheep, and we had pigs--my father had. I took it over here then. My father gave it to me. (Did he stay on?) Oh yeah, he stayed here till he died--both him and her. Both of them died here in this house.
 
(And then you continued to operate a farm, pretty much, until...?) Yeah, I kept her going up till the last 15 years. In those days we (didn't have) to fence all our fields, at that time. You could let your cattle go loose. No trouble with cattle-- let them go to the woods all day and come back in the evening. But after they started making highways, they put restrictions on it: you had to keep your cattle all wired in. At the last of it, they got down to wire fences, then they got down to only 2 or 3 strings of barbed wire around the fence, and everything. It got hard; people had to give up. Small farms gave up keeping cattle altogether. (Because of the wire?) No, not because of that, because of too much restrictions. Cattle'd get out through that, get out on the highways and everything. Then they'd take them to what they called the pound; you had to pay for to get them again. And feed got high. Everything got so high, people couldn't keep them. Cheaper to buy it, almost.
 
Years ago, cattle roaming were only through the woods. You could turn them out in the morning after you milked them and let them go. They either came back again themselves in the evening, or you had to go hunt them and bring them back.
 
(Running the farm, were you running it pretty much just for your family?) Just for our own use, yeah, that was all. (Were you able to raise your family off of the farm?) Not all alone, but you raised all you ate. You could raise all you ate. Nearly every? one around here then had a couple of pigs, a pig killed in for the winter. They'd have a barrel of salt codfish, a barrel of mackerel, all the potatoes in the cellar, all the carrots, all the parsnips. What you're buying now, all you had to do was go down in the cellar there--you never were hungry, I can tell you that. Only for that, the time of the Depression, half the people would have starved. Only for the small farms. And now, hardly a small farm on Richmond County. That's, all, just a couple of big farms. There's no land hardly now. There's land, but it's all grown up and all. It's all drained out--no cultivation or anything. They had a chance during that first Depression. If there ever come another one--goodbye! I don't know what they'd do. They'd do nothing, that I could see.
 
(Did the coastal vessels still come in with food, during the Depression?) No, it wasn't too many. Most all of the people raised their own stuff in the ground. We always did. In thomse days, we never bought nothing here. I never bought nothing in the line of potatoes, in the line of garden stuff -- carrots or vegetables or pork, beef -- we had all our own cattle. Couple of pigs every summer, and hens. The only thing we had to but was stuff you had to go to the store for, like sugar, or butter, or molassas --all you had to do was go down to the cellar and get it. Now you've got to go all to the store for that.
 
Lots of fish that time, too. Out in the bay, here, was full of them. Piles of fish. But now, the fish have barely a thing to eat. (Why is that?) Pollution from the mill, pollution running out in the bay. Those codfish that's out there. You go up under the strait there, up under the (heavy) water plant, and catch fish up there. You can't eat them. Up there around the strait. Those fish go right up to the strait, plays around Hawkesbury harbour and around, a lot of them, codfish. Went up there about 3 years ago, and we caught 10 or 15 codfish and haddock up there. Brought them home here, we had to heave them out. Couldn't eat them. Right dead--the same as if they were in the freezer for 2 years. And full of worms, right full of worms. That stuff running out of the mill--running right out on the floor of the ocean.
 
(You were saying, 80 years ago here...?) All fishermen here then. Everybody had boats, and fishing. Now we wouldn't see a boat hardly out here--a couple of times a week, we might see a boat go up. (And this was all sailboats in here.) All sailboats. (What did they do for wharfs?) That was all settled across there. Now it's all grown up, the people all left, went to the States and went other places, and died. No one there at all, only--well, not a house from up there--from where the church is there-- and go way out around--there's a point there--you go way out around and go up the other way. Not a house. Theire were about 20-some houses there.
 
 
(When did you two marry?) Clara MacNamara: 1925. (Where did he find you?) Not very far! I lived up the road there apiece. He didn't have to go very far.... We had 13.... There's two dead; the rest are all living. I've got 11 living.
 
Billy James: Pretty hard to keep a family, now, of 13, in the city.... People survived on farms years ago. They couldn't do it in the cities, time of the Depression. There never were more potatoes or gardens put in, at the time of the Depression, as what they were put in around here then. There was no money, hardly much money to be made in any shape or form. People all started putting in stuff in the ground; they had enough to eat, anyhow. Turnips and potatoes and everything.