Текст книги "Tsunami"

Автор книги: Maura Hanrahan

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

16

Albert and Thomas, Nurse Cherry’s companions from Lamaline, turned back toward home after a night at Lord’s Cove. Thomas was eager to see Ada and their daughter, Mary, and to make sure they were all right after his absence. Albert, too, wanted to see his relatives and ensure they were well. Both men were desperate to see that communications with Burin and St. John’s were established and ongoing. Above all, they wanted to alert the telegraph operators to the devastation in Taylor’s Bay and the urgent need for provisions of every kind. Nurse Cherry impressed on them that it was necessary to evacuate people from the village lest an epidemic develop.

So it was men from Lord’s Cove who accompanied Nurse Cherry on the long journey to Lawn, the next community to the east. The road to Lawn veered away from the sea, so it contained less debris deposited by the tidal wave. But without the moderating influence of the water, the air was cutting and their faces hurt when the wind blew. The horses were irritable and sluggish. The men had to push them to move on. Nurse Cherry again had visions of her grandmother’s violets; she wondered why she was thinking so much of them now. And that ha’penny with Queen Victoria’s profile on it? She bent her face to the ground and pressed on toward Lawn.

Most of the time she walked since the animals were so contrary. It made the time go faster, too, she reasoned, by giving her something to do. But sometimes she rode on one of them to give her aching legs a rest. When she stopped her calves throbbed and her feet swelled in her boots, so much that she worried if she’d be able to get them off.

The old wooden bridge that led to Lawn was down. The men called across and got some Lawn men to fetch a dory, one of the few that hadn’t been smashed to bits. They carried it from the beach to the bridge and then rowed it across the narrow river, breaking the thin ice in places. Then Nurse Cherry got aboard, laughed at her situation, and helped row across. The horses, more unpredictable than ever now, plunged their legs into the frigid water.

“They’re spooked by the tidal wave,” someone said.

“You’ll never be able to predict how they’ll act around water now,” another added.

At least there are no flattened homes in Lawn, Dorothy Cherry consoled herself as she fell asleep her first night there. And, thankfully, no one had died. She was exhausted; she had travelled at least twenty rough miles and spent another day treating people for shock, exposure, injuries, and even septic inflammations. She was relieved that some who had suffered damage here had substantial savings. Michael Tarrant, who was fifty-six, and his wife, Emma, thirty-six, gave up much of their fishing gear and rooms to the waves, but still had two thousand dollars in the bank. Even young Ernest and Loretta Connors, both thirty, had two hundred dollars saved; now they and their little Gerald would need it, and more. Other families, though, had nothing.

Nurse Cherry was in a bed under a thick quilt this time, her head lying on a pillow stuffed with the feathers of an eider duck. The last thing she saw before the blackness of slumber was a giant violet from far away England. The visions of German bombs dropping on the Co-op Laundry in Bolton had left her in Taylor’s Bay. Maybe she had seen the worst of the tidal wave’s fury.

The smell of butter smeared on fresh bread drifted into her morning dreams, only to be interrupted by a knock on her door.

“The priest wants you to go to St. Lawrence, Nurse Cherry,” said the little girl of the house in as authoritative a voice as she could muster.

Suddenly the cold, fast waters of the tidal wave washed into Dorothy Cherry’s memory and she saw the white face of Jessie Hipditch and the arms of Bertram Bonnell, swollen from carrying his dead children. She saw the first wave pull houses from their foundations and throw them inland in a thousand pieces. She saw the second wave haul away from villages, taking houses filled with women and children with it. The wrinkled telegram announcing the regrettable and heroic death of her neighbour, twenty-twoyear-old Private Harold Kettle popped in front of her eyes until she squeezed them shut to banish it. She tried to focus on the aroma of the fresh bread but she had to hurry to get to St. Lawrence. She had no idea what awaited her there. She still did not know if the outside world knew what had happened to the people of the boot of the Burin Peninsula. Or if help was on its way. Or when it would or could come. She had no bright news to bring the people of St. Lawrence. Her arms were heavy as she pulled them into her dress. My clothes need a good wash, she thought.

Nurse Cherry’s legs ached and swelled as she travelled over the road to St. Lawrence, named centuries ago by Channel Islands fishermen after a Jersey Island parish. Although the town was the largest on the lower part of the peninsula and something of a service centre, life in St. Lawrence still revolved around fishing. Nurse Cherry’s little party reached there not long before nightfall, just in time for supper and to administer some basic medicine to a few livyers alongside the priest’s house, where she was staying.

As soon as Nurse Cherry finished her breakfast of tea and hard-boiled eggs the next morning, Grace Reeves, a slip of a thing at fourteen, rushed into the priest’s kitchen to tell her that “poor Joseph Cusack’s house is all destroyed, Nurse.” Nurse Cherry let her china cup fall onto her saucer as the maid backed into the dark mahogany doorway to listen to Grace.

“Yes, Nurse,” she nodded. “’Tis true, only I forgot to tell you that.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Nurse Cherry. She knew that Cusack was a widower with three children, the older two in their early teens. Even worse, Joseph suffered badly from high blood pressure. Dorothy swallowed the last of her tea and determined to visit the Cusacks right away. This would not be good for Joseph’s health, she knew, and he was all the children had.

She glanced out the window at the snow that was still falling fast. It had been a wild night with the wind emitting war cries hour after hour. Over and over Nurse Cherry woke from the dreams that took her back to the Bolton Wanderers soccer pitch. She was a tiny girl on her father’s shoulders, clapping as the Wanderers beat mighty Manchester United. “We’re an older team than they are!” her dad called up to her. “You remember that. We’ve got four years on them.” Later that night the Burin Peninsula wind pulled her out of a Wanderers game with Ipswich Town. This time she was even smaller, not yet in school, and it was her first game. The Ipswich players came all the way from southern England—so far away!—her father had showed it to them all on a crinkled old map. Their town was on the Suffolk coast, right across from Holland in Europe! Dorothy’s heart beat with excitement as her family went through the gates for the match, surrounded by thousands of other Boltonites. She wondered about the players from Ipswich. Would they look like people in the North or would they be different? She could hardly breathe with… Then the wind pounded on the roof of the rectory, nearly tearing it off, and Nurse Cherry sat up in bed, a mess of confusion.

Nurse Cherry bundled up and faced the gale, with Grace by her side. She found the little family at James Cusack’s house, snowdrifts piled high on its side. James was in St. Pierre but his twenty-eight-year-old wife, Elizabeth, was doing her best to tend to Joseph’s three children as well as her own brood of four. Joseph had gone to look for whatever building supplies he could find. Nurse Cherry was pleased to hear that he was active and doing something about his situation; pressing on was always the best medicine, she told herself.

“We’re the lucky ones,” Elizabeth told Nurse Cherry. “We’ve lost nothing but the breastwork on our wharf. Most in the harbour have lost much more than that.”

“There’s a great deal of damage in St. Lawrence then?”

“Oh yes!” Elizabeth answered, putting bowls of porridge in front of a row of quiet children. “The businesses are in a terrible state and almost all the wharves are gone. Most have lost food and many have lost boats and coal. I don’t know what will happen the winter and next spring when they have to go fishing.”

“I suppose I thought it wasn’t that bad when most of the houses were still standing,” Nurse Cherry said.

“Well, yes, Nurse, you’re right there,” Elizabeth nodded. “Most of us have our houses and no one died, thanks be to God. I hear that’s not the case farther down the peninsula and we’ve been praying for those people and lighting candles in the church.”

“Yes, it’s the saddest sight, Taylor’s Bay,” Nurse Cherry said. “The Bonnell men, Robert and Bertram, losing their children, and Robert losing his wife, too. Bertram was driven mad with his loss when I saw him. His wife, Bessie, too, she was heartbroken, of course. And then poor Jessie Hipditch and her husband David in Point au Gaul—they lost all their children, all three of them. Jessie’s mother, too. And her sister Jemima’s daughter, Irene.”

The Cusack children stared at Nurse Cherry, trying to take in the gravity of her words. They were catatonic, like statues.

Elizabeth was silent.

“I know Jessie Hipditch. I’ve met her and she’s a good woman,” she said finally. “It’s not nice to lose your mother. But, you know, losing your children is never supposed to happen. It’s against nature.”

Nurse Cherry nodded. She could understand this. She had delivered many of them and she had closed the eyes of many old people. This was as it should be. In the past few days, everything had been upside down or backwards, just as Elizabeth Cusack had said…

“You’ll have to visit poor Michael Fitzpatrick, too,” Elizabeth said, as she cleared the dishes off the table and shooed the children away. “His house is gone, too. And his flake and that…Are you all right, Nurse Cherry?”

“Well, I’m a little woozy to be honest,” Nurse Cherry answered. Elizabeth paused and looked the nurse up and down.

“Lie down here on the daybed,” she said kindly. “Perhaps you’ve been working too hard or not eating enough or most likely both.”

“I’ve got work to do,” Nurse Cherry protested.

“Well, you can’t do it right till you rest,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Now lie down.”

Nurse Cherry moved slowly over to the daybed. Elizabeth pulled a thin woollen blanket over her legs.

“Just have a little rest now,” she said gently.

Then one of Joseph Cusack’s sons rushed back into the kitchen.

“Aunt Elizabeth!” he said urgently. “There’s a rescue ship in the harbour! The SS Meigle. Can I go see it?”

“Of course you can, child,” Elizabeth said. “Just don’t get in the men’s way, but offer to help if they need it. Off you go.”

Elizabeth smiled when she saw that Nurse Cherry had fallen asleep in spite of her nephew’s gleeful news. Her guest woke up only when the dark shadow of a broad-shouldered man standing over her hauled her from the quagmire of her dreams. Two hours had passed when Dr. Mosdell, Chairman of Newfoundland’s Board of Health, appeared in Elizabeth Cusack’s kitchen.

As Nurse Cherry blinked her way to clear vision, the doctor introduced himself.

“Nurse Cherry, on behalf of the government of Newfoundland I thank you for your efforts. Now you are coming with us,” he said firmly. “We shall take you to Burin on the Meiglefor a well deserved rest.” He nodded and looked at Elizabeth as if for confirmation. She nodded quickly in return, delighted to be of service. By now the narrow little daybed was surrounded by a gaggle of Cusack children as well as some others who had wandered in to see what was going on. They shook snow all over the linoleum floor as they came in but Elizabeth ignored it, so focused on Nurse Cherry was she.

Nurse Cherry looked up at Dr. Mosdell and straightened her hair as best she could. “Oh no, I can’t go with you—I have work to do, sir,” she said weakly.

“Nurse Cherry…” Mosdell began.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Nurse Cherry interrupted. “I have to respectfully decline your kind offer.”

Two days later Dr. Mosdell dipped his pen in an inkwell and began a letter to the Honourable A. Barnes, the Colonial Secretary in St. John’s. He wrote:

On board Relief Ship MeigleBurin Nov. 25 the Florence Nightingale of the earthquake and tidal wave disaster on the Southwest coast is Nurse D. Cherry of the Nonia Centre at Lamaline. At every point the Meiglehas called we have heard stirring tales of her courage and devotion to the interests of the survivors. Starting her work of mercy immediately after the occurrence of the catastrophe she has known no rest day or night since then and has been without assistance of any kind until the arrival on the coast of the Doctors and Nurses of our relief expedition.

It must have been almost superhuman effort for Nurse Cherry to make her way on foot all through the stricken area from Lamaline to Lawn a distance of twenty miles. Roads and bridges were swept away and she had to wade many of the streams en route. The weather was intensely cold with snow falling all the time. Her ministrations proved nothing less than providential to terror stricken and frightened women and children. She got through the District as quickly as possible sparing herself not at all and after rendering first aid in one settlement she moved on along until something had been done everywhere to help and to cheer the stricken.

Courage and devotion were required for the journey which was made right after the woeful destruction of the tidal wave with miles of desolation to be traversed at night and nobody just sure that the catastrophe would not be reenacted.

All day yesterday the Meiglesheltered at Lawn a Southeast storm with high seas and driving rain rendering communication with the shore almost impossible.

Toward evening the rain turned to sleet and there was nothing to do except wait until the dark and tempestuous night had passed. During a lull in the storm of the morning Nurse Cherry was taken onboard. She was almost in a state of collapse after her strenuous and self-sacrificing efforts. Despite her objections the expedition kept her with them and have taken her as far as Burin to enable her to recuperate. She returns to her District by the Argyletomorrow…

PART THREE: AFTERMATH

17

APPALLING DISASTER ON SOUTH COAST

27 LIVES LOST AND 18 TOWNS AND VILLAGES SWEPT BY TIDAL WAVES FOLLOWING EATHQUAKE

PROPERTY LOSSES MAY EXCEED MILLION DOLLARS

From the South Coast of Newfoundland comes a tale of tragedy most appalling, following the earthquake of Monday evening 18 ^th. Owing to communications systems having been out of operation by the quake and storms, news of the tragedy was tardy in coming in, and the first intimation of the seriousness of the disaster was conveyed in a message to the Prime Minister from the captain of the S.S. Portiadated from Cape Race last Thursday, which read as follows: “Burin experienced very severe earth tremors 5:05 pm, tidal wave which swept everything waterfront, 16 dwelling houses with 9 lives mostly women and children gone, 4 bodies recovered. All communication of wire cut off. Report is that 18 lives were lost at Lord’s Cove and Lamaline.”

The Western Star

Nature showed no mercy to the people of the Burin Peninsula on the morning following the most harrowing event of their lives. November 19, 1929 dawned bitterly cold, and iciness seemed rooted deep in the earth. Soon snow fell, slowly at first and then thick and fast. Before long the villages of the peninsula were enveloped in a cold, cruel, blinding white. The wind howled like an angry husky dog at night, blowing the bodies of dead sheep into the waters of Lord’s Cove and Lamaline, and dashing teapots and broken dishes upon the rocks that hugged the shores of Burin and St. Lawrence. Pieces of lace curtain flew on the waves that the post– tsunamiwinds whipped up. If an airplane had been able to defy the winds and fly over the Burin Peninsula, its occupants would have seen clapboard floating like matchsticks and houses bobbing here and there, oddly, as if they were enjoying their sea-going excursion after decades of being anchored to land. Entire harbours were choked with the carcasses of cows, bulls, and goats, and with broken barns, wrecked fences, and dwellings cut in half by waves that had the sharpness of saws.

Meanwhile, wave-battered houses onshore sheltered greyfaced, hollow-eyed people who shivered at the sight of the snowflakes falling from the sky. These people were the homeless. Among their number were Patrick Rennie and his motherless sons of Lord’s Cove; David and Jessie Hipditch of Point au Gaul who had lost their three children; William and Carrie Brushett and their children of Kelly’s Cove; Vincent Kelly, who had lost his wife, Frances, and daughter, Dorothy, to the tidal wave; the widower, Joseph Cusack, of St. Lawrence; and numerous families in the severely stricken communities of Taylor’s Bay in the south and Port au Bras in the north.

Tragedy was general on the lower half of the Burin Peninsula following the tsunami. So was confusion. The Corner Brook Western Starwas not unique as it laboured to determine the extent of the damage and loss of life. In the days immediately after the quake the Burin Peninsula was virtually cut off from the rest of the country and the world. In turn, Newfoundland itself was unable to communicate with the outside because of the tidal wave and the damage it wrought. The Bay Roberts Cable Station reported that cable lines between Newfoundland and New York were damaged and inoperable. The cable ships Lord Kelvinand Cyrus Fieldlocated the cable breaks 360 miles south of St. John’s. There were twenty-eight breaks in more than 212 oceanic cables near the epicentre of the quake. The French government had its own cables—three in total—and these, too, were broken. Fifty new miles of cable would be required to make the repairs at a cost of $400,000 in 1929 dollars. The French estimated that the repairs would take no less than two years.

Within the country, the main means of transportation was boat. Thus, sea travel and wireless would have to be relied upon to convey information about the effects of the tsunamiin the towns and villages of the Burin Peninsula. One of those eager to get the message out was George Bartlett, owner of a large general store in the town of Burin. Bartlett’s store would go down in legend because of what happened to it on the night of November 18, 1929. The store was housed in a building fifty-five feet by thirty feet, anchored on a concrete foundation. There were no witnesses to the event, but Bartlett’s store had turned 180 degrees and travelled two hundred feet that strange night. Amazingly, the building was not destroyed; it landed in a neighbour’s yard, right up against their house, completely intact. Even more remarkable was the fact that not one item inside the store, including dishes, lamps, and inkwells, was broken or even disturbed.

Two days later, Bartlett took pen to paper to alert Newfoundland’s prime minister of the gravity of the situation facing his neighbours.

Burin North, Nov. 20, 1929

Right Hon. Sir Richard Squires K.C.M.G.,

Prime Minister

Dear Sir:-

This is to acquaint you of a terrible disaster that has overtaken Burin and adjacent settlements, and to appeal to you and your Cabinet to send help quickly. All the waterfront of Great Burin consisting of stores and stages were swept away with all fishing gear and provisions for the winter. Burin proper all the waterfront is damaged more or less I myself have lost considerably but of that I will not mention.

Port au Bras had been cleaned out nothing left standing except a few houses, there has been a loss of seven lives at that place. Foots Cove all waterfront gone with loss of three lives. Rock Harbour has been swept also, I hear also that St. Lawrence is swept clean but as the telegraph lines are down we cannot hear. The S.S. Daisy has gone there and no doubt you will get a full report from them. After the quake a tidal wave of about 15 feet swept this part of the coast and you know what that meant when all stores etc, are only built about five feet above high water line. The conditions are beyond describing as people lost all their coal provisions for the winter, the merchants are in practically the same state and one can hardly help the other. My own nerves are so shaken I can hardly write coherently or legibly as only a person that has gone through such an experience can understand it.

Organized relief should be undertaken as quickly as possible as the winter will soon be on us and hundreds of people have lost their all. As no doubt you will get a full report from Official Circles, you will be able to judge. My object in writing is to stress the urgency of immediate help to the stricken places. Some have no home or any means or getting anything to rebuild and have nothing only what they could catch from the water as they fled from their houses. I know the appeal will not be in vain.

Yours very truly,

(Sgd) George A. Bartlett .