Chapter 2

The day passed quickly as we were all busy with our various tasks. We had to collect more dry wood to keep the fire alive, as without fire we would not be able to cook or to keep ourselves warm. We also had to salvage as much as possible from the ship, dry our clothes, and decide how we were going to repair the ship. Finally, we had to look for water to drink. With all that, it was a long day, and when night fell, we made ourselves as comfortable as possible on the sand above the high water mark, and fell asleep, exhausted, but lulled by the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.

The light of dawn, the calling of seabirds, and the chill in the air of late September soon had us awake and starting to come to terms with the fact that we might not be able to return to our homes until the next year. This was the opinion of our captain, and with solemn faces, we all had to agree with him that even if we were able to repair the ship quickly, the weather would probably be too stormy for us to make the crossing home safely. We were all experienced sailors, so we knew how dangerous the seas between the Grand Banks and the north coast of our homeland could be at that time of year.

In other words, we would be forced to spend the winter in this new and uncharted land.

Before we could become too despondent, the captain called us all together and told us what he had decided we needed to do.

The first task was to make the ship secure, so that even if the waves from the winter storms were strong and high, our ship would be safe from further damage because without the ship, we would have no hope of ever being able to return home. So, we needed to move the ship further up the beach and past the high water mark. To complete this, we would have to put logs under the keel to act as rollers, and then push and pull the ship into its final resting place. Luckily, the beach was flat where we had been driven ashore, so that would make the task much easier. We all donned our clothes that we had left to dry overnight. Some were still wet, but we were accustomed to wearing wet clothes when we were fishing. Next, we searched among the carpenter’s tools that had been removed from the ship the day before to find any tool we could use to cut trees. Finally, leaving the beach, we walked as a group towards where the trees that had supplied us with our firewood lay.

As we approached the trees, what we could not help but be amazed at was the blaze of red, gold, yellow and brown of the leaves about to fall from the branches as the trees prepared to hibernate for the coming winter. In some way, this display of nature lifted our spirits and made us thankful to have survived the shipwreck. To me it felt as if God was sending us a message that all would be well, and that we would return safely to our families.

Entering the wood, the captain quickly found the trees that he felt would make good rollers to help us to move our ship. These he marked with his knife by slashing the bark. Then he instructed the four men who were armed with two axes, a saw and some sharp knives that we used to gut and clean the cod we caught before salting them to start chopping down the trees he had marked. He then instructed the rest of us to search for a sheltered clearing where we would be able to make a camp because the beach was not a suitable place to make a permanent place to survive the winter. The place we had to look for needed to be near a source of water and also already clear of trees as we could not afford to spend a lot of time going in search of water every day, and we did not have the resources to make a clearing by chopping down trees and pulling up the tree stumps.

These requirements made the task difficult because we found a few clearings, but there was no water nearby. However, finally, after searching for more than an hour, we came across a small stream that had a flat area of grass on one of its banks. The stream was shallow, but with some deeper pools, so we knew that we would not be in danger of flooding and that it should be possible to construct fish traps as well as have a plentiful supply of water for cooking and drinking.

Carefully marking our trail by slashing the bark of some trees, we returned to where the sound of the axes, the saw and the knives let us know that our compatriots were making good progress on the first steps of making our ship safe.

When we arrived at the site of the tree felling, we could see that they had already managed to cut down six medium sized trees and lopped off all the branches, so now we had the first logs that should help us to move our ship out of danger from any high tide or storm surge. Under the guidance of the captain, my group spent an hour or more dragging the tree trunks to the beach. By the time we returned, the logging group had already felled and trimmed another two trees, so these were also dragged to the shore.

The captain had instructed us all to return to the shore and to begin the work of using the logs as rollers to move the ship. The work was time consuming, but the sand was hard packed by the waves that had brought us to shore, so it was possible to excavate enough sand to insert the logs under the ship. The logs were first wrapped in seaweed to make them slippery, which we hoped would make the task of moving the ship easier.

Finally, we had the rollers in place and then the hard work of moving the ship began. Fortunately, the ship had a broad beam, so it was mainly flat on the bottom. That made the task of pushing it from the stern and pulling it with ropes attached to the prow without it toppling over possible. Possible, but difficult, although the wet seaweed helped to make the work succeed.

The job was made easier by first unloading everything that was not part of the ship. So, all barrels of fish, all fishing gear, all personal belongings, and all loose items were carefully removed and stored safely at some distance from where we were working.