Some 45 miles distant lay the capital, St. Johns with its fish industry and fine harbour, its shipping and dry dock. The steamship Glencoe arrived on the scene of the wreck that afternoon fully prepared to supply our passengers with warm clothing, a hot meal, and to take them on to St. Johns.
An acute problem faced us, for we had to consider how we could trans-for these people first through the heavy surf pounding on the beach, and then over the Atlantic swell alongside Glencoe. A. lifeboat is a heavy, unwieldy thing, more suited for open sea work than for being launched from a beach through breakers. Trouble seemed certain.
Luckily, in the vicinity there were many of the Newfoundland fishing fleet, and readers who are familiar with Kiplings "Captains Courageous" nautical novel, or have seen the film, need no reminder of those small boats named dories, really true that some men had sold their farms and gone to sea I recall the day when, during the command of Captain Stewart, we brought the Lake Superior into Montreal as the first ship of the season after the ice permitted. Our arrival synchronized with a strike among the stevedores, who were mostly French-Canadians. Consequently we began discharging the cargo ourselves.
Driven off With Hoses This aroused indignation. We had not been long at our task when two or three hundred of them came down to the wharf with sticks and chased us all on board. Captain Stewart had made his mind they should not have the best of it, and now made preparations for the following morning, which doubtless would still be bitter-
Double-ended, flat-bottomed, built so as to nest into each other on deck, they are readily dropped over the side, and from them the fishermen pursue their job with long lines. Their design makes them excellent for beach work and manceuvring alike.
It was a wise decision to employ these dories to take the passengers through the turbulent waters to where the deeper lifeboats were waiting to row them alongside the Glencoe. The local fishermen agreed on a payment of a dollar a load for the use of their dories.
The owners of the Lusitania, impressed with the way we had all behaved and the fact that not one life had been lost, cabled out to the captain awarding two months' wages for meritorious services. ly cold.
He ordered all hoses to be connected up, with nozzles screwed on, and disposed fore and aft above the ship covering the whole wharf side. Our ship carried a couple of small brass cannon—one on the poop, one on the io'e'sle head—which were to be used for distress signals He now filled these with the usual lib. bag of black powder, then rammed them full of Indian corn and trained them towards the wharf.
Nothing happened until 8 am. when about 400 stevedores swooped down with the intention of stopping us working. As all gangways were blocked up the crowd could not get aboard, but contented themselves with clustering along the wharf, shouting violent threats.
Captain Stewart, not. greatly worrying. bided his time until the mob were well packed together. Then he issued two orders one to fire the guns and the other to start all the pumps. I never saw a crowd scatter so quickly. What with the cold water and the Indian corn hitting them in the face, you might have imagined that machine-guns were pelting them with bullets.
Up Berri-street they ran like greyhounds; and left the wharf to us. So the strike was ended and we got
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.