All our freight that year arrived promptly and in good condition, which had never happened before. Later the vessel was chartered to go to Greenland by the Smithsonian. On this occasion her engine, never satisfactory, gave out entirely, which so delayed her that she got frozen in near Etah and was held up a whole twelvemonth. Meanwhile the war had broken out, and when she at last sailed into Boston, we were able to sell her, by the generous permission of Mrs. Cluett, and use the money to purchase the George B. Cluett II.
Illustrating the advantage of getting our freight direct, among the many instances which have occurred, that of the lost searchlight for the Strathcona comes to my mind. As she had often on dark nights to come to anchor among vessels, and to nose her way into unlit harbours, some friends, through the Professor of Geology at Harvard, who had himself cruised all along our coast in a schooner, presented me with a searchlight for the hospital ship and despatched it via Sydney—the normal freight route. Month after month went by, and it never appeared. Year followed year, and still we searched for that searchlight. At length, after two and a half years, it suddenly arrived, having been "delayed on the way." Had it been provisions or clothing or drugs, or almost anything else, of course, it would have been useless. It has proved to us one of the almost de luxe additions to a Mission steamer.
For a long time I had felt the need of some place in St. John's where work for fishermen could be carried on, and which could be also utilized as a place of safety for girls coming to that city from other parts of the island. My attention was called one day to the fact that liquor was being sent to people in the outports C.O.D., by a barrel of flour which was being lowered over the side of the mail steamer rather too quickly on to the ice. As the hard bump came, the flour in the barrel jingled loudly and leaked rum profusely from the compound fracture. When our sober outport people went to St. John's, as they must every year for supplies, they had only the uncomfortable schooner or the street in which to pass the time. There is no "Foyer des Pêcheurs"; no one wanted fishermen straight from a fishing schooner in the home; and in those days there were no Camp Community Clubs. As one man said, "It is easy for the parson to tell us to be good, but it is hard on a wet cold night to be good in the open street" and nowhere to go, and harder still if you have to seek shelter in a brightly lighted room, where music was being played. The boarding-houses for the fishermen, where thousands of our young men flocked in the spring to try for a berth in the seal fishery, were ridiculous, not to say calamitous. Lastly, unsophisticated girls coming from the outports ran terrible risks in the city, having no friends to direct and assist them; and the Institute which we had in mind was to comprise also a girls' lodging department. No provision was made for the accommodation of crews wrecked by accident, and our Institute has already proved invaluable to many in such plights.
Seeing the hundreds of craft and the thousands of fishermen, and the capital and interest vested against us as prohibitionists, it would have been obviously futile to put up a second-rate affair in a back street. It would only be sneered at as a proselytizing job. I had almost forgotten to mention that there was already an Old Seamen's Home, but it had gradually become a roost for boozers, and when with the trustees we made an inspection of it, it proved to be only worthy of immediate closure. This was promptly done, and the money realized from the sale of it, some ten thousand dollars, was kindly donated to the fund for our new building.
After a few years of my collecting funds spasmodically, a number of our local friends got "cold feet." Reports started, not circulated by well-wishers, that it was all a piece of personal vanity, that no such thing was needed, and if built would prove a white elephant, to support which I would be going round with my hat in my hand worrying the merchants. We had at that time some ninety thousand dollars in hand. I laid the whole story before the Governor, Sir Ralph Williams, a man by no means prejudiced in favour of prohibition. He was, however, one who knew what the city needed, and realized that it was a big lack and required a big remedy.
A letter which I published in all the St. John's papers, describing my passing fifteen drunken men on the streets before morning service on Christmas Day, brought forth angry denials of the actual facts, and my statement of the number of saloons in the city was also contradicted. But a saloon is not necessarily a place licensed by the Government or city to make men drunk—for the majority are unlicensed, and a couple of experiences which my men had in looking for sailors who had shipped, been given advances, and gone off and got drunk in shebeens, proved the number to be very much higher than even I had estimated it.
Sir Ralph thought the matter over and called a public meeting in the ballroom of Government House. He had a remarkable personality and no fear of conventions. After thoroughly endorsing the plan for the Institute, and the need for it, he asked each of the many citizens who had responded to his invitation, "Will you personally stand by the larger scheme of a two hundred thousand dollar building, or will you stand by the sixty thousand dollar building with the thirty thousand dollar endowment fund, or will you do nothing at all?" It was proven that when it came to the point of going on record, practically all who really took the slightest interest in the matter were in favour of the larger plan—if I would undertake to raise the money. My own view, since more than justified, was that only so large a building could ever hope to meet the requirements and only such a comprehensive institution could expect to carry its own expenses. I preferred refunding the ninety thousand dollars to the various donors and dropping the whole business to embarking on the smaller scheme.
That meeting did a world of good. It cleared the atmosphere; and it is only fresh air which most of these things really need—just as does a consumptive patient. The plan was now on the shoulders of the citizens; it was no longer one man's hobby. Enemies, like the Scribes and Pharisees of old, knew better than to tackle a crowd, and with the splendid gift of Messrs. Bowring Brothers of a site on the water-side on the main street, costing thirteen thousand dollars, and those of Job Brothers, Harvey and Company, and Macpherson Brothers of twenty-five hundred dollars each, the fund grew like Jonah's gourd; and in the year of 1911, with approximately one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in hand, we actually came to the time for laying the foundation stone. The hostility of enemies was not over. Such an institute is a fighting force, and involves contest and therefore enemies. So we decided to make this occasion as much of an event as we could. Through friends in England we obtained the promise of King George V that if we connected the foundation stone with Buckingham Palace by wire, he would, after the ceremony in Westminster Abbey on his Coronation Day, press a button at three in the afternoon and lay the stone across the Atlantic. The good services of friends in the Anglo-American Telegraph Company did the rest.
On the fateful day His Excellency the Governor came down and made an appropriate and patriotic speech. Owing to the difference in time of about three hours and twenty minutes, it was shortly before twelve o'clock with us. The noonday gun signal from the Narrows was fired during His Excellency's address. Then followed a prayer of invocation by His Lordship the Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda—and then, a dead silence and pause. Every one was waiting for our newly crowned King to put that stone into place. Only a moment had passed, the Governor had just said, "We will wait for the King," when "Bing, bang, bang," went the gong signifying that His Majesty was at the other end of the wire. Up went the national flag, and slowly but surely the great stone began to move. A storm of cheering greeted the successful effort; and all that was left for our enemies to say was, "It was a fake." They claimed that we had laid the stone ourselves. Nor might they have been so far off the mark as they supposed, for we had a man with a knife under that platform to make that stone come down if anything happened that the wire device did not work. You cannot go back on your King whatever else you do, and to permit any grounds to exist for supposing that he had not been punctual was unthinkable. But fortunately for all concerned our subterfuge was unnecessary.