The Wreck of the Mail Steamer

by Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

“My watch was from eight to twelve. But I was a new hand and wanted to give her every chance, so I went on at six to watch that the fires were kept clear and a good head of steam when we made a start. It did seem an awful time delaying, and I wished a hundred times that we would throw that freight overboard.

“I guess I was a bit excited. But when at last the bell did go, we were all ready below. It was a hard fight, however, from the first. For the boat was small and we knew she couldn’t do much in a dead hard sea. Her propeller comes out and she races, and it’s no soft job trying to fire at the best of times. She wasn’t so bad first out in the spring either. But like everything else, she had run down with hard usage and at the end of the long season she couldn’t do her best by a long way. However, as I said, we had a full head of steam when the gong rang at last and, for a time, it looked as if we might make it by standing right out to sea.

“The fierce dust in the stokehole from the powdery coal, and the heavy and quick rolling soon made our eyes blind and our throats dry, and before my watch was out at midnight I just had to go up for water. I found the doors were all sealed up with ice, so had to crawl out through a ventilator to get that drink. I hadn’t been up two minutes, it seemed, before the chief sent for me to hurry down again, as the steam was going back. I was only second fireman really on my watch, but the first, a Frenchman who had been at it seven years, was an oldish fellow and was getting all in. At midnight watches were called but both of us stuck to it for we were losing steam again. Water was now washing up over the plates of the engine room, and we were wet and badly knocked about by the ship rolling us off our legs when we tried to shovel in coal.

“At two o’clock the old man gave in altogether and went up, and I never saw him again until it was all over. Cyril was in as trimmer, and he came in to help me. Every time I opened the fire box door Cyril would grab me by the waist and hold on hard, but in spite of it I got thrown almost into the fire one time by the ship diving as I let go to throw the coal in.”

Harry here showed me a big scar across his arm and one on his face. “I got these that time,” he remarked, “just to remember her by.

“The water was rising then in the engine room, and the pumps had got blocked so we couldn’t pump it out. We didn’t think she was leaking but we heard after some port holes had been stove in, and she took in water every time she rolled. We got the pumps to work again after a while. But the doors being frozen up above we had no way to get rid of our ashes, and they were washing all around in the engine room, and it was impossible to keep the runways clear.

“The worst of it was that now the water was in the bunkers, and mixed up with the coal making it into a kind of porridge. It was just like black mud to handle, and you couldn’t get it off the shovel until you banged the blade against the iron firebars.

“So steam began to drop again, and went so low that our electrics nearly went out and we got repeated orders from the bridge for more steam and more steam. It appears we were making no headway at all with only 80 pounds pressure and, in fact, were slowly being driven sideways into the cliffs. We worked all we could, but things went from bad to worse, the water rose and splashed up against the fire box making clouds of steam, so though the dust was laid, what with the steam and the darkness, and the long watch, we couldn’t keep her going. Moreover it seemed as if we would be drowned like rats below there, and I tell you we wouldn’t have minded being on deck, cold as it was.

“We heard afterwards that one of the stewards had been fishing on this part of the coast. He knew every nick and corner, and said there was a little sandy cove round St. Martin’s Cape, where a small head of rock might break the seas enough to let us land, for they knew on deck now that the ship was doomed. For my part I knew nothing, but that work as we would the steam gauge would not rise one pound. Beyond that, what happened didn’t even interest us. We hadn’t time to worry about danger.

“One sea did, however, make us madder than others. Something had been happening on deck. The heavy thumps like butting ice had reached us down below. It turned out to be the lifeboat that had been washed out of davits and went bumping all down the deck, clearing up things as it went. Anyhow something came open and as we were getting coal from the lea bunkers a lot of icy water came through the gratings and washed us well down, sweaty and grimy as we were. Somehow that seemed to set my teeth again, and we had the satisfaction of seeing the steam crawl once more to 100 pounds.