Reprinted from The Navigator Magazine, March 2010
by Jim Wellman
“He was a very very dedicated fisherman.”
That’s one way Stirling Seaward remembers his friend Junior Seward from Gooseberry Cove, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Junior fished all his life, most of the years with his brother-in-law Ernest (Ern) Kelly. For many years the two men fished cod traps and gill nets from a typical trap boat and then in later years from a 34’11” longliner. Junior also had a couple of speedboats – one was a 19 ft “Neldo.” He also had a small get-about 14 footer powered by a 15-horsepower (hp) 4-stroke engine that he used to puttering around the harbour doing small jobs.
On Monday morning, April 18, 2005, Stirling was onboard his 44’11” fishing vessel preparing for the upcoming season. His was the only longliner in Gooseberry Cove in the water so far that spring. It was a lovely early spring morning – sunny and hardly a ripple on the water and Stirling was taking advance of the good spring weather to do some fibreglass repair work on his boat.
About 10:00 a.m. Junior pulled his small boat alongside Stirling’s longliner to ask for a favour. He had three bags of sand that he was going to do something with so he asked Stirling if he could give him a hand to get them up on the wharf.
“I said; ‘hang on a minute, I got a little bit of stuff [fibreglassing compound] mixed up here, and as soon as I get this done, I’ll be there.”
Junior went on his way and that’s all Stirling thought about it as he continued to put the finishing touches on his glassing work. A little while later he noticed Junior had landed the sand bags on his own, probably by using the electrical hoist that was attached to the wharf.
“By and by, I heard him coming out around the wharf again, this time he was in the Neldo, his bigger speed boat, the one with the 60-horsepower Mercury on the back,” says Stirling.
As Stirling recalls the moment he tells the story of the Mercury engine. He said Junior had a 40 hp Yamaha on the Neldo for years but he had a problem with it and rather than spend money repairing an old engine he thought he get a new one so in 2004, he bought a 60 horsepower Mercury. He didn’t use the new motor for nearly a year. With the new higher powered engine on hand, Junior figured the Neldo was getting old so he might as well go all the way and get a new boat too. With that in mind, he left the new engine in the gear shed and continued using the Yamaha. Eventually, Junior decided to postpone the new boat purchase and with the help of his wife Christine and Stirling, they brought the new Mercury from the shed to the speedboat.
A 60 horsepower Mercury is a powerful engine for a 19-ft speedboat. Some would say it was too powerful although Stirling, who also owns a Neldo, says the boat could handle the engine without any problem.
As Junior came around the wharf, Stirling figured his friend was heading out to set trap “marks” for his capelin trap berth later that spring. It was still early to set marks, as they are known locally to fisherman, but Junior was that kind of man – he liked to get things done in a timely fashion.
Just moments after Junior passed alongside the wharf, Stirling heard the engine making a strange sound. “All of a sudden, I heard the engine racing full speed and then I heard him singing out ‘help!’ so I jumped up on the wharf and when I did, there he was in the water and the boat was circling full speed and boy of boy with that 60 horsepower Mercury, she was goin’. She was goin’ round and round – she’d almost touch the beach and then she’d almost run into a small wharf there – but she kept goin’ round and round and he was caught in the middle!”
Stirling says the runaway speedboat circling menacingly around Junior in the water must have been very frightening for him. If the boat struck him, he would be killed. Junior couldn’t swim, probably because he suffered polio when he was a boy and had a mobility disability that had bothered him for most of his life, although he eventually overcame it. He did manage to tread water and was moving from the place he fell overboard but it was in the wrong direction. At first he was only a few feet from the beach but in the confusion, he was moving further offshore.
Stirling says he didn’t think that Junior was in immediate danger of drowning because he was wearing a hunting jacket and it appeared that air trapped inside the coast was acting as a flotation device and he was floating fairly high in the water. Stirling also felt reassured because other people saw what was happening and were all preparing to attempt to rescue Junior. As Stirling looked for something – a piece of rope or anything that might help, he saw Vivian Seaward and Derek Smith running down to a nearby wharf and Warren Langer was on the beach vey near where Junior had fallen overboard. I sang out to Viv and Derek and asked if there was a punt there. “Ern [Kelly] had built a 13-ft lifeboat that he used on his longliner and the boys jumped in that and started paddling across the cove. “The last thing on my mind was that June would drown although the tide and water that the boat was kickin’ up was washing over him – there were times when we couldn’t see him at all – but, it’s only about 300 feet or so across the cove and it didn’t take the boys [Viv and Derek] long to get out there,” Stirling recalls. Meanwhile, on the shoreline, Warren had found a life jacket and waded out into the bitterly cold oceans in water as far as he could go. He threw the jacket and managed to pitch it close to Junior but the distressed man was either unaware that a jacket was floating very close to him or he was too far gone to reach for it. A few moments later Vivian and Derek reached Junior and, although it was a struggle in the very small boat, they finally managed to pull him onboard. He was lifeless but the two men weren’t sure whether he was alive or not. They paddled to shore as quickly as possible where a crowd, including fireman Clayton Smith, had gathered. After lifting Junior from the little boat, the men laid him on the beach and Clayton immediately performed CPR.
But, it was too late. Junior had passed away.
Something eerie happened when Clayton was performing CPR on Junior. The motor on his speedboat that had been racing at full speed all this time suddenly stopped and with the remaining, the boat headed toward shore coming to stop precisely where the men were still trying to revive Junior. “She came right on in alongside of us and stopped at Junior’s feet just like a horse or something that you called to come to you Stirling says.
What caused the engine to suddenly accelerate is still open to speculation but it seemed to happen quickly with the power surge knocking the 56-year old fisherman off balance. On April 18, 2005, Junior Seward, husband to Christine and father of two daughters and a son made his final voyage just a few feet offshore from the beach in Gooseberry Cove, Newfoundland.
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Clipping provided by Lester Green
Transcribed by Wanda Garrett, October 2015
These transcriptions may contain human errors. As always, confirm these as you would any other source material.