Like the survivors of the Linda May, descendants of the ‘Lucky Seven’ will keep their story alive.
By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 29, 2024.
OTTAWA—The homecoming of the ‘Lucky Seven’ was something to behold.
A crowd gathered in New-Wes-Valley, N.L., to celebrate the impossible: their men had survived.
After three days lost at sea, hope was beginning to run out while a massive ocean search continued.
But the seven fishers of the Elite Navigator were sighted, and the message came back. “They are alive.”
Every fisher’s family dreads the possibility of them being lost at sea. Many don’t get the good news that the families of the ‘Lucky Seven’ received last week.
Stories of shipwrecks capture our collective imagination, but little is often recounted of those who survive.
My husband tells one such story.
He was a sickly babe in arms in 1948—barely a month old—when his father Philip Thorne and 13 others went out to the ice for sealing season.
They call it “out to the ice” because the North Atlantic is so frozen at that time of year that sealing boats wend their way through narrow open passages in search of the elusive herd of pups born on the front from St. Anthony to St. John’s.
Seals less than two weeks old are all white, and therefore most valuable.
After two weeks, the pups moult and become grey-spotted bedlamers, which are hunted on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland’s south coast.
Philip and the crew of the Linda May had already secured half a load of pups, and were on the Grand Banks hunting bedlamers when disaster struck.
Because sealing boats were surrounded by ice, the wooden-walled schooners were ill-suited for winter work. These wooden boats were primarily used to fish, but in March they were repurposed for sealing to feed families that lived on little else than what was caught in the ocean.
The schooner’s wooden walls could be crushed by shifting ice, so someone always stood watch when the vessel was navigating between two ice floes.
Philip was on watch that fateful night when the Linda May was literally cut in half by the forces of moving ice. The crew was aroused and had minutes to gather up food, water, and gear.
They escaped with just enough to fill a wooden dory with kerosene oil, charts, canvas for protection, wood, food and water. Lighting fire to the sinking ship, they hoped the smoke would be seen.
They then struck out toward Nova Scotia and the lighthouse at St. Paul’s Island, which they figured, by dead reckoning, would be the closest point of land.
By their charts and navigational knowledge, they figured it was a 100 mile walk. The march was slow because they were up and down rafted ice.
They dragged the dory by day and huddled under canvas at night while Atlantic winds howled around them. After more than a week, the dory’s wooden bottom gave out. They set it on fire in the hopes of a rescue signal.
No such luck.
Philip’s wife, Stella, and the other waiting wives were all told the men were lost at sea. Like the ‘Lucky Seven’ families, they hoped against hope, but the search was called off when authorities thought survival was impossible.
The men kept walking until the captain, the oldest of the lot, lost his mobility. He was carried on the backs of the others. After almost two weeks, they saw a light in the night sky.
Sure enough, their dead reckoning was right. They were in sight of the St. Paul’s Island lighthouse.
They finally arrived 100 metres from shore only to face the rush of freezing open water blocking passage. The youngest and strongest tied a rope around his waist and swam to shore, using the lead to ferry the others to safety.
When they finally landed on the rocks—hypothermic and desperate—they faced a 100-foot cliff, which could not be scaled. Exhausted, they literally laid down to die.
But the lighthouse keeper happened to see them and quickly organized a rescue party of his family. They lowered ropes over the cliff to pull the men up one by one.
The keeper sent a Morse code message to Halifax, ‘We got the crew of the Linda May. They are all alive.’
Imagine the joy of those families who had literally been told their men were lost at sea.
My husband’s mother had never given up hope.
The story of the Linda May is legendary in Dingwall Harbour and the communities nearby the lighthouse.
Like the survivors of the Linda May, descendants of the ‘Lucky Seven’ will keep their story alive.
Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.
