GOOD LUCK TODAY, GAIL.
Day 97 – The low last night was 64 degrees. The high today at the RV was 75 degrees. On our drive the high was 84 degrees once we were away from the ocean. A very nice day! This morning it was really overcast, but by 10 a.m. it had burned off. We took advantage of the weather and took a long drive along the coast from our campground south, along the bottom of the peninsula, then heading north and west back to our campground – a big loop.
The scenery was beautiful. The topography changed from fairly level land with sandy beaches to rocky cliffs and beaches. Large sections of the drive were unpopulated and wild. We took several dirt or gravel roads just to see where we’d end up. Rob’s work on the Honda makes this kind of driving possible.
There were nice larger towns like Grand Bank, Fortune, and St. Lawrence. And smaller villages like Point May, Lamaline, Lord’s Cove, and Lawn. Grand Bank and Fortune were on the western side of the Burin Peninsula below the campground. St. Lawrence was located on the southeastern side of the peninsula. The smaller villages were mostly located between the larger towns of Fortune and St. Lawrence.
Grand Bank is the home of the Provincial Seamen’s Museum. We spent hours at this museum in 2019. This is a “must do” if you are in this area. There are also some very old, well preserved homes that are open for tours. After Grand Banks, we drove south to the next town, Fortune. A ferry travels from Fortune to the French islands of St. Pierre and the Miquelons, and back to Fortune again. This is a very popular tourist attraction; the guide books say the French-owned islands give visitors a real feel of travel to France.
Soon after passing through Fortune, there’s a fairly well-maintained gravel road that leads to the rocky cliffs at the Ocean and a nice lighthouse. This site is called the Fortune Head Ecological Reserve. It was gorgeous out and the scenery was outstanding – the water was a beautiful shade of blue with some deep turquoise areas, the waves were crashing below on the rocks, and the cliffs were incredible. From the website: “The rocks in the superbly exposed low cliffs represent the geological boundary between the Precambrian and Cambrian geological eras. Additionally, the fossils here represent the first skeletal creatures from 540 million years ago.”
St. Lawrence and nearby Little St. Lawrence were located close to each other and are mining towns. We took a couple of gravel roads there, encountering plenty of ATVs, and lots of people at a beautiful beach at the end of one road, Shoal Cove. Of interest were a couple of memorials: one memorilizing the miners of the Fluorspar Mines in the area, and one memorilizing the efforts by locals to rescue the survivors of two shipwrecks. Copied from https://mha.mun.ca/mha/polluxtruxtun/index.php:
“On February 18, 1942, the American naval vessels USS Truxtun, USS Pollux, and USS Wilkes were scheduled to arrive at a large military base at Argentia, Newfoundland (the next peninsula east of Burin peninsula). Only the Wilkes made it. The other two ships went aground on the jagged rocks off Newfoundland’s south coast in a ferocious winter storm. Giant waves pounded the vessels and eventually broke them to pieces. The Truxtun was trapped in Chambers Cove and the Pollux about one and a half miles west at Lawn Point. The Truxton was carrying 156 men and the Pollux 233.
For hours, these men fought to survive in the driving sleet, howling wind, and bitter cold of the North Atlantic. With their ships breaking up beneath them, they first had to cross the raging ice-cold seas that separated them from land. Then they had to travel over miles of snowy wilderness to reach the nearest inhabited buildings. A great number of men spent all night outdoors, huddled wet and cold in caves or under clumps of trees. Many drowned or froze to death. Of the 389 officers and enlisted men on board the two vessels, 203 died. But 186 lived. They survived because of their own determination, courage, and resourcefulness – and also because of the tremendous heroism displayed by the residents of St. Lawrence and Lawn who travelled to the wreck sites through blowing snow and spent hours hauling men out of the ocean, pulling them over icy cliffs, bringing them to a nearby mine, and then into their own homes. The rescuers and their families bathed the numb and semi-conscious survivors in warm water, gave them what little clothing and food they had, and nursed them back to health.
Although one of the worst disasters in United States naval history, the story of the Pollux and Truxtun is not just about death and anguish. It’s about human courage, generosity, transcendence, and bonding; and the local townspeople risked their own lives to save strangers in imminent danger and in the process forged intimate relationships that would not only span the decades, but would also dramatically change the lives of some survivors.
A striking example is Lanier Phillips, a black sailor aboard the Truxtun who was the victim of severe racism while growing up in Georgia during the 1920s and 1930s, and also while enlisted in the US Navy. To this day, Phillips credits the kindness and respect he received from the white people of St. Lawrence with changing his life and giving him a newfound sense of self-worth. He says it motivated him to fight racial discrimination in the United States and to become the first black sonar technician in the US Navy. Today, Phillips is widely recognized as a civil rights role model. Although many lives were lost as a result of the two shipwrecks, 186 were saved, and at least one was changed for the better, with profound and far-reaching results.”
The smaller villages along the southern coast of Burin Peninsula are very scenic and tranquil. Lamaline and Lawn, in particular, were two we wanted to visit again. In 2019 we spent some time at museums and interpretive areas in these two villages, and we also read the book, Tsunami, The Newfoundland Tidal Wave Disaster. Below we’ve copied what we wrote in 2019’s blog about our visit here and this horrific event (with apologies to those who have already read this from the original 2019 blog): “We stopped at the town of Lamaline to visit the Lamaline Heritage Museum. It was located in a small, very old building that had been nicely maintained. This building was once a family home that was picked up & carried out to sea by the 1929 Tsunami. After the wave brought the house back in to the Bay and dumped it back down, it was lovingly restored & moved, and it now acts as the home of the Museum. The whole story of the Tsunami & artifacts from the time period are available to see during the tour of the house. Lamaline was not the only small fishing village virtually destroyed by the earthquake & subsequent tsunami of 1929. As we drove the lower coastline, many of the small towns had memorial plaques & displays. And you could absolutely see how this could have happened. In several locations the Ocean comes into bays through relatively small openings between two rock cliffs. Homes, at that time, were put up at water level close to the fishing equipment each family used. The water suddenly was sucked out of these bays and soon came roaring back in through these narrow openings, the water 30 to 50 feet tall in a big wave, which picked up everything in its path. Families were taken while inside their houses and swept out to sea, only to be returned (in some cases) and dropped back down in another location. 28 people died, including almost entire families. This happened in November. The weather was freezing. People lost everything. And at that time, there were no roads leading from one city or town to another.” Things now may seem so quiet and peaceful, but life earlier in Newfoundland was not easy.
Back at the RV we were tired after lots of driving. It was good to see the girls. And hopefully tonight we won’t dream about tsunami’s and about people lost at sea! Tomorrow, we’ll probably see lots more rocky cliffs and beautiful scenery. Excellent!