August in Newfoundland, is known for it’s storms, but many, especially the young, could have been excused for feeling that the year 1949 might be different. After all there was no major turbulence until the late afternoon of the thirtieth. The old men though, those who had spent more than three score years watching the sea and the sky, who were so much a part of this land and sea that they could feel it in their bones, when old Neptune began stirring his brew, were not to be fooled. Such a man was old Jacob Hynes of Little Valley. Bent with eighty years of trying to scrape a living from the sea or working ten hour days for the local merchant to earn the grand sum of fifty cents, he leaned on his walking stick as the S.S. Home steamed out the harbour that morning, and knew that the crew and passengers were in for  some boisterous weather, compliments of the old God of the sea himself. “The calm before the storm” he  muttered softly, glancing again at the gentle breeze and almost cloudless sky knowing that in a matter of three or four hours they would feel the onslaught. He liked Mona and Adam and felt that their lives were not in danger, but his thoughts were of the beating the old ship would take and of the seasickness it’s passengers would have to contend with. 

Adam and Mona after taking their luggage below to the small rooms that they each shared with three others, had returned to the deck. It was a beautiful sunny morning with just a slight breeze. The boat stopped at each community as it made it’s way along the coast, Stag Harbour, Burnt Point, Sam’s Cove, Eastern Point, and finally reaching Petersview in the early afternoon. While the stops at the smaller communities had been no more than ten minutes, they were tied up here for nearly an hour. As the vessel steamed out the harbour and set it’s course for the three hour run to Carmen’s Bight, Adam noted that the wind had suddenly changed direction and there was now a stiff breeze blowing from the north-east. The sky too had quickly clouded over. Before long the ship was battling what he guessed were winds nearing sixty miles per hour. Mona had already gone to her room and Adam decided it was time to go below as well before he was ordered to do so by one of the crew.