The man in the Water

“Look daddy, there’s a man in the water”, Six year old Peter  was in a rowboat with his father just a few feet from shore in Upper Arm Cove, and both had made the discovery at the same moment. For Peter’s dad however, it was a gruesome spectacle, a scene to which he knew his son must be spared any further exposure.  “No Peter, it only looks like a man”, Aubrey was already rowing away from the site, “you need to go home now, I have to go see Ike Jones, and may be gone all day”. Peter enjoyed spending time with his dad but knew better than to question his father’s decision that he must go home. In less than ten minutes, he was running up the path to where his mother was waiting. The bright sunlight and relatively calm sea of that Monday morning of March 2, 1942 had all the appearance of an early spring, an usually occurrence for the windswept cost of  Newfoundland.  It was also in stark contrast to the previous week when a winter storm, starting on Tuesday evening February 24 and continuing into Wednesday the 25th had on the latter day, wreaked havoc and tragedy on two American ships on the Southern tip of the Island’s Burin Peninsula.  High winds had continued for the next three days and there had been reports of  bodies being found in several ports throughout Placentia Bay. All this was on Aubrey’s mind now as he hurried to find another adult to return with him to where a body, he suspected was that of another  American sailor, had washed ashore.

The United States of America, having entered the war against Hitler in December of the previous year, had build a military Base at Argentia  in Placentia Bay and Aubrey, like many young men from the area, had himself  worked on the site during the previous Summer and Fall. Now that the preliminary work  had been all but completed, more military personnel were being dispatched to the site. By week’s end, the story of  the tragedy had reached every nook and cranny of the island’s largest bay.  Aubrey, having grown up by the sea, knew well it’s fury and unforgiving temperament and his heart went out to those brave men aboard the S.S. Pollux and the S.S. Truxton, caught in the grip of such a frenzy in a barren and unfamiliar land. The ships it was said, were carrying a total of 388 men, most of which had met their death by being dashed against the rocks near Lawn Point and Chambers Cove.  He had heard too of the courage and heroism of the men of Lawn and St. Lawrence who had risked life and limb in saving 185 men from the raging seas of the North Atlantic.  He sighed now, feeling certain as he did, that he had come upon yet another of the disaster’s victims.