FALLING OVERBOARD
By Ernie Walsh

Pop built our 32-foot trap skiff, The Sheena, in the spring of 1950 and launched her over the flake at high tide in the morning with himself, Clem Best, Neish Cochrane and me on board. When I ran home from school at dinner time, Mr. Jim Barry was helping Pop put the new Eight-Acadia on the bedding and said she should be ready for a run when I got out of school at 4 p.m. Well, that afternoon in school was a long two hours: subsequently, I guess, in my excitement, I talked too much to my school chums. Our teacher caught me early and made me kneel down on the floor for the rest of the school period. When I got up to leave with the rest after school, she made me stay and kneel in the corner for another half hour, so I missed the maiden voyage of The Sheena.

Pop had also bought two cod traps that same year and stayed home in Merasheen to fish rather than Golden Bay for the Warehams of Harbour Buffett. Our dory would be moored astern of the skiff and, after I'd finish bailing them out, I would stay aboard the dory, put the oar out over the stern into the sculling slot, and scull the dory back and forth. This one afternoon there was a good lop coming down the harbour, and I was again sculling, but it was a lot more fun with the lops. I decided to stand on the cod bag in the stern and sit on the gunwale and continued sculling back and forth. As I pulled the oar towards me, it popped out of the slot, and I fell backwards and head first overboard. When I came up, I was bowling! Vincent Pittman was having a nap up in the store loft and came running. When he saw me in the water, he jumped right over the flake and into the landwash. He came out and pulled me in to the beach.

Later that same summer, in September, Pop went back fishing in the schooner Glider because they had only gotten ninety quintals of fish for the trap season in Merasheen. On Saturday, Neish Cochrane and I had finished bailing out the skiff and were ready to come ashore. Neish pulled in the stern of the skiff and, as the tide was low, he held onto the rope tied at the top of the wharf, jumped onto the bottom rail of the wharf and, leaning out, hauled himself hand over hand from rail to rail up to the top of the wharf. "A neat trick," I said, and I continued to try the same thing. Well, half way up the head of the wharf, the rope untied and down I went into the water. Neish had to go in to the end of the wharf and get down into the beach. He had the presence of mind to grab a flake longer and, after several tries, up to his waist in water, he hooked me with the stick and pulled me ashore.

Another day, Tony Hann was playing around the edge of their wharf. Out behind the drums and puncheons filled with cod livers and rendered-out blubber and cod oil, a piece of board he was standing on moved, and Tony lost his balance and fell overboard. I was down in the beach at the end of the wharf, and Tony was drifting farther out from the wharf. I floated some sticks out to him but, as he couldn't swim, he was probably too frantic to even see them, let alone hold onto one. Well, Tony and I roared and bawled loudly enough to get everyone's attention on the wharf. The next thing I saw was a black streak coming off the top of the wharf overhead and then a big splash out close to Tony. It was Johnny Wilson, with his oil pants and long rubbers on and the splitting knife in his hand, who had jumped off the wharf and rescued Tony. He swam him in to where I was in the beach and said, "Here, you take him, Ernie." Johnny then crawled up through a hole in the inside of the wharf and went back to finish splitting about thirty quintals of fish. In later years, as manager of the Merasheen Fish Plant, Johnny got great enjoyment out of grabbing us unsuspecting young fellows by the hand with his strong grip and saying, "Let's, myself and you, jump overboard!" On a warm day, it was enticing to many, and they would run with Johnny to the edge of the wharf to jump off. All were surprised when they came to the surface of the water to find that Johnny had let their hand go at the last moment and was still up on the head of the wharf having a great laugh as you swam ashore through the blubber.

Camillus Wilson recently related to Denis and me about the time when he was only about five years old. He and his brothers, Ernie and Gerard, were catching conners off the rocks on the Fender in Little
Merasheen, out of sight of their mother, Clara, as they were told not to go out there. There was always an undertow there and, as Cam said, he was a clumsy young fellow, so he apparently slipped on the kelp or tripped in a rock, lost his balance, and fell off the rocks info the water. His brothers couldn't reach him, and the undertow was washing him farther off from the shore. Ernie ran in off the Fender crying out for help. George Ennis was fishing with Mr. George Wilson and answered the call. He came running out, donned in his oil pants and long rubbers, jumped off the top of the Fender, over some sharp rocks, through a narrow space, and swam out to Cam and polled him to safety.