Shipwrecks of Newfoundland and Labrador, Vol. 3

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

This volume, the latest in a recent wave of popular publications on
Newfoundland’s maritime history, examines various shipwrecks that
occurred off the province’s coastline in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Each of the book’s 19 chapters is devoted to a shipwreck (both local
and foreign vessels). The first chapter deals with the scuttling of the
HMS Sapphire off Bay Bulls in 1696 to avoid letting it into the hands of
French enemy forces from Placentia. The last chapter recounts the 1970
double tragedy involving a herring seiner and a Canadian National
Railways vessel, the Patrick Morris, in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

Each chapter provides information on the port of the ship’s origins
and its destination, its captain and crew and passengers (if any), the
cause of the wreck, and rescue efforts where applicable. Information is
based mainly on newspaper descriptions of each marine disaster. While
fog, ice, sunkers, and stormy seas were the main causes of wrecks, human
error was often at play as well. The received wisdom that, if necessary,
a captain goes down with his ship is contradicted here by instances
where the captain thought of his own survival before that of his
passengers.

Accounts of shipwrecks off Newfoundland’s long and treacherous
coastline have long been part of both Newfoundland’s folk ballads and
its popular history. Shipwrecks is a popular continuation of that
tradition.