T. C. Badcock

1914 was one of the most tragic years in Newfoundland history. Two sealing disasters took away something like a tenth of one percent of the island's population -- all bread-winning males. One was the unexplained disappearance of the sealer Southern Cross. The other was the deaths of 78 men, and the maiming of many more, from the ship Newfoundland, when they were caught in a storm (the same storm that sank the Southern Cross) after having been ordered onto the ice by the famous sealing captain Abram Kean. They were not his men; the Newfoundland was commanded by Abram's son Westbury Kean. It was Westbury who had sent them out on the ice initially. But many believe that it was Abram -- who had refused to let them stay on his ship -- who was ultimately to blame.

The Newfoundland disaster burned itself deeply into the island's folklore. This book purports to be a diary account by a child, Jessie Lewis, telling of the events of the time; T. C. Badcock claims to have extracted the tale from the diaries of Jessie and her relatives.

There were a lot of curiosities about the reports. For one thing, the diary often quotes Abram Kean. It so happens that Abram Kean published an autobiography, Old and Young Ahead, which I forced myself to read. Kean was a pompous sociopath, but that very pomposity makes his writing style very distinct. The accounts in the diary sound nothing like the writing in the autobiography. We also have an account by George Allen England, Vikings of the Ice, of a voyage taken with Kean. The diary sounds nothing like the Kean whom England quotes, either.

Of course, a child might have taken down Kean's words incorrectly.

Much of the reporting is supposed to be from Jessie Lewis's father. In 1914, Abram Kean is said to have asked Charles Lewis to sail as engineer on Kean's ship. Charles Lewis turned him down. There are a lot of oddities about that tale. Didn't Abram Kean know by then that Charles Lewis was a humanitarian who hated killing seals? It makes no sense. It makes even less sense that Charles Lewis then went sealing with someone else (and doesn't seem to name the ship). But set that aside. On page 38, the book says that Charles Lewis sailed with "Skipper Tom."

Of course, we know the names of every sealing captain who sailed in 1914 -- they are listed in the authoritative publication Chafe's Sealing Book. They were (in the order Chafe lists them on page 81, based on the time they returned to St. John's) William Winsor, James Randell, David Martin, William Bartlett Sr., John Parsons, Jacob Kean, Joseph Kean, Westbury Kean, Abram Kean, George Barbour, Jesse Winsor, George Marley, Kenneth Knee, Sam Winsor, Stan Barbour, William Bartlett Jr., Edward Bishop, William Wilcox, Samuel Burgess, and Baxter Barbour. No "Toms" or "Thomases" in sight.

Of course, Charles Lewis might not have known the name of his captain.

Newfoundlanders pronounced the word "sealer" as "swiler." They might spell it either way. Still, it's rather odd to find one or another Lewis using both spellings in the course of two sentences on page 42.

Of course, not everyone remembers how to spell a word from one minute to the next.

Then there is page 49. One paragraph reads, "Kean looked at me and said, 'Charles Lewis, you are going soft. I thought you were a man, not a wimp.'"

It was that line that caused me to cease scratching my head about all the unlikely reports in this book and actively start researching.

Etymological dictionaries report one use of the word "wimp" in 1920, then no additional uses until the 1940s. The word is not cited in Story, Kirwin & Widdowson's Dictionary of Newfoundland English.

Of course, Abram Kean could have used the word six years before it was coined, and Charles Lewis could have known what it meant, and remembered it, and taken it down.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.… (meer)