George Crooks and the Coal Barge

As you probably know, and as I have stated on occasion on this site, my dad left Seal Harbour when a young man to pursue his fortune in the US. While in MA., in went from job to job, not staying long at any specific endeavour. One of his sorties into the job market was a job as seaman on a coal barge that ran from Philadelphia to Boston. This barge was the hulk of a once noble clipper ship, that had been run under as it were by the new technology of steam. This barge of course was towed from port to port. The barge left Philly one fine morning in February fully loaded with coal bound for the Boston market. A typical winter nor'easter was making up off Hatteras, ( remember the one we took there Jim; you in HMCS Algonquin, and I a few miles away in the bulker "Gypsum Duchess?" 1961?)

(Blogger’s Note: I remember it well...it bent back our forward 4 inch 50 gun mounting, and snapped the davits on a starboard lifeboat!)

The storm caught the tow off Martha's Vineyard; the tow line parted and the old clipper was adrift on the Atlantic.......to coin a popular phrase of common usage around home when I was young, " At the mercy of Tiberius " The blizzard as nor’easter are wont to do, swept down upon the Nova Scotian coast with a howling ferocity; Aunt Lyd appear at breakfast that morning with this solemn proclamation; " George is gone!" " He came to me last night in a dream and he is lost at sea. " The storm past and several days of gale force nor'west winds followed in it' s wake. One day a rider from Isaac's Harbour arrive with a telegram from the barges owners, stating that the barge had been lost.

They on the hulk drifted fo nine days before being taken off the waterlogged wreck by, I believe a german ship in bound to New York..The family was sure dad was 'a goner' and was about to have a memorial service when the word came from the barge owners that he was, indeed safe.
My dad told me he was very close to his aunt Lydia and his thoughts were with her on the night when the tow parted, and the crew were in dire peril, this telepathic phenomenom has been documented many, many times, in studies of the paranormal.


Don