Medivac

Back in the days of manned lighthouses, the threat of sickness or injury was ever present in every adult’s mind. Before the radiotelephones were installed toward the end of WWII, communication, especially in winter was virtually impossible.
1929 was a winter of extreme ice  conditions……the ocean froze over well out beyond the harbours and bays, making transportation by small boat none existent.
A keeper by the name Misener passed away that winter on Liscombe Island, and besieged as they were by ice, it fell to his young son Charles, to lay out his fathers body in the base room of the tower, until a break came in the ferocious cold and he (Charles) could get ashore to seek assistance from the people of the village to remove his father’s remains to the mainland for burial.
I took over that station from Charlie in 1963, and he told me he never quite recovered from the trauma of passing his father’s corpse hourly throughout the nights as he went up the tower stairs to check on the light, and wind the clockwork mechanism that made the light revolve. I believe it was twenty-nine days before a break came in the weather. 
My dad and his family were on very short rations on Green Island that same cold snap. It taught my dad that when on an offshore island…….lay in enough staples to see you through the winter, and particularly, flour.
This narrative is meant to show the reader what can occur in the way of illness, and how quickly it can happen, and to show the dedicated response to keepers in distress by the fishing communities that depended so much upon the lights and the untiring vigilance of the keepers for their safety while at sea, before the advent of electronic technology on the scale that exists today.


The southeast gale had blown itself out and as is the pattern had veered completely around the compass, and now was blowing with equal velocity from the north and had turned cold. Snow was falling, and when viewed through the beams shining from the tower, seemed like a horizontal mantle of white, that coalesced constantly in the stronger gusts, that howled around the eaves of the keepers dwelling as if singing a dirge for the fourteen fishermen who had lost their lives in the Canso trawler  “Acadia Seahawk” on the first of that month; December 1964.
We invited my assistant over for supper, we had fried deer steak, mashed potatoes, turnips……..the works.
After the meal he excused himself and said that he must go home and get some rest, as he would be going on watch at twelve midnight.
About ten minutes or so after his departure, my two Labradors started to take on at the kitchen door and when I went to investigate the cause of their irrational behavior I opened the outside door to find my assistant, Wilfred, lying in a fetal position on my doorstep.
“ Whats wrong? “ I asked the writhing form that lay before me. “ Kidney stone “ was his reply. “ Are you sure? “  “ Yes, I’ve had them before”
Now, I knew before I ever started to the sun porch where the radiotelephone was installed that there wasn’t a hope in hell of getting him air lifted that night, because of weather conditions, but I had to go through the formality of it.
The federal government in its wisdom had the bureaucrats devise a questionnaire that keepers had to complete when an accident or illness occurred on a station. The radio coast station operator then telephoned a dedicated medical facility in his area to pass this information along so some doctor could make a diagnosis (and a decision) as to whether or not an evacuation was warranted.
The operator at VCS Chebucto Head and I talked it over. I gave him our current weather conditions, And we concurred that an evacuation by air would be out of the question, so I asked him to advise the duty officer  at Dartmouth Base of the situation and also to call Murray Baker on land line and ask him to tune his all wave (marine band) radio to my transmitting frequency.
After this was done, and the operator told me that Murray had his ears on, I started transmitting directly to Murray and told him the Wilfred had suffered a kidney stone attack and would it be possible for him to bring Dr. Silver to the station and try and get Wilfred ashore after the medication took hold.
The operator came back to me and told me that he would advise when Murray was leaving the wharf; as soon as he could get a crew together and locate Dr. Silver and get him to Liscombe.
After the telephone session I went over to Wilfred’s ( he was at his house then) he was in excruciating pain and went into denial when I told him help would be arriving, probably within the hour.
“ Who would come out here for me on a night like this? “ he said, “ And besides, they don’t know me”  ( he was from northern NB. “ We’ll see”  I replied, just as Carol came to the door to tell me that “ Sir Wm. Alexander” was calling our station and was on standby waiting for my answer.
The Alexander had been notified that an emergency was in place at Liscombe, and her master wanted to know the situation as far as landing was concerned ( by water} I told him that conditions wouldn’t support a barge landing but if he had a dory on board it could probably be achieved. I added that local help was on the way, but that I would appreciate him coming in and standing by. He, at this time was a bit better than an hour away.
While the Alexander and I were talking, VCS broke to advise me that Murray eas  about to leave the wharf and that he planned to drop Dr. Silver on the Gravel Point at the north end of the island and near the slipway, and then proceed out to the light and attempt a landing in a double dory and evacuate Wilfred at the cove beneath the light.
I went up the hill above the station where the tractor garage was located and backed out the Farmall and started across the island to the landing site, the driving snow partially blinding me as I drove into it.
I reached the point just as Murray running lights were showing through the snow as he swung down along the back of Hemlow’s Island toward the point. 
Murray rowed Dr. Silver ashore himself, because he wanted to confer with me as to landing conditions at the light. When the good doctor alighted from the dory, I said, “ Where’s your bag doctor? “ thinking that in the heat of the moment that he may have left it on board Murray’s boat. “ Got everything I need right in here” he answered, tapping the breast pocket of his parka, so with him standing on the draw bar, we made our way back to the station while Murray steamed around the point on his way to the light.
On hearing of our troubles at the light Murray had made three phone calls; one to Dr. Silver and one each to his neighbors, Johnny Tibbo and Ernest Rudolf, both of whom were well skilled and proficient in the art of handling of a dory.
Fred, Murray’s father, was harbour pilot for Liscombe. Most of the traffic he served consisted of Irving tankers, because Liscombe was a storage depot and had a tank farm as did Goldboro, and petro products were brought in by ship. For boarding in winter Fred owned a halibut dory. One of the larger of the dory family. It was this noble craft that Murray had in tow that night.
Dr. Silver and I reached the light and he immediately injected the suffering assistant, “ In ten minutes you’ ll feel like you could fly ashore.”  He told him, as he administered the narcotic.
Murray was laying by outside the cliffs below the light, and as per prearranged signal, when Wilfred was pain free,  I gave Murray three flashes from my torch   (you can see I’ve Associated with too many Brit engineers) as the signal that he should send Johnny and Ern in to pick up Wilfred and his personal angel of mercy, Dr Silver, and take the whole works home to the wharf.
The Alexander was on the scene now, lying in mid-stream outside the Mackerel Rocks with two searchlights trained on the activities taking place under the cliffs. Murray took his boat around to where the cliffs below the light make some lee with the wind from the north and dropped the dory. With two pairs of oars, Johnny and Ern had no problem bringing the dory in to the cliffs. She made a beautiful picture, coming toward the cliffs, brightly lit by the search lights of the Alexander, her yellow hull personifying all the great legends pertaining to the Grand Banks dory.
When the dory struck the cliffs I grabbed the bow becket to hold her stern to the sea; Ern bellowed, above the roar of the surf, “ Wilfred, “  “Addie said if you come ashore without Spuddy, it won’t go well for you.” Addie was his wife who was ashore at their place in Goldenville on some business, and Spuddy was her very neurotic miniature Schnauzer, which had already been placed in my care by Wilfred; the end result being that Ern and Johnny had to back off and ‘ lay on their oars’ while the dog got dressed in suitable gear in which to make such an arduous ocean voyage. He had a different outfit for each day of the week.
Safely on board and with the dory towing astern, Murray drove her for the wharf. The Alexander shut down the illumination which was more blinding than helpful, turned her bow seaward, blew a long blast in salute on her whistle and continued her voyage down the coast.
I garaged the tractor, walked back to the house and rewarded myself with a well deserved drink of rum.

          Epilogue

This was Murray’s second medical evacuation from Liscombe Light. He and his father took Ida, Charlie’s wife off after she sustained very serious burns, when, clothed completely in synthetics, the hem of her dress ignited when a baffling wind blew it into a fire they had going in the yard. She lived to tell me all about it……..a shocking story.
Johhny Tibbo walked hand in hand with death during the sinking of the halibut schooner “ Maureen and Michael “ a year or so later. The giant seas generated by a winter storm broke the little schooner and Chelsea Miles, her skipper, Johnny and the rest of the crew, fought like demons for twenty six hours, bailing with five gallon pails, to keep her afloat until the US Coast Guard took them off the sinking vessel by swimming a Zodiac to and from the wreck. This had such a post traumatic effect on Johnny that he could never bring himself to go to the Banks in winter ever again.

Seanachie