CHAPTER XX.

SABLE ISLAND.

Or a letter from Hon. Hugh Bell to Miss Dix, dated Halifax, August 4, 1853, the following words may be recalled by the reader: "I called on the Admiral or rather at the Admiralty House - to leave my card for the Earl of Ellsmere (as in duty bound). The old Admiral met me at the door very cordially, shook hands, and then said, 'Where is Miss Dix?' I replied, 'She left for home yesterday. She has been to Sable Island and back!' He exclaimed in true sailor style, 'She's a gallant woman!'"

How gallant a woman the sequel to this visit was to prove her not even the hearty old Admiral dreamed.

It so happened that while Miss Dix, in June, 1853, was engaged in asylum work at St. John, Newfoundland, there occurred a fearful storm, attended by appalling shipwrecks which left a lasting impression on her mind. She had gone through some perilous experiences of her own on these exposed coasts, but from a letter to her friend, Miss Heath, describing the fury of the elements on this especial night, it was evident that her whole nature had now been wrought to the pitch of a fixed resolution to devise some efficient practical means for the rescue of those at the mercy of such terrible gales. Hence her visit to Sable Island, so fitly named "The Graveyard of Ships." The familiar maxim, "It is an ill wind that blows

nobody any good," was now destined to receive a fresh commentary.

Sable Island, jutting far out into the western Atlantic, lies in latitude 43° 56' north, longitude 60° 3' west, some thirty miles southward from the easterly end of Nova Scotia. It is a waste of desolate, windswept sand hills, fringed with everlasting surf, harborless and shelterless on every side.

"The whole region for leagues around is a trap and a snare. One sunken bar stretches sixteen miles away to the northeast, another twenty-eight miles to the northwest. The embrace of these long arms is death, for between them lie alternate deeps and shoals, and when the sea is angry it thunders and reverberates along a front of thirty miles, extending twenty-eight miles to seaward. No lighthouse throws its warning gleam beyond this seething death-line, for stone structures will not stand upon these ever shifting sands, and wooden ones of sufficient height could not withstand the storms. The mariner drifts to his grave through total gloom. The whole island bristles with stark timbers and the débris of wrecks. Thus like the monster polypus of ancient story, it lieth in the very track of commerce, stretching out its huge tentacles for its prey, enveloped in fogs and mists, and scarcely distinguishable from the gray surf that unceasingly lashes its shores." 1

Official records set the number of known wrecks on the island, occurring between 1830 and 1848, at sixteen full-rigged ships, fourteen brigs, and thirteen schooners. Besides these, the loss of large numbers of unknown vessels, engulfed and never surviving to tell their fatal story by more than a floating spar, would have vastly farther swollen the tragic list.

The first authentic mention of Sable Island dates

1 "The Secrets of Sable Island," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December, 1866.

from the surviving companions of the ill-fated Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the gallant and devout courtier of Queen Elizabeth, who added so heroic a name to the proud list of England's worthies. The occasion of his search for the island, with his little fleet of three vessels, is thus described in "Hakluyt's Voyages":

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"Sabla lyeth to the sea-ward of Cape Brittan, about 45 leagues, whither we were determined to go upon intelligence we had of a Portingall, during our abode in St. John's, who was himself present when the Portingals about 30 years past did put into the same island both neat and swine to breed, which were since exceedingly multiplied. The distance between Cape Race and Cape Britton is 100 leagues, in which navigation we spent 8 days, having the wind many times indifferent good, but could never attain sight of any land all that time, seeing we were hindered by the current. At last we fell into such flats and dangers that hardly any of us escaped, where nevertheless we lost the [ship] Admiral with all the men and provision, not knowing certainly the place.

"Contrary to the mind of the expert Master Coxe, on Wednesday the 27th August they bore up towards the land, those in the doomed ship, the Admiral, continually sounding trumpets and drums, whilst strange voices from the deep scared the helmsman from his post on board the frigate. Thursday the 28th the wind arose and blew vehemently from the south and east, bringing withal rain and thick mist, that we could not see a cable length before us, and betimes in the morning we were altogether run and folded in amongst flats and sands, amongst which we found flats and deeps every three or four ship's length. Immediately tokens were given to the Admiral to cast about to seaward, which, being the greater ship and of burden 120 tons, was performost upon the beach, keeping so ill watch that they knew not the danger before they felt the same too late to recover

it, for presently the Admiral struck a-ground, and had soon after her stern and hinder parts beaten in pieces."

Thus beginning the record it has ever since maintained, such was the disastrous reception given by Sable Island, August 28, 1583, to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who with great difficulty escaped with his two remaining vessels, only soon after himself to founder in the terrible gale off the Grand Banks, in which, "standing at the helm, sorely wounded in one foot, and Bible in hand," he cheerily shouted to his companions on the sole surviving vessel, "We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!"

Later on, in 1598, Sable Island was made a penal colony for convicts from the French settlements in Arcadia, forty of them having been landed there by the Marquis de la Roche, and left to their fate. It was found seven years later that only twelve had survived to tell the story of their sufferings. Later, as increasing commerce added to the tale of wrecks, the island became the abode of desperate men, who as piratical wreckers gave it such a name that it was reputed better for mariners to be swallowed up by the sea than to escape only to be murdered on land. Finally, in 1802, after the wreck of the British transport, Princess Amelia, "having on board the furniture of Prince Edward, with recruits, officers, and servants to the number of two hundred, all of whom perished, though it is supposed that some reached shore, and were murdered by the pirates," - the Provincial Legislature took action. A relief station was established, the wreckers were driven off the island, and a superintendent, with a crew of four men, placed

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1 Sable Island, by J. Bernard Gilpin, B. A., M. D., M. R. C. S. Halifax, 1858.

in charge. From step to step, these humane provisions were increased, until in 1836 the annual fund was raised to £2,000, stanch buildings were erected, and new apparatus added. Such, then, is the illomened, though gradually ameliorating, history of Sable Island in the past.

It is certainly a striking commentary on the change that has come over the world on the subject of “ WOman's sphere" and "woman's appropriate work," since the days when Iago summed them up in such unflattering terms, that now an overtaxed and suffering representative of the sex should see it in the light of imperative duty to make a voyage to this so dreaded island, to study on the spot whether something more effective could not be devised for the safety of those exposed to such frightful perils. Why her imperative duty? Were there not the home government and the provincial government; were there not admirals and captains in plenty; were there not the rich shipping merchants of Halifax, Liverpool, New York, and Boston, whose argosies lay stranded at every point of those storm-lashed shores? And she herself? Surely, with hospitals to look after in twenty States, 12,225,000 Acre Bills to engineer through Congress, and two new asylums actually in hand in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, might she not guiltlessly have washed her hands of Sable Island? No, thither must she go, to study the problem on the spot, to examine into every detail of the life-saving apparatus used, and to leave behind her, as she scoured every part of the island on one of the ragged little wild ponies that breed there, "the character of an intrepid horseman."

Making Sable Island, landing there for a stay of