47 Men and a Corpse

Through a pea-soup fog the fishing schooner Isabelle Parker, out of Boston, footed it north one night last week toward Brown's Bank, off the Nova Scotia coast. To Seaman Fred Bourque, on the bow watch, the fog seemed to thicken as dawn came. Suddenly, 20 feet dead ahead, a great silhouette showed. Fred Bourque shouted a warning to Billy Oilman at the wheel, ran aft. In less time than it takes to gut a cod the Isabelle Parker had piled halfway through the Gloucesterman Edith C. Rose, southbound with her hold stuffed with catch from Brown's Bank. The watch below came tumbling up in undershirts. They saw that it was over for both ships.

The Yankee fishermen put out in their dories, as coolly as if it had been a working morning on the Banks. With no time to get their oilskins, they piled overboard in their underclothes, all except 62-year-old Frank Nickerson. He fell dead on the deck of the Parker and his shipmates took his body along. The Rose went down in five minutes, the Parker in 25, leaving 47 men and twelve dories alone on the empty sea.

First the fishermen searched the water for men from the Rose who had not had time to launch their dories. They found them all. Then, without food, water or compasses, they struck out, rowing steadily through the grey dawn toward the land somewhere about 100 miles westward. The sea was calm. For a while the dories kept in sight of one another, but soon they spread apart, going their own ways as they do when fishing. There was no disorder; every man knew they must make land or sight a ship before thirst broke their morale.

At mid-morning of the second day a dory containing five men from the Rose was picked up by the gasoline boat Amacitia off the coast of Nova Scotia. They had rowed 80 miles. A few minutes later, eight miles away, the Amacitia sighted another dory with four men from the Parker. One boat rowed all the way to land. Within 40 hours of the crash every last man had turned up, little the worse for wear. Captain Albert Hines of the Rose calculated that he and his own dory-mates had rowed 150 miles. The others didn't bother to figure carefully.

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