The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador: a Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell

Part 1

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+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: Throughout the whole book, St. | | John's (Newfoundland) is spelled St. Johns. A list | | of typos fixed in this text are listed at the end. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

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THE STORY OF GRENFELL OF THE LABRADOR

The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador

A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell

By DILLON WALLACE, Author of "Grit-a-Plenty," "The Ragged Inlet Guards," "Ungava Bob," etc., etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH

Copyright, 1922, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

Foreword

In a land where there was no doctor and no school, and through an evil system of barter and trade the people were practically bound to serfdom, Doctor Wilfred T. Grenfell has established hospitals and nursing stations, schools and co-operative stores, and raised the people to a degree of self dependence and a much happier condition of life. All this has been done through his personal activity, and is today being supported through his personal administration.

The author has lived among the people of Labrador and shared some of their hardships. He has witnessed with his own eyes some of the marvelous achievements of Doctor Grenfell. In the following pages he has made a poor attempt to offer his testimony. The book lays no claim to either originality or literary merit. It barely touches upon the field. The half has not been told.

He also wishes to acknowledge reference in compiling the book to old files and scrapbooks of published articles concerning Doctor Grenfell and his work, to Doctor Grenfell's book Vikings of Today, and to having verified dates and incidents through Doctor Grenfell's Autobiography, published by Houghton Mifflin & Company, of Boston.

D.W.

Beacon, N.Y.

Contents

I. THE SANDS OF DEE 11

II. THE NORTH SEA FLEETS 26

III. ON THE HIGH SEAS 31

IV. DOWN ON THE LABRADOR 39

V. THE RAGGED MAN IN THE RICKETY BOAT 52

VI. OVERBOARD! 61

VII. IN THE BREAKERS 68

VIII. AN ADVENTUROUS VOYAGE 74

IX. IN THE DEEP WILDERNESS 83

Part 2

X. THE SEAL HUNTER 99

XI. UNCLE WILLY WOLFREY 109

XII. A DOZEN FOX TRAPS 116

XIII. SKIPPER TOM'S COD TRAP 126

XIV. THE SAVING OF RED BAY 135

XV. A LAD OF THE NORTH 146

XVI. MAKING A HOME FOR THE ORPHANS 158

XVII. THE DOGS OF THE ICE TRAIL 171

XVIII. FACING AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 183

XIX. HOW AMBROSE WAS MADE TO WALK 193

XX. LOST ON THE ICE FLOE 203

XXI. WRECKED AND ADRIFT 213

XXII. SAVING A LIFE 219

XXIII. REINDEER AND OTHER THINGS 225

XXIV. THE SAME GRENFELL 233

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

The Physician in the LABRADOR Title

The LABRADOR "LIVEYERE" 40

"Sails North to Remain Until the End of Summer, Catching Cod" 46

The Doctor on a Winter's Journey 84

"The Trap is Submerged a Hundred Yards or so from Shore" 130

"NEXT" 172

"Please Look at My Tongue, Doctor" 172

The Hospital Ship, STRATHCONA 220

"I Have a Crew Strong Enough to Take You into My District" 234

THE SANDS OF DEE

The first great adventure in the life of our hero occurred on the twenty-eighth day of February in the year 1865. He was born that day. The greatest adventure as well as the greatest event that ever comes into anybody's life is the adventure of being born.

Part 3

If there is such a thing as luck, Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, as his parents named him, fell into luck, when he was born on February twenty-eighth, 1865. He might have been born on February twenty-ninth one year earlier, and that would have been little short of a catastrophe, for in that case his birthdays would have been separated by intervals of four years, and every boy knows what a hardship it would be to wait four years for a birthday, when every one else is having one every year. There are people, to be sure, who would like their birthdays to be four years apart, but they are not boys.

Grenfell was also lucky, or, let us say, fortunate in the place where he was born and spent his early boyhood. His father was Head Master of Mostyn House, a school for boys at Parkgate, England, a little fishing village not far from the historic old city of Chester. By referring to your map you will find Chester a dozen miles or so to the southward of Liverpool, though you may not find Parkgate, for it is so small a village that the map makers are quite likely to overlook it.

Here at Parkgate the River Dee flows down into an estuary that opens out into the Irish Sea, and here spread the famous "Sands of Dee," known the world over through Charles Kingsley's pathetic poem, which we have all read, and over which, I confess, I shed tears when a boy:

O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the Sands o' Dee; The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam, And all alone went she.

The creeping tide came up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see; The blinding mist came down and hid the land-- And never home came she.

Oh is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-- A tress o' golden hair, O' drown'ed maiden's hair, Above the nets at sea? Was never salmon yet that shone so fair, Among the stakes on Dee.

They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel, crawling foam, The cruel, hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea; But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home, Across the Sands o' Dee.

Charles Kingsley and the poem become nearer and dearer to us than ever with the knowledge that he was a cousin of Grenfell, and knew the Sands o' Dee, over which Grenfell tramped and hunted as a boy, for the sandy plain was close by his father's house.

There was a time when the estuary was a wide deep harbor, and really a part of Liverpool Bay, and great ships from all over the world came into it and sailed up to Chester, which in those days was a famous port. But as years passed the sands, loosened by floods and carried down by the river current, choked and blocked the harbor, and before Grenfell was born it had become so shallow that only fishing vessels and small craft could use it.

Parkgate is on the northern side of the River Dee. On the southern side and beyond the Sands of Dee, rise the green hills of Wales, melting away into blue mysterious distance. Near as Wales is the people over there speak a different tongue from the English, and to young Grenfell and his companions it was a strange and foreign land and the people a strange and mysterious people. We have most of us, in our young days perhaps, thought that all Welshmen were like Taffy, of whom Mother Goose sings:

"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef; I went to Taffy's house, Taffy wasn't home, Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow bone; I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed, I took the marrow-bone, and beat about his head."

But it was Grenfell's privilege, living so near, to make little visits over into Wales, and he early had an opportunity to learn that Taffy was not in the least like Welshmen. He found them fine, honest, kind-hearted folk, with no more Taffys among them than there are among the English or Americans. The great Lloyd George, perhaps the greatest of living statesmen, is a Welshman, and by him and not by Taffy, we are now measuring the worth of this people who were the near neighbors of Grenfell in his young days.

Mostyn House, where Grenfell lived, overlooked the estuary. From the windows of his father's house he could see the fishing smacks going out upon the great adventurous sea and coming back laden with fish.

Living by the sea where he heard the roar of the breakers and every day smelled the good salt breath of the ocean, it was natural that he should love it, and to learn, almost as soon as he could run about, to row and sail a boat, and to swim and take part in all sorts of water sports. Time and again he went with the fishermen and spent the night and the day with them out upon the sea. This is why it was fortunate that he was born at Parkgate, for his life there as a boy trained him to meet adventures fearlessly and prepared him for the later years which were destined to be years of adventure.

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