"It's all right while you're exploring. You get used to the rotten meat, frozen fingers, lice and dirt. The hard times come when you get back." - Captain Bob Bartlett (Log 13)
2009 is our year to celebrate a famous son, and the historic town of Brigus is front row, centre lighting the fireworks.
One hundred years ago, Mar. 31, 1909, Newfoundland's world-famous sea captain Robert Bartlett reached the 87" 48' North point in the Arctic.
Bartlett was the "greatest ice sea captain of the 20th century" and one of the world's most renowned master mariners.
The first time I heard about Captain Bob was when I studied world history in high school. In those days I wasn't quite interested in the exploits of Bartlett; to me at the time it was just something I had to study in preparation for the then CHE (Council of Higher Education) exams.
Little did I know at that time, after I retired (1996) we would eventually choose to live in Clarke's Beach just a few kilometres from Bartlett's historic home in Brigus, and that my wife and I would find the tiny community to be one of our very favourite places to go in Newfoundland.
Brigus had fascinated me for years, beginning way back in the mid '40s when, as a very young lad, I left the concrete sidewalks of St. John's (home of the corner boys) to journey 'round the bay with two of my dearest boyhood family friends, Betty and Felix McCarthy of Carbonear.
Betty and Felix loved Brigus and often on our journey to Burnt Point we would take a rest stop at a nice little cafÉ there (I think it was called Brigus Tea Rooms). They both had friends down in the community who catered to boarders somewhat like a bed and breakfast, and we would drive down for a brief visit with them.
My first memory of Brigus was my childlike fascination of the two churches that were built so close to one another upon those rugged rocks.
At the time I wondered to myself why there wasn't just one? Sixty years later I am still asking the same question as I drive around touring many communities.
Lately I learned (after all these years) that the origin of the name Brigus some theorists say, is from a French word for intrigue - Brigue. Others claim it to be called after Brickhouse or Brighthouse in Yorkshire, England.
Varied celebrations
With a year full of activities to celebrate Captain Bob's historic voyages of exploration (some have already begun) we will be invited to step onboard one of the last of the Arctic expeditionary schooners as it tours the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador bringing the story of exploration to ports around the province.
The Ports Program (as it is called by the Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland & Labrador) begins in July and will include opportunities to see first hand: harbour sails, enjoy live entertainment, drama, exhibitions and the very special arrival ceremonies of the Arctic schooner Bowdoin.
The exhibition program has already begun. It started in November. This past month the Newfoundland Society of Greater New York held a Bartlett anniversary dinner in St. John's and in conjunction with that the education programs officially started across the province.
The Historic Sites Newfoundland website offers an official list of celebration activities for the remainder of the project up until September 2009.
Bartlett biography
Bob Bartlett was born Aug. 15, 1875 to William and Mary (Leamon) Bartlett. The family lived in Brigus where Bartlett's ancestors skippered ships in the cod and seal fisheries for generations. Despite the family's seafaring heritage, Mary Bartlett wanted her eldest son, Bob, to become a minister and in 1891 sent him off to the Methodist College in St. John's.
Bartlett, however, enjoyed working at sea and spent each summer vacation fishing and sealing with his father. He commanded his first schooner, the Osprey, after his second year of college and returned from the Labrador fishery with a profitable cargo of salt codfish. Realizing he wanted to pursue a career at sea rather than in the pulpit, the 17 year old dropped out of school and obtained work as an ordinary seaman with the merchant vessel Corisande, due to leave St. John's that October with a shipment of fish for Brazil. The voyage was his first step towards becoming a master mariner, a title only to be attained after accumulating considerable experience at sea.
Bob Bartlett spent the next six years aboard merchant vessels in the fall and winter, and aboard fishing and sealing vessels in the spring and summer.
In 1898 (instead of obtaining command of a merchant or fishing vessel), he accepted an offer from his uncle John Bartlett to work aboard the Windward, the main vessel of famous explorer Robert Peary's North Pole expedition. The elder Bartlett (John) was the Windward's captain and young Bob its first mate.
North Pole
During the next 10 years master mariner/explorer Bob Bartlett accompanied Robert Peary on three separate attempts to reach the North Pole, first aboard the Windward, and twice as the captain of the steel-hulled Roosevelt (1906-07 and 1908-09). Their first two expeditions ended in failure because of storms, supply shortages and injuries. (Peary lost eight toes to frostbite in an earlier (1898) attempt.)
Undaunted by these setbacks, Peary, Bartlett, and other expedition members departed New York in July of 1908 for a third voyage north. They reached Ellesmere Island, northwest of Greenland on Sept. 5, and began travelling towards the North Pole by dog sled. By the grace of God favourable weather conditions assisted their progress and by the end of March 1909 the team set up camp within 150 miles of the North Pole.
The rest is history and the events that followed make for incredible reading, watching, and sharing -- and are a major part of why this year we in Newfoundland and Labrador are celebrating the 100th anniversary of that great feat (and others from Bartlett's life at sea).
Be sure to get the Historic Site's detailed schedule of events and join the throngs who will be coming out to hail our incredible Newfoundland son.
In Log 307-310 Bartlett wrote:
"On shore a man is always worried because...
He hasn't twice as much as he has already got.
It is not like that on board ship...you are contented with your life simply because you are living. If I had to do it over again I should be a sailor or just the same.
There is nothing so satisfying as the sea."
Bob Bartlett died from acute pneumonia, at age 71, April 28, 1946.
Bill Westcott writes from his winter retreat in Florida.
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