1800 Saturday, July 16
Today I want to mention something from the past and a surprise from my present.
Like all places maritime, Newfoundland has a past that is filled with more than its fair share of tragedies and shipwrecks. Two shipwrecks happen to be easily visible from the shores of Conception Bay not far from here Tazzarin is berthed. I would like to tell you about one.
The SS Charcot lays with her rusting bow rising from the depths on the shore of Conception Harbour. She was built in Norway in 1923 as a whale catcher boat, probably with a bomb lance mounted in the bow. She was named for the famed Arctic and Antarctic explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot. Interestingly, there is a Charcot Bay in Antarctica that Annie and I visited with my parents some 20 years ago. The bay was named by Otto Nordenskjold who led the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1903. Charcot's first planned Antarctic voyage was to go in search of Otto Nordenskjold, whose expedition was many months overdue.
Anyway, the SS Charcot was later sold to the Hawke Harbour Whaling of Newfoundland and Labrador. Back in 1977 I visited the remnants of the Hawke Harbour Whaling station on Hawke Island in Labrador. I still hope to return there later this summer. Whaling stopped there in 1959. The SS Charcot was in Conception Harbour in 1970 when she broke loose from her moorings in a storm and wrecked on the site where she rests today, a reminder of past days of whaling in these regions. Commercial whaling in Canada ended in 1972.
