|
2100, Saturday, July 8, 2023
Tonight, we are in Williamsport on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland. This is also the farthest north the boat has ever been, we are above 50 degrees north.
The only other time I have been to this place was way back in 1977 while sailing aboard the 144-foot barkentine, Regina Maris. I have vivid memories of that visit. We sailed up this magnificent fjord with 1,000-foot mountains and steep cliffs. In a cove on the right-hand side was an abandon fishing outport called Williamsport. A mile further up the fjord was a whaling station that had also closed just five years earlier in 1972; it had been one of the last shore whaling stations in Newfoundland. Whale catcher boats would shoot whales offshore with a bomb lance and then tow them in here to be flensed and processed.
When whaling ceased in 1972, the outport of Williamsport had no employment. Times were hard. The residents of the outport were "resettled." This was part of a government plan to move people out of small outports to larger urban centers. Government was finding it too expensive to support and provide services to the myriad small outports. If a high percentage of the residents voted to resettle, they received a payment and were moved and a traditional way of life ended, and in some cases, it moved people to places they were ill equipped to assimilate.
Resettlement continues across Newfoundland today. Old fishing outports become ghost towns. Houses and churches crumble into nothing. A way of life ends.
When I came in 1977 the whaling station was as if people had simply walked out. Now it is a rusting industrial site and all structures have collapsed. Back then the little community of Williamsport still had a few people. Now, it is a ghost town with few homes or fishing stages left standing. Tonight, we are anchored just of the old village and can see the graveyard of some of the last residents at the head of the cove.
See the photos below.
Bill
| 
