I have been building out the family tree of my paternal line to help to determine the biological father of James Pyle, my second great-grandfather. (See Narrowing Down the Non Paternal Event.)
James Pyle's sister Elizabeth married William Scott in the 1840s, probably in Guysborough, Nova Scotia. (Maybe James's son, William Scott Pyle was named after this uncle?)
William and Elizabeth had several daughters, one of whom, Annetta (Netty), married a Maine-born fisherman, Lyman Morey, in 1873 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. This was not uncommon; many fishermen sailed between Massachusetts, Maine, and Nova Scotia, and likely found their love interests in a community away from home.
In 1880, widow Annetta Morey was living in Gloucester with two young sons. by 1881, she had returned with her two young sons to her parents' home in Guysborough. How was it that a 29-year-old mother of two was already a widow?
Her husband died in February 1879, which has been referred to as the deadliest month for the Gloucester fishing fleet. He was a fisherman on the Schooner Gwendolen.
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| The Boston Globe Evening Edition, 12 March 1879 (Newspapers.com), p. 4, col. 4. |
This article explains the cost of the financial losses to the owners of these thirteen fishing vessels, as well as the personal losses of the families and friends of the men lost when their ships went down in the "February Hurricane."
There were upwards of 70 fishing vessels anchored in nearby Georges Bank, a feeding ground for codfish and haddock, and the description of what these mariners had to do to protect themselves when a gale arose is relatively detailed in this article. All of the vessels sustained some damage. The Schooner Gwendolen was insured for $6,010, and was described as "a fine vessel."
The next day, there was optimism that both the George B. Loring and the Gwendolen were "all right," even though the Gwendolen had been gone for about seven weeks "on a halibut trip."
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| The Boston Globe, Evening Edition, 13 March 1879 (Newspapers.com), p. 1, col. 4. |
A week later, the news was less optimistic. "No tidings have been heard of the absent schooner Gwendolen."
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| The Boston Globe, Evening Edition, 20 March 1879 (Newspapers.com), p. 4, col. 1. |
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The death register in the Gloucester vital records recorded the "crew of Schooner Gwendolen lost on Grand Banks" with a death date of February 1879. The first two members of the crew were married
men (Zadock Hawkins and Lyman H. Morey) and the remaining single. (The deaths of men on the George B. Loring were listed above these entries.)
How challenging to be the wife of a fisherman before the improvement of weather forecasting!
These mariners certainly knew how to read the weather by observing the sky and cloud formations. (I remember being taught: "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning; red sky at night, sailor's delight," though observing cloud formations is much more than this rhyme.) They also had barometers to measure changes in barometric pressure and of course they were aware of the tides and the depths of the waters they sailed in.
However, fishermen could only forecast the weather about a day or two in advance and were often out for weeks at a time (as mentioned above). When a storm picked up suddenly, they were at the mercy of the weather.
Lyman H. Morey was married to Annetta Scott, my great-grandfather, James Tolman Pyle's first cousin.
This week's theme is Challenging.
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