The Miss Ally

Tragic loss of boat and crew detailed

In the oft-repeated maritime way, those on shore are left to piece together the factors that contribute to tragedy. So it was in the age of sail, in the age of steamships and, still recently, when the Miss Ally out of Woods Harbour went down in a vicious storm with its young captain and crew lost to the depths. February 2013, and a blistering storm was forecast days in advance. As it bore down from the south, boat after boat hauled its gear, left the fishing grounds and headed for the nearest port, all except the Miss Ally which lingered too long and was fatally battered by hurricane force wind and staggering waves. In “The Sea was in their Blood: the Disappearance of the Miss Ally’s Five-Man Crew” (Nimbus, $22.95) Quentin Casey introduces the crew while presenting a backdrop of socio-economics and tradition. He skilfully presents a sense of each of the men, their families and the particular circumstances that led each to be at the sea’s mercy that night. The question of why they failed to get out of the storm’s path is more complicated. It takes into account youth and experience, risk and reward and the nature of debts. It also comes down to fishermen’s ability to calculate what the sea will allow and whether the young captain Katlin Nickerson pushed too far and, as always, the answer is a matter of perspective. Casey, an award-winning journalist, presses those of us who live our lives on land to get past our initial reaction of wondering why, with all the sophisticated equipment available today, a small Cape Islander found itself the target of raging winds and 10-metre waves of ice cold ocean water. There are even folks in the fishing villages of Cape Sable Island and Woods Harbour whose thinking is inclined to veer in that direction but Casey also talked to many who insist it was never that simple. “People will call it greed and people will call it all kinds of things. But no, (the captain) was just aggressive – doing what he loved to do,” said Woods Harbour fishing captain Sandy Stoddard who spoke to the Miss Ally before he and his son steamed for shore. Casey’s story includes the determined and heroic efforts of local divers and fishermen to find the boat’s hull so the families of the crew might be able to bring their bodies home. Angry that the military and the coast guard scaled down their search and recovery effort, local fishermen announced they would go out themselves in search of their own. Diver Donnie Mahaney initially thought he was being asked to quote on recovering the boat but when he understood the families were hoping to find bodies he quickly revised his estimate. “There’s no money involved in this,” he told the father of crewman Joel Hopkins. On shore the RCMP appealed to Captain Stoddard to order the local divers not to dive but he refused, just as the divers ignored orders from the RCMP on board a coast guard vessel. Instead they located the remains of the boat, went into the water and determined there was little left below the Miss Ally’s upturned hull: no air pocket keeping a crewman alive and certainly no bodies. After the divers and boats returned, the village began to prepare for the funeral services, one after another. Small communities can come together powerfully to help each other in times of trouble as was witnessed following the disappearance of the Miss Ally but, as Casey points out, the aftermath shows that in small communities divisions can also run painfully deep.