The Waterwitch Tragedy

Have you heard the story of the Waterwitch?

The schooner Waterwitch sailed out of the St. John’s harbour on November 29th, 1875, and into a storm that would change the lives of everyone on board.

Within hours, they would be in a fight for survival that would lead to one of Newfoundland and Labrador’s most daring rescues.

Captain Samuel Spracklin had sailed to St. John’s from his home port of Cupids to sell the last of the summer’s fishing catch, but the company aboard his ship, the Waterwitch, wasn’t its usual crew of fishermen.

Instead, as many captains did at the time, Spracklin had brought family, friends, and neighbours along for the year-end trip to town, to shop for winter provisions and toast the close of another fishing season.

There were twenty-five people aboard in all, and they must have been a merry crowd. Half of them were young people in their late teens and twenties, including three of Spracklin’s sons and two daughters-in-law.

Around sunset on Monday, November 29, 1875, once all their supplies had been loaded onto the ship, they sailed north, bound for home.

Soon the wind picked up, and the crew lost sight of the coast in blinding snow. Thinking more than enough time had gone by for the ship to have passed Cape St. Francis at the northern tip of the Avalon Peninsula, the crew turned west into Conception Bay.

But the wind had slowed their progress. Suddenly, cliffs loomed up on either side of them in the night. They were caught in Horrid Gulch, more than two miles short of the cape.

The forceful waves, whipped up by the gale, buffeted the Waterwitch against the rocks. Knowing the hull couldn’t withstand such a battering, two of the men risked taking a flying leap from the quarterdeck to the north cliff face.

They landed on a small outcropping. The next time the ship neared the cliff, more men jumped out to join them.

Clutching each other on the slippery ledge, they watched as the Waterwitch broke apart and sank beneath the angry surf.

They thought everyone else had been lost until, over the roaring of the wind, they heard the captain’s shouts.

Four men had managed to make it off the vessel to the opposite cliff face, where the drop was slightly less sheer. Despite the storm, three of them decided to try to scale the slippery rocks, leaving the fourth, one of Spracklin’s sons, behind “to keep in good heart the poor creatures on the other side.”

Slowly, they climbed hundreds of feet in the darkness, then, when they reached the top, walked a mile and a half to Pouch Cove for help.

Meanwhile, the men stranded on the north side of the gulch were at the mercy of the elements.

According to survivor George Thomas Noseworthy, “the spray dashed over us constantly, and every twenty minutes or so a large sea would come and dash right over us. I was almost gone once. We had to crouch and cling close together when we saw the sea coming.”

The first party of rescuers arrived at the gulch in the wee hours of the morning.

Local Anglican priest Rev. Reginald M. Johnson recalled, “We could hear their cries all night below us. It was frightful!”

With few options to reach them, a man named Alfred Moores volunteered to be lowered down the cliff by a rope tied around his waist.

He was swung out over the abyss four times before he found a crevice he could use to descend. Finally, he landed on a ledge some five hundred feet down, where he could see the survivors below him.

Using the cord running from Alfred to the summit, several other Pouch Cove men climbed down and stationed themselves at various points along the line, forming a relay to help the exhausted survivors to the top.

One by one, they tossed a long rope down to the men from the Waterwitch, and one by one, they hauled them up. The last to be rescued was sixteen-year-old James Wells who had jumped to the cliff face at some distance from the others and spent the night clinging to the rocks half-dressed, with only one boot on.

Through their ingenuity and bravery, the people of Pouch Cove saved thirteen men that November night. Two dozen men participated in the rescue effort, and six of them were awarded medals from the Royal Humane Society for risking their own lives to save others.

Twelve souls perished in the wreck, including all four women on board, who were unable to jump to safety. The Spracklin family lost six members.

In Cupids the following week, the newly built Methodist church opened its doors to host a solemn first service: the funeral for the victims. In a town of only 1,300, more than two thousand mourners turned out to pay their respects.

The Waterwitch wasn’t the only vessel lost that night. A second schooner, Hopewell, sank just two miles away when it struck the Biscan Rock near Cape St. Francis in the storm, and seven of eight hands were lost.