Spending about a week camping and exploring fascinating Fogo Island. I'm loving it. I applied for a residency at the new studios being built here by the Fogo Art Corp, which is part of a company called Shore Fast which is fixing up heritage structures, funds a theater company (I saw a show last night) and has the Art Corp.
My 3-week stay in Brigus is almost complete. I was selected as the 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Landfall’s Kent Cottage in Brigus, Newfoundland. It’s been a dream come true for me, staying at this historic artist cottage, (Rockwell Kent and A.E. Harris worked here) while hobnobbing with Bartlett descendants and the people of Brigus! This quaint town of about 800 residents is steeped in sea culture that interests me personally as a professional artist, a schooner sailor, and a Massachusetts resident with ties to Bob Bartlett’s old schooner Morrissey.
I sailed on Ernestina in 2001 when I was a graduate student at MassArt. About twenty students went on a most memorable 5-day trip…but that’s another story. More recently I worked as deckhand aboard other New England schooners as a sort-of research project to inspire my artwork. For several years I’ve been developing my “Nautical Body” of sculpture, drawings, and photographs. I’m interested in the history of Brigus, Bartlett, and the Ernestina for an upcoming art project.
Last night I enjoyed a fantastic concert by Jim Payne’s Crowd of Bold Sharemen from Newfoundland and Wren Music from Devon, England. There were plenty of sea songs, the tune “Captains and Ships” mentions Bartlett. This concert was part of the Cupids 400 Celebration happening which highlights Newfoundland’s English roots. Cupids is a town next to Brigus where archeologists have an ongoing dig site recovering artifacts. It’s the oldest English colony in Canada, founded by John Guy in 1610, so this year is its 400 year anniversary. There is a bit of irony of course, in that Newfoundland only became part of Canada in the 1940’s, but hey, it’s another nice tourism destination in the area.
I was cooking a codfish dinner one night, and a pod of whales came into the harbor, breaching right at the foot of my cliff! A mother whale rolled over revealing a speckly-pink piggish belly. They must be chasing the caplin, Ron Burke tells me, it’s usually about this week. Ron is the caretaker of Landfall and was born in the big white house on the south side, smack across the harbor. I saw old pictures of old caplin runs, and one newsreel of Bob’s talking about this “tasty snack” which was mostly used as crop fertilizer. The huge school of fish swarm right up on the beach, and people would just scoop them up inti buckets and carts!
Capt. Bob Bartlett’s family home, Hawthorne Cottage, is a well-preserved museum. I suppose it looks about the same as it did when Eleanor, one of Bob’s sisters, the last Bartlett to inhabit the house, died. I spent a long time watching all the old newsreels that Bob made on his arctic trips in the 1940’s. I’d only seen little bits of Bob in moving-pictures at the Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College in Maine, so it was really charming to hear his voice and get a feel for the man in the very rooms he grew up in.
Ernestina is held truly dear in these people’s hearts. Everyone has stories or old photos to share in response to my inquisitiveness. Bill Pomeroy, a descendant of the family that built Landfall Cottage in the 1790’s, was a crewmember on the sail from Brigus to St. John’s in 1988 or '90 when she visited under Capt. Dan Moreland, now captain of Picton Castle, (who I briefly met in 2007 on Block Island when I was crew on Mystic Whaler). Bill visited me at the cottage carrying loads of old pictures of the town and harbor. He pointed to the little island in the harbor across from where the Bartlett pier was. Bob’s uncle had a tunnel blasted in the rock to make the pier more accessible for his big sealing ship Panther; it’s a big tourist destination in town. Bill grabbed the binoculars and showed me how there are still big chains attached to the rock on the island- the Panther would be lashed between the island and their pier. He pulled out a photo of it. It makes sense, given the geography, but for me it was magical to look at Bill’s old photo collection while hearing his first and second hand accounts of how things have changed while I was looking at the place. With the bird’s eye view of town and harbor from Landfall, he pointed out different landmarks. It was a warm sunny day, and I figured I was in heaven.
Some folks, like Bill, follow SEMA updates, but many are shocked when I tell them of the plight of the Ernestina, and how much repair she requires. Last summer Newfoundland held many Bartlett Celebrations to honor the man in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of Robert Peary’s “dash” to the North Pole to which Bartlett was essential. Reading a brochure of the events for the Bartlett Celebrations held all over the island, I became fairly mortified that the schooner Bowdoin (a fine old arctic schooner) visited for the festivities instead of Ernestina. At that point, she was in the yard in Maine having her stem revamped at last, which was valuable progress… It’s just such a pity that work (and more) could not have been done sooner to allow her to participate in a monumental event that’s part of her legacy. Ernestina is the “official vessel of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ” part of the New Bedford Whaling National Park, the oldest fishing schooner in New England, and a designated National Historic Landmark. Maybe these designations indicate a relic; do they read like an epitaph? She’s not dead, I sailed on her just 9 years ago. I never felt more alive, and I swear she loved it too! She has a very viable mission as a sail-training vessel, school ship, and educational enterprise. It seems positively criminal that she’s so neglected!
What I’m enjoying most about Brigus is that everywhere I turn I meet with a personal connection to the history of Bartlett. I discovered that both Andy Critchley (who runs Landfall Trust) and Jenifer Soper (my liason from the Rooms in St. John’s supporting my residency) are grandchildren of Bob Bartlett’s sister Anne. Bob’s nephew Rupert’s wife still lives here. I met with many people, especially old people, whose fathers or other family members served with the Bartletts sealing, fishing, or exploring the arctic. I met the Bartlett family maid’s granddaughter. I ate dinner at Jenifer’s house off identical china-ware to what’s in Hawthorne. It was her grandmother’s, of course, and all the Bartlett women had ordered the same set!
Flipping thru the guestbook of Landfall which Jake started in the 1960s, I find an entry from Dan Moreland on Aug 2 1990. He drew a picture of the Morrissey in the harbor from right there, and thanked Jake for the hospitality.
I hiked way out beyond my cottage to the lighthouse at the tip of the rocky peninsula. With the strong land-breeze aiming to blow me off the cliff I imagined what the Morrissey looked like sailing into this scenic little harbor. Jenifer Soper has a photo in her home here of her mother as a child sitting on Uncle Bob’s lap. She told me how her mother would describe to her how the Morrissey would enter the harbor and just where she would tack, and with her pointing out the window to the harbor, I imagined it. But what I’d really like, it to see it with my own eyes and for Brigus . Let’s rally up support to SAVE ERNESTINA and sail her up for a visit! . It was a really big deal, Jenifer said, when she sailed in the harbor. The town provided her crew and provisions and affected everybody’s lives. Its no wonder that even some 60 years later, she’s still beloved.
Learn about my “Nautical Body” of art: http://www.christygeorg.com
Donate to Schooner Ernestina/MorrisseyAssociation:
http://www.sailernestina.org/%3Chttp://sailernestina.org/?q=node/178
