It was a Friday when the small schooner set off for Halifax, and superstitious sailors believed it was bad luck to begin a voyage on Fridays. But Halifax was only 54 miles away. They’d be there by nightfall. What could go wrong?
Aboard the little schooner named Industry as it departed La Have, just south of Lunenburg, bound for Halifax early in the morning of December 11th, 1868, was a cargo of pickled fish to sell at the market, and an 18-year-old passenger named Angeline Publicover. She was heading to the city to buy her wedding dress.
The day looked bright and fine when they set out, but the wind was slow. It took seventeen hours to cover the first forty miles. The short December day ended, and night fell. By 1 a.m., the Industry had the Sambro Lighthouse in sight — the marker at the mouth of Halifax Harbour.
Then the wind died entirely.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a violent nor’easter erupted. Halifax’s Harbour, treacherous even in calm weather, was now too dangerous to attempt.
The Industry turned back for La Have.
While tuning, the foresail ripped clear in two. At that moment, the kerosene spilled. The cabin light went out, never to be lit again.
The howling winds drove the ship quickly back toward Lunenburg. For a moment, they recognized the mouth of the harbour — home was quite literally just around the corner. Then the winds shifted again. With no foresail and no control, the Industry was pushed relentlessly further and further out to sea.
All hands rushed on deck, including Angeline. The barrels of pickled fish were rolling dangerously around the deck and had to be hurled overboard. One barrel of fish went flying, smashing one of their two kegs of freshwater.
Then the snow turned to hail, shredding what remained of their sails to ribbons.
For three days, the storm pushed them further and further out into the open Atlantic. They were lost at sea, with no sails to navigate by and barely any fresh water — rationed to a single wine glass of water per person per day. They had expected a one-day trip and brought almost no food. The hold was full of pickled fish, but as historian Archibald MacMechan noted in his 1923 Tales of the Sea, “they dared not touch the salt fish in the hold for fear of the thirst that would drive them mad.” Their stove had been destroyed in the rolling. They wrapped themselves in scraps of torn canvas against the December cold.
On December 15th, they spotted an American fishing schooner. It came close enough to shout, but the sea was far too dangerous for any approach — with no sails, the Industry was effectively an out-of-control unguided missile.
The American captain shouted across the waves that they were now closer to Bermuda than Halifax.
Then he left.
Days became weeks. From December 15th to 29th, all seven survivors lived on just ten hardtack biscuits.
On Christmas Day, a small treasure was discovered in the hold: a single potato. They divided it into seven pieces and ate it raw.
“Our tongues were so swollen we could scarcely eat it,” remembered one survivor. That night, another terrible storm erupted.
“We were nearly exhausted with hunger and exposure, and our thirst was dreadful,” the anonymous survivor later told a Halifax newspaper. “We shook hands with each other … for the last time. Most of the men gave way to tears, but our only female passenger cheered us with hope.”
Four days after Christmas, on December 29th, a large barque appeared on the horizon. She was the Providence, out of Hantsport, Nova Scotia — 480 tons to the Industry‘s 37, a giant beside the wrecked little schooner.
At her helm were two brothers, Hiram and Abel Coalfleet. Their curious last name had an unusual origin. Years earlier, a coal ship had sunk with all hands off Hantsport. The next morning, a baby boy washed ashore, the shipwreck’s sole survivor. He was given the name “Coalfleet” in tribute to where he’d come from. His sons grew up to be expert mariners.
The Coalfleet brothers got a safe distance away and tried lowering their ship’s longboat into the choppy seas. It was smashed to pieces.
The sensible course of action would have been to steer clear. What was left of the Industry was dangerously adrift and could easily hole a ship that got too close.
Instead, MacMechan wrote, Hiram Coalfleet “maneuvered his big barque to windward of the little coaster, backed his topsail, and drifted down on the Industry broadside on … risking his own ship with all on board, for collision was inevitable. As the two vessels swung crashing together, the main-yard of the Providence fouled the rigging of the Industry.”
Abel Coalfleet crawled out along the main-yard above the Industry‘s heaving deck and swung down on a rope.
With the two ships grinding and smashing against each other with every wave, he grabbed Angeline Publicover, tied the rope around her, and she was hauled up to safety. The six male crew members climbed ropes thrown down the Providence‘s side.
Abel scrambled up the Industry’s mast, cut the tangled lines binding the two ships together, transferred to the Providence’s mast, and the two ships drifted apart. For thier heroics, the two Coalfleet brothers would later be presented with a gold watch and a golden set of binoculars by Canada’s federal government.
All seven of the survivors of the wreck of the Industry — Lewis Spongle, Ronald Currie, Henry Legag, Henry Wolfe, Daniel Wambach, Lawrence Murphy and Angeline Publicover — survived the trip, arriving in London in January 1869. They were utterly destitute, but alive. Fellow Maritimers in London helped find them lodging in Liverpool.
Canada’s brand-new federal government, barely a year old, scrambled to figure out how to help citizens stranded abroad. This seems to have been the first time the government ever had to ensure the safe return of Canadian citizens stranded abroad.
By February 12th, 1869, passage home was finally arranged; not on a sailing ship this time, but a modern steamship.
Angeline Publicover was taken under the wing of some wealthy ladies, who dressed her “like a queen.”
She never bought her wedding dress.
Her engagement was broken off.
When asked why, she replied with a striking question:
“What woman could be lured into marriage, so much more dangerous than the wildest sea?”
