Page 1 - Wreck of the 'Mikado'

ISSUE : Issue 31

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1982/6/1

Wreck of the'Mikado' Arthur Severance, Fourchu: It was a beam trawler, the Mikado (wrecked May, 1924) . It's a Japanese name. (Was it a Japanese ship?) No, no. English. One of the earlier beam trawlers. She was on charter--! sup? pose it'd be the National Fish Company in its earlier days. They probably did have more than one beam trawler on charter, but this one, her charter was up anyway, and she was going to go back to England. They were on their way from Canso to Louisbourg for bunker. They used to bunker a lot of ships at Louisbourg then. They had a coal pier there, and they used to ship coal from there, too, for export. And she was bound there for bunker. Oh, I guess there'd been a bit of partying, according to one of the survivors. Somebody wasn't doing his job, and she was wrecked on Wing? ing Point, Framboise Winging Point Rock, right on the--well, it's sort of a natural breakwater. Fishermen had shanties there years ago. In fact, my father fished out of there for quite awhile, in the days when the lobster fishing was all done with rowboats. This beam trawler, she didn't hit the rocks. She struck a breaker at the eastern end of the rock. It was early in May, but it wasn't what you'd call really bad weath? er. There was some haze and fog, but there had been quite a heavy blow a few days be? fore that, and there was a ground swell running. You know what I mean now, a big sea--not lop, but a heavy ground swell. And just after she struck--she was a small steamship--they were blowing the whistle. We heard this whistle blowing, got up, and walked up the shore. We got up there, well, you could hear the hollering, calling-- some of them had got up in the rigging. But before daylight, we had picked up 5 bodies, washed ashore. Most of them at the western end of the rock. Came around into a cove there called Harriet Cove. Well, that was named after another ship that was wrecked there, the Harriet, a sailing ves? sel. So they picked these bodies up and they brought them over and put them in a shanty that my father had there for years. I think there were 17 in the crew--and there were 12. of the crew got in the rigging on the foremast. She was heavy shrouds and rattlings, and they went up the rattlings as far as they could get. And there were 5, I guess, that got on the bridge. But the sea was so heavy, it just carried part CAPE BRETON'S MAGAZINE, NUMBER THIRTY-ONE WRECK COVE, CAPE BRETON, NOVA SCOTIA SECOND CLASS MAIL -- REGISTRATION NUMBER 3014 (1)

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