Reminders of the Great Saxby Gale of 1869 are readily found in archives, on memorials--and in the burial grounds of East Coast communities
Written by David Goss for the Peoples/Places section of the Telegraph Journal
Published Saturday, October 2, 1999
Transcribed with permission
Above, in a quiet plot in Mascarene, stands the double gravestone
of Peter McVicker, 33, and his brother George, 38, both drowned
in the sinking of the barque Genii on October 4, 1869.
Monday marks the 140th anniversary of the Great Saxby Gale of Oct. 4, 1869, in which the Barque Genii sank off New River Beach with the loss of 11 lives.
Lloyd Mealey was first to share the story with me. He told me there was a house on the beach near the New River where the bodies of the dead seamen were laid. All but one, he said, and that one washed up in an inlet on Barnaby Head that became known as Dead Man's Cove.
Mealey said that in both that cove and in a house more than a kilometre away, the ghostly countenance of a seaman is seen from time to time. Some see the whole body; some see head to hip only; others, just a pair of legs wandering along. Still others see the fellow carrying his head under his arm.
On Dec. 24, 1868, Lieutenant S.M. Saxby of London, England, predicted a major storm would strike the eastern North American coast on Oct. 5, 1869. His message was carried in Maritime papers, but was paid little heed.
Now, the barque Genii was built at St. Andrews and was launched in September, 1869, outfitted for an overseas voyage and sent to New River to pick up a load of deals arriving at Knight's Mill on Oct. 4.
It was an incredibly calm day, and as the Genii dropped her ballast, the pilot, Captain James Clark, went ashore to enjoy some rum in Haggerty's Cove. Thus, he was the only survivor of the crew, for when the storm came into the bay later that day, it flipped the Genii over and ragged it against the shoals, with a loss of all onboard.
More than 70 lives were lost in incidents up and down the bay. Property damage was in the millions. In addition to the many boats lost, 60 in Charlotte County alone, wharves were smashed, breakwaters swept away, houses floated off their foundations, bridges ripped from their supports and steeples toppled from churches. Trees were downed inland as far as Fredericton, hundreds of roofs blew off, rail lines washed out, telegraph poles snapped off, dikes were breached by the huge waves and tides two metres above normal drowned hundreds of head of livestock.
For years, the storm was the talk whenever those who lived through it gathered. Fortunately, many of their tales were recorded and they can be used to this day as a comparison when similar storms hit.
I've met numerous people who have told me various interesting details about it. Nellie Leland took me to the gravesites of several of the Mascarene stevedores who were on board the Genii to move the lumber. She took me to see where some of them had lived and pointed out houses in Mascarene that had been blown off their foundations, were repaired and are still in use to this day.
Steve Campbell said he'd been told so many trees blew down it was possible to walk from his home in St. George to New River hopping from tree to tree and never touch the road.
Leigh Thomson of Dipper Harbour and Gerry Baxter of New River both assured me that in bogs behind the shore at both places, I'd find bleached logs that were swept into the ponds during the gale and have become petrified over time.
In Moncton, there is a marker at the Bore Park that shows the height of the water of the Petitcodiac River driven up to three metres higher than normal by the high tides backing up the river on Oct. 4, 1869, flooding Moncton's main street.
Monctonian George McLeod added to the information for that area when he told me I could visit the graves of the four O'Brien children who died in the raging river at Coverdale, I intend to visit these as well as graves in Lepreau and Fredericton.
Prison poet Dean Butterfield wrote one of his famed narrative poems, telling the tale in rhyme. One verse reads;
"But in that Monday cauldron, falling on October four
The Genii went to bottom with one body washed to shore
McVicker and the others, we forever mourn their fate
In the annals of the Maritimes, it's a tragic sorry date."
Artist George Kinsman took on the job of depicting the barque Genii as she was being battered by the Saxby Gale, quite a job as no image is known to exist.
Chester Dixon wrote a tale in 1934 concerning one John Leaman, who was caught in a collapsed smokehouse on Grand Manan in the Great Saxby Gale and had all his hair stripped off by sand whipped by the ferocious gale.
I've also met descendants of those Genii crewmen who died in the gale. In fact, I've worked with one, Vicky Nodding, at New River for the last two summers. She introduced me to her grandmother, Marguerite Wentworth. Her mother, Elizabeth Clarke McNichol is still alive too, a third generation removed from Herbie McNichol, one victim of the gale of 1869.
It's generally conceded that no gale as dramatic has visited the area since, even though there have been some notable storms like Hurricane Edna and Hazel in the fifties and the Groundhog Gale of 1976 that are often mentioned as weather milestones today.
Anyone who doubts that the Great Saxby Gale deserves its notoriety need only visit the archives of the New Brunswick Museum or the Saint John Free Public Library, where there are plenty of accounts of the gale.
There is enough information for a book and I have heard there is such a project underway; the author is predicting that we're due for another storm to match that predicted by Saxby 141 years ago.
I don't know the author's name, but if the predicted storm does occur, I wonder if it too will be a subject of curiosity for 140 years after it rips across the province as has been the case with the Great Saxby Gale.
David Goss explores the local lore of New Brunswick.
The Saxby Gale of 1869 as told by Marilyn Bonvie