April 13, 2007

<*I AM a frequent reader of Dr.<\p>Edward Harris’ Heritage Matters<$> column, enjoying and learning interesting things each time. Today is no exception. Rarely, however, is the subject something within my lifetime or memory, as the story of the SS Leicester was. The vessel with the “A” frame and long boom, between the>Josephine and the ST 10 is, I believe, a US navy barge. It is not thI>Lord Cochrane. She was a bucket dredge with a very different profile. Badly holed, the Josephine had to be patched with wood and canvas, before she could be refloated.

I think the barge with crane was alongside possibly to position the patching material over the holes. Apparently digging her dredging buckets into the ocean floor as an anchor, tLord Cochrane then used her winches pulled the Josephine off the rocks.

There was still then a small floating dock in the dockyard and after Josephine was gotten off, she was towed to dockyard and placed in the dock for more permanent patching before she was (or could be) towed to the US for repair.

The Canadian author Farley Mowatt wrote a history of the Foundation Maritime Company called Grey Seas Under and a book entid The Serpent’s Coil<$>, which is the saga of the Leicester anhe Josephine, both books I enjoyed reading many years after.

The latter book is not the source of my information, as I remember the hurricane. At 9:00 p.m. that night in Shelly Bay as the wind dropped,

I heard an SOS on a ship’s whistle and speculated that it must be the Josephine, as indeed it was.

She was holed and filled with water, but upright, and they did not know where they were in the dark and storm conditions. The crew walked safely ashore across a plank.

Later, after the Josephine was refloated, I remember watching her being towed past ouruse en route<$> to the Dockyard.

I understood from Farley Mowatt’s book that the Josephine was a royal Navy tug under charter or lease to Foundation Maritime, and that her skipper was a Royal Navy, or ex-RN officer, although her crew were civilian.

Thank you, Dr.<\p>Harris, for refreshing memories indelibly etched in the mind of a then fourteen yeard!

EUGENE<\p>OUTERBRIDGE,<\p>MD, FRCP

Hamilton Parish