Wreck of the Joan Kielberg

At five o'clock in the morning on January 23, 1930, the four masted Nova Scotia schooner Joan Kielberg caught fire off McNutt's Island. Her crew left the burning ship, probably by life boats. They would have made for the closest shore, which was this one.  They may have landed near the lighthouse. It would be a difficult place to land without breaking up entirely. Cape Roseway, where the lighthouse stands, is edged by tumbles of sharp jagged boulders, steep vertical cliffs and pounding waves. There is a cobble beach to the west of the light; maybe the crew could come to shore safely there.The ship was carrying a load of coal from New York to Halifax.  

I imagine that the crew, wet and freezing, went to the lighthouse, or maybe to the fishermen's houses along the south west shore of the island. Maybe the lighthouse keeper saw the ship on fire and sounded an alarm and the island folk braved darkness and cold to help. I'll bet it was an exciting day for the island children.

The New York Times reported: "... at noon the charred hulk was riding at anchor in the heavy swell off Cape Roseway, McNutt Island." She was later towed into the inner part of Shelburne Harbour.  Joan Kielberg was registered at LaHave, according to the shipwreck database at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. So she wouldn't have been very far from home when she was lost. A four masted schooner in 1930 had probably seen better days. 

The image I've included here is of the Savannah, another four masted schooner, just to give you an idea of what Joan Kielberg looked like. This image is at Ship Wiki and is available for use through the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License.

Shipwreck

On Saturday Skipper and Radar came in to tell us there was a ship wrecked on the opposite side of the island. She was a lobster boat that had gotten caught in strong currents and was dashed into the gigantic tumble of boulders that crouch, partly submerged, beneath the waves of the eastern channel. We looked out upon the shallow western channel -- our view. The harbour on this side of the island was calm. But Radar and Skipper assured us that the weather was different on the eastern side. Over there, the currents and a strong easterly wind had conspired to create another climate entirely. They had heard the mayday signal and travelled around to view the boat, by then already abandoned by the rescued crew. "Oh, she'll be gone by tomorrow," they told us. "Those rocks will smash the whole thing overnight." They seemed quite cheerful about it.

This boat wrecked south of Northeast Bluff, at the base of a rocky cliff that makes the site hard to reach by land. Other boats have wrecked there in the past. You can still see ominous old wreckage out in the water and along the shore of a shallow cove.

Salvaging wreckage is a time-honoured practice along the southwest shore of Nova Scotia. Long ago, folks made a living of sorts this way. They lured boats into the rocks at night with bonfires on shore, tricking the sailors into thinking they were heading for safe harbour. Wreckers, they were called. But I imagine for most people a shipwreck, though not caused by them, was still an opportunity too good to pass up. Once a ship is wrecked she is legal and fair game. And who knows what might be there for the salvaging -- or, as Skipper says, scalvaging -- a combination of scavenging and salvaging.

He and his boys did go scalvaging after all -- I guess they couldn't resist the adventure. Skipper picked up his two older sons on the mainland and brought them back to the island. They boarded the wreck at low tide, in the dark of night, after cutting their way through dense forest to a point above the boat where they could make their way down a rocky cliff. They pulled all sorts of interesting stuff off the boat, then left her to her own devices. I heard their ATV going along the lower road, down to their camp, around midnight Saturday night.

They came by on Sunday morning after making a second foray to mop up. They stood in front of the woodstove steaming their pant legs, telling about their late night sortie aboard the broken boat clinging to the rocks amid crashing waves and darkness. They were all three quite cold and soaked and cheerful.

Greg had gone over to take some pictures of what was left of her. He, too, was quite cheerful when he came home. There must just be something about a shipwreck.