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The S.S. Southern CrossBuilt in Arendal, Norway in 1886, the Southern Cross served as a Norwegian whaler for eleven years under the name Pollux. In 1898 it was bought by explorer, Carstens Borchgrevink. The sail ship, now equipped with engines and a new name, sailed on its first Antarctic expedition on December 19, 1898, and the next year made marine history by going through the Great Ice barrier to the previously unexplored, Ross Sea. Sold to Daniel Murray and Thomas Crawford, of Glasgow, Scotland, outfitted by Baine Johnston, and commanded by Darius Blandford, the Southern Cross was sent to the Newfoundland seal hunt in 1901.
The "Southern Cross was the first ship to arrive back in port with a full load of (26,563) Seal Pelts. The vessel continued its trek to the ice each spring for the next 13 years. In the Spring of 1914, with Captain George Clarke of Brigus in command, an experienced and veteran seaman in his mid-forties, the Southern Cross sailed to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It seems that at the time there was some difficulty getting older and experienced sealers; so a crew of 173, young and inexperienced men from Conception Bay, were recruited. Many of the crew were single and under the age of twenty-five. Clarke, tis' said, was a fierce competitor for the "Silk Flag", a status symbol given to the first ship back to St. John's with a full load of Seal skins or "pelts". Southern Cross left St. John's on March 12, the crew did well on the floes. It was estimated the Southern Cross had somewhere between 17,000 and 25, 000 pelts when Clarke left for home. According to eye witness accounts by other seaman, the twenty-eight year old vessel was heavily laden in the water. As the ship was not equipped with wireless, its course, and ultimate fate, can be reconstructed only from other wireless messages and visual sightings. Clarke plotted a course down the western side of Newfoundland, around Cape Ray, and along the south coast. A report from Channel/Port aux Basques dated 6:30 P.M. March 19th, 1914, claims the sealer passed there with all flags flying, presumably racing toward St. John's. Captain Thomas J. Connors on the coastal steamer Portia, reported the next and, as it turned out, the final sighting of the S.S. Southern Cross. He saw the sealer around eleven A.M. about five miles west-southwest of Cape Pine, on the southern end of the Avalon Peninsula. Connors stated a storm had come up, seas were high. Southern Cross appeared out of the storm passing close to the Portia. Portia, blew her whistle; Southern Cross replied, sailed on under a heavy head of steam and went out of sight. Connors said after, he had no doubt Captain Clarke was headed for the sheltered waters of St. Mary's Bay, to wait out the storm. That encounter was the last ever seen of the S.S. Southern Cross. Over the anxious weeks that followed, only two sightings of wreckage was spotted. The captain of the sealer Bloodhound reported a large mass of floating debris ninety miles south-southeast of Cape Broyle. It was never positively identified. In the summer of 1914 rumors from Ireland, claimed wreckage, planks, even seal pelts drifted onto the shore of Ireland. Again nothing was confirmed. Despite a long wait, and several searches initiated by the Newfoundland government, and carried out by the S.S. Kyle, Fiona, and Seneca, the Southern Cross and its 173 men were never seen again. The intensity of the storm, the high bulwarks, the heavy load of pelts and a low-mounted engine were all thought by some experienced mariners to have contributed to the disaster. Those lost came from the Avalon Peninsula with a great concentration from Conception Bay North. Harbour Grace lost 24 young men - 7 of whom were from Bryant's Cove, Spaniard's Bay, 14 and Carbonear, 12. There were 20 from St. John's and many had resided in the capital's smaller outlying towns, Kelligrews 9; Foxtrap 9; Paradise 5, Seal Cove 4 and Torbay 3. From St. Vincent's at the southern end of the Avalon Peninsula, 5 men were gone. Brigus lost 8 and so it went on. Nearly every community on the Avalon was affected. An enquiry into her loss could not explain the tragic disappearance and could only conclude, it was "An Act of God." The sinking of the "Southern Cross" was a personal tragedy for my Grandmother, Martha (nee James, Mercer, Yetman). On that fateful day in March 1914, Martha, lost her husband, two brothers, Uncle, a cousin and friends. She was married to John Mercer, of Upper Island, and had one child, Mark, two years of age when his father was lost at sea. After the tragedy Martha, and son Mark moved back to Bryant's Cove, where she later remarried my Grandfather, Joseph Yetman. They had five Children, four girls and one boy, Roy, my father. They say, there's a reason for everything in God's Master Plan. His ultimate goals are not for us mere mortals to know. However, there's one thing I do know, if it had not been for the Loss of the Southern Cross, Martha and Joseph, may not have married, and my family as it is now would not exist. Harvey's 1914 sealing fleet included both the SS Southern Cross the [[SS Newfoundland]] (under Captain Westbury Keane). In addition to minor crew changes from 1913, Harvey's made the fateful decision to remove the wireless set and operator from the [[SS Newfoundland]] in order to cut costs. The fleet left St. John's on the 13th of March, 1914. By March 30, The SS Newfoundland was "jammed" in the ice. The Captain, Wes Kean, could see signals from his father's ship, the [[SS Stephano]], indicating that there were seals several miles away, and sent his crew in that direction to begin killing seals, under command of his first mate. A storm began that afternoon, and Wes Kean, believing that the men were safely aboard the Stephano, did not blow the ship's whistle to signal his location and assist the crew in returning to the Newfoundland. The dead and survivors alike were picked up approximately 48 hours later by another ship in the fleet, the SS Bellaventure, under Captain R. Isaac. Of the 132 men aboard the Newfoundland, 78 died, and many more were seriously injured. Meanwhile, as the terrible news of the SS Newfoundland was reaching St. John's, the SS Southern Cross fell out of normal communication. The people of Newfoundland remained hopeful that tragedy would not strike twice, as evidenced by the April 3 newspaper article below:
Unlike the wreck of the Newfoundland, the disappearance of the Southern Cross remained largely unexplained as no crewmen or record of the voyage survived. While a marine court of enquiry determined that the ship sank in a blizzard on March 31, little evidence exists to verify this. Oral tradition suggests that rotten boards gave out in the heavy sea and allowed the cargo to shift and capsize the steamer. Though the wreck of the SS Southern Cross accounted for the greater human loss of the two shipwrecks, some historians argue that the emotional impact of the Newfoundland disaster was more intensely felt because of the horrific stories survivors were able to recount. These two shipwrecks together constitute what is referred to as the 1914 Newfoundland Sealing Disaster. A total loss of 251 lives from a province with a population of approximately 250,000 devastated families and communities. In his autobiographical book, Rockwell Kent describes the impact of the loss on Brigus, where many of the sealers from the Southern Cross had lived. “It will pretty well clear out this place,” said one resident of the ship’s loss. According to Kent “The dread of the loss of this steamer had passed almost to certainty and the mention of the house, the wife, the children, the hopes and ambitions of any of those on her became a tragedy.” Legislative ResponseIn 1914-15, the government held a commission of enquiry to examine the Newfoundland and Southern Cross sealing disasters. The commission’s findings made it clear that sealers faced extraordinarily dangerous working conditions on the ice. While legislation concerning the sealing industry had existed as early as 1873, most regulations concerned maintaining seal stock. In 1898 legislation put a limit on the number of men on each steamer, and one year later in 1899, some wage protection was instated for sealers. Arguably as a result of the 1914 Sealing Disaster and subsequent inquiries, further legislation was put in place in 1916, aimed directly at improving the safety standards and well-being of sealers. The new measures prohibited men from working in the dark; prohibited captains from ordering their crewmen to travel so far as to not be able to return to the ship within the day, and provided for rocket signals, search parties, masters’ and mates’ certificates, medical officers, thermometers, barometers, and better food and compensation. In response to speculation that the Southern Cross sank because of overloading, the government prohibited any ship from returning from a hunt with more that 35,000 pelts, and the Minister of Fisheries began to mark "load lines" on sealing vessels. Any ship that returned to port with its "load line" below the water would be heavily fined.
The Song Southern Cross Is A Traditional Newfoundland Folk Ballad Describing The Loss Of The Southern Cross On The South Coast Of Newfoundland With 173 Men Onboard. LyricsShe got up the steam twelfth day of March and shortly did embark. She reached the Gulf in early March, the white-coats for to slew, She passed near Channel homeward bound, as news came out next day, The last of March the storm came on with blinding snow and sleet; St. Mary's Bay she never reached, as news came out next morn. The SS Kyle was soon dispatched to search the ocean round, The Southern Cross out twenty days, she now is overdue; All things do happen for the best, but if they're called away, Southern Cross ExpeditionFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Southern Cross Expedition's landing ground at Cape Adare, Antarctica, in the midst of a penguin rookery . The Southern Cross Expedition, officially known as the British Antarctic Expedition 1898–1900, was the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, and was the forerunner of the much more celebrated expeditions of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton during the following decade. It was the brainchild of the Norwegian-born, half-British explorer and schoolmaster Carsten Borchgrevink. He envisaged a pioneering mission that would verwinter at Cape Adare on the Antarctic mainland before making the first investigations of the continent's interior, which was then wholly uncharted. The entire scheme was financed by the British magazine publisher Sir George Newnes. In February 1899 the expedition's ship Southern Cross landed Borchgrevink and a shore party of ten at Cape Adare, the north-west extremity of the Ross Sea, where a camp was erected. During the following months the group experienced the full hostility of an Antarctic winter. While a programme of scientific work was carried out, opportunities for inland exploration were severely restricted by the mountainous and glaciated terrain surrounding the base. During this period the expedition's zoologist, Nicolai Hansen, fell ill with an intestinal disorder and died. In January 1900 Southern Cross took the party southward to explore the Ross Sea and, following the route taken by James Clark Ross in 1840, reached the Great Ice Barrier. On 16 February Borchgrevink and two companions ascended the Barrier, then sledged approximately 10 miles (16 km) southward, to set a new Farthest South record latitude at 78°50'S. On its return to England the expedition was coolly received by London's geographical establishment which was resentful of the pre-emption of a role they envisaged for their own National Antarctic (Discovery) Expedition. There were also mutterings about the quality of Borchgrevink's leadership, and the limited amounts of scientific information obtained. However, the expedition had recorded several pioneering achievements, being the first to overwinter on the continent and establish man-made structures on the mainland. It also made the first use in the Antarctic of dogs and sledges, made the first ascent of the Great Ice Barrier, and set a new Farthest South record. Despite these successes Borchgrevink never achieved heroic status equal to that of Scott and Shackleton, and his expedition was soon forgotten in the excitement of later events. However, among those who recognised its contribution to Antarctic exploration was Roald Amundsen, conqueror of the South Pole in 1911. Amundsen used the location of Borchgrevink's Barrier landing as the base camp for his own attack on the Pole, and later wrote: "We must acknowledge that, by ascending the Barrier, Borchgrevink opened the way to the south, and threw aside the greatest obstacle to the expeditions that followed".
The Southern Cross in SongThe best known version of the ballad dealing with this tragedy was published in Gerald S. Doyle's Old-time Songs and Poetry of Newfoundland (editions 2, 3 and 4). This version was taken from Greenleaf and Mansfield (pp. 28 1-82): She reached the Gulf in early March, the white-coats for to slew,
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