water line. The conditions are beyond describing as people lost all their coal provisions for the winter, the merchants are in practically the same state and one can hardly help the other. My own nerves are so shaken I can hardly write coherently or legibly as only a person that has gone through such an experience can understand it.
Organized relief should be undertaken as quickly as possible as the winter will soon be on us and hundreds of people have lost their all. As no doubt you will get a full report from Official Circles, you will be able to judge. My object in writing is to stress the urgency of immediate help to the stricken places. Some have no home or any means or getting anything to rebuild and have nothing only what they could catch from the water as they fled from their houses. I know the appeal will not be in vain.
18
Nineteen-year-old Isabel Gibbons was the telegraph operator in Marystown on the Burin Peninsula in November, 1929, when the waves came crashing into the shores. Isabel was carrying on a family tradition that included her uncle who had worked with Western Union in New York and her older sister, Elizabeth, who worked with the same company in Boston. Isabel came from St. Mary’s on the Avalon Peninsula in eastern Newfoundland, where her paternal grandmother was the first operator. In turn, Mrs. Gibbons passed on her skills to her son, Isabel’s father, who taught his daughters telegraphy, a valuable communication tool in those days. Mrs. Gibbons ran the telegraph office in her home. It was no surprise, then, that her four daughters became telegraph operators, too.
Isabel started work in Marystown, one of the most sheltered harbours on the Burin Peninsula, in 1927. She lived about a mile from the telegraph office, which she shared with Eddy Reddy, who served as the postmaster. They also had a messenger on staff, a young married woman. Isabel worked 9:00 to 6:00 from Monday to Saturday, and 9:00 to 10:00 and 4:00 to 5:00 on Sunday.
Mrs. Forsey, the operator from Grand Bank, was sending messages to St. John’s when the Marystown telegraph office pens and inkwells started to rattle on the evening of November 18, 1929.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Mrs. Forsey called over the wire.
Isabel stared at the shaking items on her desk. She was awestruck.
“I…I don’t know,” she answered her colleague in Grand Bank.
“What’s gone wrong?” Mrs. Forsey cried again. “Everything is rattling.”
“It’s rattling here, too,” Isabel said. As her voice faded away, the noise grew louder. Then the line snapped and she could hear Mrs. Forsey no more. The office was eerily quiet. Isabel removed her headset and spun around in her chair to face Eddy, who stood behind her, half a dozen envelopes in his hand. He was like a statue.
“The cable between Burin and Marystown is gone,” Isabel said calmly, though her heart raced in her chest. She looked down at her hands, shaking on the armrests of her chair. She thought of the others on the line, people she knew so well, although she had never met most of them: operators from Garnish, Fortune, Lamaline, St. Lawrence, Epworth, Burin, Baine Harbour. Everyday she heard everything they said on the lines. They took turns sending messages, each one more patient than the last.
Somehow Isabel could still get through to St. John’s. As she realized this, she also noticed that the rumbling and rattling had stopped. She checked the line to Grand Bank but found that it still wasn’t working. She would try to reach the capital, though. But then a cable between Terrenceville and Baine Harbour broke and she couldn’t reach St. John’s. She frowned and looked at Eddy who shrugged, his lips pressed together. Neither spoke. Isabel could not communicate with anyone, but she stayed at her post until closing time at 6:00 p.m.
That night she walked over to nearby Creston with a group of young women. Like Marystown, Creston was protected by Mortier Bay, which separated it from open waters. By now Isabel had heard incredible stories about waves as high as buildings in New York. The women stood at the waterline and watched floating sheds and skiffs ripped from their moorings. They knew that places like Kelly’s Cove and Port au Bras were more exposed to the sea and they worried about the damage that might have occurred there.
“I wonder if anyone died?” Isabel said.
“My dad said a score of people have died farther out the bay,” one of the young women answered her.
“That’s just rumour,” said another. “No one knows for sure. And people always exaggerate when the unexpected happens.”
Isabel returned to her office the next morning at nine o’clock sharp, rushing to her lines to check for signs of life. There was none and her shoulders slumped in despair. She shook her head at Eddy when he appeared at the door. He sighed in response. Between customers coming in to check on telegraphs and mail, Isabel and Eddy traded stories they had heard about houses swept out to sea and little girls drowned.
When Isabel kept saying it’s just rumours at this point, Eddy said, “There was a time before telegraphs, Isabel, and we had to go by each other’s word then.” Then he stopped while Isabel bowed her head.
“We do know there was terrible loss of life in Port au Bras and that Vince Kelly’s wife and daughter are drowned,” he added.
Isabel’s face reddened.
“I’m sorry, Isabel,” he said. “It must be hard on you, being away from your own people at a time like this.”
The young woman nodded.
“I wish I knew what was going on,” she said quietly.
“That’s your way, being a telegraph operator,” Eddy said, his mouth turning up. “You’re a pro through and through!”
Isabel let out a small laugh through the fogginess that clogged her chest and throat.
She went into her office the next day and the day after, though the lines remained dormant and broken. She stayed until six o’clock every day, listening to the people of Marystown come in and tell what they had seen and heard since the waves had crashed upon the shores of the peninsula. The snowstorm of the nineteenth was followed by a calm on the twentieth, which seemed to offer some small promise that there was something other than chaos in the world.
But by the end of the third day, stories were starting to trickle in from as far away as Lord’s Cove and Taylor’s Bay. Could it really be true that a woman had lost all her children to the tidal wave? Was a toddler really saved after her mother and siblings had drowned? Isabel wondered and she reflected that her mother often told her there was much that only God could understand.
On the fourth day after the
Almost unique in the region, the telegraph office at Epworth was capable of receiving and sending messages. In the days following the tidal wave, people from surrounding communities had poured into the Epworth office to communicate with friends and relatives in St. John’s and other parts of the country. The operator could not keep up with the volume of messages and was desperate for Isabel’s help.
As soon as she landed in Epworth, Isabel went straight to the office and to work. She barely had her coat off when the Epworth operator handed her a stack of messages. “Hello! Thanks!” the bulky woman said breathlessly, and quickly returned to her own pile of papers.
