Aug 19, 1830 hours.
SS Otter, Ocean Falls.
Brown thought a smoke cloud would obscure the approach to the ruins of Ocean Falls. But the destruction had happened more than 24 hours before. The
Otter rounded a bend in Cousin’s Inlet in clear air, and all of a sudden, there was the town. Or half of the town. To the left, was a brand new company townsite of white frame houses and administrative buildings. The barrel roofed General Store greeted them with
Ocean Falls painted high on its clapboard sides.
On the right side sticking out of the bay was a geometric pattern of wooden pilings, truncated and blackened on top. Close to shore, some rusted tangled pieces of metal remained above the surface. A torrent of water gushed forth from a burst metal pipeline that ended jaggedly at the shoreline. The air did smell slightly of smoke, but of old wet smoke. Brown was reminded of, as a child, playing in a neighborhood house that burned and sat abandoned for years. This underlying odor was mixed with the smell of creosote, and burned fish. An unnatural number of gulls flocked in the bay. They bobbed on the water, and whirled overhead, and walked on the log booms and shore, pecking at the ground. Crows and eagles and ravens were also foraging all around the shoreline. A cacophony of bird arguments coursed through the air as the different species shouldered in on each other.
A splayed pair of masts jutted from the bay, at the boundary between the pilings and the open water. Several fishboats and tugboats were anchored off the town site. The
Otter was the first ship of any size on the scene. Some of the log booms had broken apart and loose logs floated about the inlet. Lacking a suitable wharf, the
Otter dropped anchor. The captain immediately sent ashore a boat with a doctor and several nurses and orderlies brought from the Bella Bella hospital. Brown went ashore with this crew.
The civilian population mobbed the boat at wharfside, falling over each other to shout their stories and demand information. “What is being done?” “How could this be allowed to happen?” “What is happening now?”
A man in a grey suit raised one arm above his head as he pushed his way to the front of the crowd towards Brown. A single Provincial Policeman accompanied him, then helped to clear a path shoreward through the crowd for the doctor and his medical party.
“Richard McNulty, manager,” the man introduced himself to Brown.
“Tell me what happened here,” said Brown. “We are trying to construct a picture of what the Germans are up to. Perhaps if we learn their habits we can predict their next move.”
McNulty led Brown to a quieter location, overlooking the bay. The
Otter had begun to load its boats with supplies for the General Store. “The liner,” began McNulty “the
Princess Charlotte, steamed into the bay around quarter after one in the afternoon, and tied up to the deep water wharf.” He gestured at the pilings, empty space, and protruding masts of the wreck. “The ship was flying the Red Ensign, but we had already heard the warning from Swanson Bay on the wireless, so we were not fooled. I went down to the ship and told them so.”
“You talked to the German crew?” said Brown, incredulous.
“Yes, a very young captain, I recall his name was Von Spee.”
Brown scribbled furiously in his notebook. “Young. Von Spee,” he repeated.
“He told us to evacuate the mills. He said they were going to destroy the war industries, but that Swanson Bay had been an accident and he wished not to cause any civilian casualties.”
“The German Captain said that?” asked Brown.
“Yes, and they didn’t. We did have some minor injuries, none from direct German action, and there we no deaths.”
“How did this unfold? Brown asked, “what did they do?” He was not getting the answers he had imagined.
“We evacuated the mills as they asked,” said McNulty. “In fact the men had already started evacuating spontaneously. Everyone knew the story of Swanson Bay, and there was something of a panic. The Germans rigged the mills and the freighter for demolition, and then blew everything up. They were very efficient. What was left caught on fire, and the fires were not fought. We were left with what you see. The Germans were only here for no more than half an hour. Probably less. The longest half hour of my life.”
“And the Princess Charlotte was the only German raider?” asked Brown.
“A cruiser came and sat in the harbour covering the town with its guns, once the young Von Spee announced his intentions,” said McNulty. “I must say it looked very intimidating.”
“Describe the cruiser,” asked Brown excitedly.
“Three funnels with a wider space between the second and third, two masts with searchlights on platforms. I counted what looked like five guns on the broadside. I could not see a name on her, she was too far away.
“Very useful description,” said Brown still scribbling in his notebook. “The cruiser sounds very much like the
Nürnberg. And it couldn’t really be any other. Ahh… go back. You said the German, Von Spee, said that Swanson Bay had been an accident. What did he mean?”
“He said they had been fired upon, and that one of his men had been killed.”
“Fired upon?” Brown stopped writing and looked up. “By who?”
“I understood him to mean the civilian population of Swanson Bay. That was all he said. Oh, you may be interested in talking to the crew of the
Kintuck. The freighter sitting on the bottom of the bay. They were marched off their ship by the German landing party. They are billeted here for now at the Empire Hotel. This way.”
McNulty led Brown from the waterfront along a plank road through the small tidy houses of the town. Much construction was in evidence, with basement excavations and half-framed structures interspersed with the lived-in houses. Brown noticed that many of the windows facing the harbour were broken. “I thought you said the town was not bombarded?”
“The freighter exploded before it sank. Something in the cargo. The town was bombarded, but with flying cans of fish. It caused some injuries, but nothing serious. All in all we were very fortunate.” Seagulls sat on the roofs of some of the houses, pecking at the gutters.
Brown met with the crew of the
SS Kintuck. They were resentful that their ship had been sunk by the Hun, and that they were stranded in the Canadian wilderness, but they had no complaints about their captors. All agreed that the German landing party had treated them respectfully, as fellow sailors. The ship’s quartermaster had noticed that the boarding party carried a wooden Dynamite crate labeled in English, and that there was a bill of lading stapled to the crate that listed Anyox, B.C. as the destination. Brown took copious notes.
Afterwards, McNulty took Brown to the infirmary, attached to the town doctor’s house. “The hospital is scheduled to be built next year,” said McNulty. “We are lucky we did not suffer more casualties.”
Two men lay in beds in the infirmary. A nurse was giving them oxygen from a tank, from time to time. McNulty introduced Brown. “These men inhaled some of the chemical fumes from the mill fire,” the nurse said, with a Scandinavian accent. “They will be fine, but they have to rest for now.” Two other beds sat vacant.
The doctor entered the room. He wore small spectacles and a stethoscope around his neck. “Ah, the navy arrives, just in the nick of time,” he laughed. “I’m sorry, I sent your medical party away. I accepted their supplies, but there is no help we need really. We were quite busy here, for a while, but that is all taken care of now.”
“Please tell,” said Brown, taking out his notebook.
“We have these men here,” the doctor said, gesturing at the two men in the beds. The men smiled back, weakly. “They got too close to the cloud of sulphur trioxide, and singed their lungs a bit. I am keeping them here under observation. The rest I sent home. Not enough room here. There was a mill worker who tripped running across the bridge, and broke his wrist. Another woman broke her arm falling down a flight of stairs. Half a dozen people were hit by flying cans of salmon. It sounds funny, but those one pound cans are… one pound, falling from the sky. Those caused contusions mostly. A twelve year old boy got a nasty goose egg, knocked him unconscious. His mother was distraught. A couple of people were cut when their windows were smashed by flying tins. And a tugboat operator got a burst eardrum from being too close to the explosion. So a regular massacre it was, although not worse than a typical Saturday night in Prince Rupert.”
The
Otter sounded its horn. Brown made his way back to the waterfront. The ship had finished unloading provisions for Ocean Falls, and was preparing to leave. The crew of the
Kintuck was offered passage to Prince Rupert, and from there, rail passage to the rest of Canada. They had declined, preferring for the time being to stay off of waters where marauding Germans may still be lurking.
The
Otter raised anchor, and Brown watched Ocean Falls shrink to stern.
Photo History Of Ocean falls
www.oceanfallsmuseum.com
Photo History Of Ocean falls
www.oceanfallsmuseum.com