Although the cable lines were still not functioning, Hollett wrote again on Wednesday to the government in the capital. The Daisyhad brought much sad news upon her return to Burin. This time Hollett reported the death of old Thomas Lockyer of Allan’s Island, who had been fatally crushed in the tidal wave. And he sadly recorded the death of Jessie and David Hipditch’s three children in Point au Gaul. He had already written of the deaths of Frances Kelly and her daughter, Dorothy, in Kelly’s Cove, and the near drowning of the elderly Inkpens from Stepaside.
Now the magistrate’s face was permanently the colour of a beet; it had turned that way after the Daisy’s Inspector Dee told him that fifteen of twenty-four families in Taylor’s Bay were homeless and that the harbour was a wasteland. Of the villages closer to his own home in Burin, he wrote to the prime minister, “William Moulton’s house is washed away. The family barely escaped with their lives… Corbin practically every bit of waterfront property with some dwellings gone.”
After some time alone in his parlour, Hollett made a bold suggestion to the prime minister:
In my opinion this affair is almost too big even for the Government and a general public subscription should be started immediately. It is impossible to describe this dire calamity which has come upon us. I respectfully suggest that an immediate investigation of the individual losses and destitution be made at once on the whole coast concerned. That a boat with provisions and coal be sent as soon as possible, and that a committee be appointed to handle its distribution.
On Thursday morning, three days after the tidal wave, telegraph operators in St. John’s reeled in shock when they received the news from the wireless operator on the SS Portiacalling from Burin. The message was sent to Prime Minister Squires from Magistrate Malcolm Hollett.
SS “PORTIA”
Via Cape Race
Nov. 21, 1929
Sir R.A. Squires,
St. John’s.
Burin experienced very severe earth tremors 5.05 PM Eighteenth followed at 7.35 PM by an immense 15 feet tidal wave which swept away everything along waterfront sixteen dwelling houses with nine lives mostly women and children gone four bodies recovered all communications by wire cut off report is that 18 lives have been lost at Lord’s Cove and Lamaline S. S. “DAISY” rendering every assistance St. Lawrence also swept no lives lost destruction property terrible and many people left destitute and homeless doing all possible to relieve suffering “DAISY” now at Lamaline writing particulars.
(Sgd) Magistrate Hollett.
The telegraph operators had seen St. John’s harbour empty for a full ten minutes on Monday evening but that was all. It had been a strange sight—a once in a lifetime kind of thing, everyone said—but it had not been followed by anything like the monstrous waves to which the villages of Burin had been subjected. Instead, St. John’s harbour had slowly filled with sea water again until it regained its usual fullness. People had even laughed about it. But in the mercantile town of Burin and neighbouring villages, they learned, everything had been destroyed, and most sadly of all, women, men, and children had died. Up to Thursday, the twenty-first, the telegraph operators in the capital knew almost nothing of the tragedies farther south on the peninsula.
Sir Richard Squires, Newfoundland’s prime minister, got Hollett’s message just before noon. Straight as a flagpole, Squires stood in his office giving dictation. Although he was lean, his little round glasses made him look owlish and academic, though he was neither. He seemed, in fact, to sail from one ill-advised decision and scandal to another. His last term of office had ended under the cloud of corruption charges which were never proven and rumours continued to swirl about him. Anderson, as he was known to friends, also lacked the easy charm of his wife, Lady Helena Strong Squires. Although Helena was the first woman elected to the House of Assembly, she had initially opposed women’s suffrage. Now, as a member of the House, she had won many fans.
Squires sank into his overstuffed leather chair as he listened to a messenger read him a telegram from Burin. He crossed his arms in front of his chest as if to ward off what he was hearing.
“My God, it’s winter,” he muttered. “It’s bloody cold out and the fishing’s over. And the dead…”
He stood up quickly. He wiped his brow and telephoned Clyde Lake, the Minister of Marine and Fisheries, to inform him of the disaster and to ask him to ready his officials for immediate assistance to the stricken region. Squires then directed the Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries, W.P. Rogerson, to contact the railway authorities to commission the SS Meigleas a relief ship. He directed his officials to organize a special meeting of Committee of Council, which was also attended by Clyde Lake and Dr. L.E. Keegan, Superintendent of the General Hospital.
Squires emerged from the meeting to send a telegram to Magistrate Hollett:
AS RESULT MESSAGES RECEIVED FROM YOU AND OTHERS THIS MORNING S.S. MEIGLEIS BEING DISPATCHED THIS EVENING WITH MINISTER MARINE AND FISHERIES DOCTORS MOSDELL CAMPBELL AND MURPHY AND MR. FUDGE TWO NURSES MEDICAL SUPPLIES AND PROVISIONS SO THAT WHOLE SITUATION MAY BE FULLY AND EFFECTIVELY HANDLED WITH GREATEST POSSIBLE DISPATCH STOP KINDLY KEEP ME FULLY ADVISED ALSO PLEASE NOTIFY OTHER STRICKEN SETTLEMENTS OF DISPATCH OF RELIEF SHIP.
After the meeting Squires’ bureaucrats drew up a list of provisions to be purchased and then had these rushed to the dock in St. John’s for shipment on the Meigle. Dr. Keegan prepared medical and nursing supplies, while Dr. Mosdell, Chairman of the Board of Health, arranged for doctors and nurses to join the ship to take care of the injured. At this point, the authorities in St. John’s could only guess at the scale of injuries and illness brought on by the tidal wave. They knew Magistrate Hollett was not given to exaggeration; there had to be more deaths south of Burin.
In St. John’s, everyone involved worked frantically, uttering prayers as they rushed from their offices to the Royal Stores, where they bought most of the goods, to the waterfront. By 8:30 p.m. the Meiglewas loaded with personnel and provisions. The Meiglewas built in Scotland in 1886 and weighed 835 tons. Originally called the Solway, she was more than 220 feet long. The Reid family, Newfoundland merchants, brought her to the island country in the winter of 1913 and named her after a place near their patriarch’s birthplace. They used her as a passenger and cargo vessel. Now, under the ginger-haired Captain Vince Dalton, she would be on a mission like no other.
The ship carried 2,688 four-pound sacks of flour; one hundred barrels of beef; one hundred barrels of pork; two thousand pounds of sugar; 1,020 pounds of tea; two hundred pounds of butter; and four hundred quarter-bags of hard tack. She also carried nails, window glass and putty for house repairs, but no lumber. Captain Vince Dalton, tall and quiet, and his ship pulled away from the finger piers in St. John’s harbour at 9:30 p.m. and disappeared beyond the Narrows a few minutes later.
By three-thirty the next afternoon, the Meiglewas tied up at the wharf in Burin.
Not long after landing, Dr. Mosdell sent a cable to Dr. Barnes in St. John’s, describing the Meigle’s November 22 arrivaclass="underline"
Shores of Burin Beach strewed with wreckage of all sorts. Houses and stores floating waters of Harbour and dotted along beach partially or wholly submerged. Stages and wharves swept away in almost every Cove and Harbour. Destitution general wherever tidal wave did its work of destruction. Food fuel and clothing badly needed. Stores of food on ship sufficient meet present requirements. Medical and Nursing staff on ship now busy attending number of cases of severe injury and of shock consequent on sudden and tragic nature of disaster.