The Speares

Now we're going to head southwest through the interior of the island towards the coast and the ferry terminal. There's nothing in the interior but moose, which are an invasive species introduced in 1904 to attract tourism and feed miners and lumbermen, but we'll keep that for another story. While our destination today is Port-aux-Basques, there's actually no airport there; sufficient flat land for airports can be hard to find on the Rock. So we'll be landing a bit to the north at St. Andrew's. Either way, we'll be heading deep into the heart of what was, at one time, Basque territory.

The Basque people are a hardy breed. Though exactly what that breed is remains open to debate. Some Basques will happily tell you that they are the last remaining Cro-Magnon people, and there is actually some evidence to that effect. Some hold that the Basques were Neolithic hunter-gatherers from Turkey who moved west and took up farming. Others have arcane DNA evidence that Basques came from Sardinia. Whatever the truth, they were a geographically isolated people.

They have historically inhabited the Basque Country, Euskal Herria in the Euskara tongue, on the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, straddling Spain and France. The region was and is inhospitable. And generally speaking, so are the Basques. If you're trying to invade at least. So they were pretty much left alone throughout much of the turmoil starting with the Roman invasion of 196 B.C., the Muslim invasion of 711 A.D., and various Germanic and Celtic invasions. You simply can't march an army into Basque territory. And if you do, you'll find it to be full of Basques.

The Basque region is rich in iron deposits. That and its proximity to the ocean made the Basques a seafaring culture. And they were especially interested in whales. Whales were valuable as a source of meat, to be sure. The King of Castile, Léon and Galicia (the three regions to the west of the Basques, along the top of the Iberian Peninsula), granted the Basques trading rights on whale products in the town of Burgos with the understanding that "in accordance with custom, the King should have a slice of each whale, along the backbone, from the head to the tail". But the principle use for whales was the oil. Oil lamps were vastly superior to candles. But whales are wily, and hard to catch.

To catch a whale in the Bay of Biscay in the early 13th century you would station full time lookouts in the vigías, or stone lookout towers. When a whale was spotted, the watchman would light a fire, beat a drum, wave a flag, or some such. Then the whale team would swing into action. A smaller boat would attack the whale with a two-pronged harpoon attached to a line. This would restrain the animal so it could be killed with lances. Then another, much larger, boat would row the carcass ashore, depositing it at the high tide mark. There the animal would be flensed (skinned, then the blubber removed) and the fat would be rendered into oil in a boiling house.

By far the easiest way to catch a whale, so as to boil it up into oil, was to injure its calf. Then the mother would come to its aid, and you would end up with two whales. As many as a hundred whales a year where taken in this manner in the bay at the height of the whaling industry, in the second half of the 13th century. But then, for reasons known only to the whales, it became a rarity to see one in the Bay of Biscay, let alone catch one. So the Basques had to look further from home.

Some sources say that as early as 1372 Basque fishermen noted the increasing number of whales as they approached the rich cod fishing grounds far to the west. That may or may not be true, but it is certainly true that by 1530 records were being kept in sufficient detail that we know La Catherine d'Urtubie, a French Basque ship, returned from Terranova with 4,500 dried and cured cod as well as twelve barrels of brined whale meat. Within twenty years Basques were delivering large cargos of Newfoundland whale products to Bristol, London and Flanders. The baleen could be used as something like ivory, for making knife handles, or farthingales, a kind of hoop structure within women's dresses. The oil could be used, depending on its purity, for lamps, or perhaps mixed with oakum and tar, it could be used to caulk ships.

The best whale grounds in Newfoundland were in Grandbaya, known today as the Strait of Belle Isle, between Newfoundland and Labrador. But it's a treacherous, windy, icy place. You wouldn't want to spend much time there if you weren't actively whaling and you for sure wouldn't want to overwinter there. The little harbour of Red Bay on the Labrador coast seems to have been a popular place to park your whaler; you can tell because there are the remains of four whaling vessels there.

With even the harbours of Grandbaya being treacherous, the whalers needed a port far to the south on the much more hospitable Cabot Strait. And there was, in fact, a large natural port with a brook to supply fresh water, just the other side of Cape Ray. This was a perfect place to rest and prepare for the gruelling whaling season on the way to the whaling grounds, and the perfect place to rest and possibly repair on the way back home. As a settlement it was seasonal at best, although it did start showing up on maps in 1687.

The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 saw France cede most of its rights in Newfoundland to the British in exchange for the unimpeded use of some coastal areas for its fisheries. When French fishermen started overwintering in the ice-free harbour, it needed a name. And Port-aux-Basques seemed about right.

Over time other settlers and settlements showed up; people from the Channel Islands (Guernsey and Jersey) created the settlement of Channel; others came and created Mouse Island. These settlements eventually became incorporated into the larger town of Port-aux-Basques. And it seemed that the area was happy being, and would remain, a cluster of fishing villages. But Port-aux-Basques is the closest deep-water harbour to Cape Ray, the extreme south-western tip of Newfoundland. And that point is a mere 110 kilometers from its counterpart on Cape Breton Island, Point North. In between is the Cabot Straight. This proximity to the rest of North America is what has given Port-aux-Basques its place in history.

In 1856 the Cabot Straight portion of the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable was laid. When the entire link was up and running two years later it allowed Queen Victoria to send an official congratulations to the new U.S. President through the repeater station at Port-aux-Basques. Sadly, that cable only worked for three weeks but subsequent efforts proved more durable and Port-aux-Basques was one link in the revolutionary new means of communicating across the ocean - "Two weeks in two minutes!" was the slogan.

In 1893 it was decided to extend the Caribou, the narrow gauge railway known affectionately as the Newfie Bullet, from St. George's to the harbour at Port-aux-Basques. This was to coincide with the new docks being built for the steamer Bruce which was the first ferry to the mainland. On June 30th, 1898, it was possible to take a train from St. John's to Port-aux-Basques, and thence on the Bruce all the way to Canada.

Ferrys have been operating out of the port ever since, except for a period in 1942. The steamer SS Caribou, operating between Port-aux-Basques and Cape Breton, was sunk by U-69 on 14th October leaving twenty widows in the Port-aux-Basques area.

In the mid 1960s, the Trans-Canada Highway link between Port-aux-Basques and St. John's was completed, which was the end of the line for the railway, but the beginning of a whole new era of importance for the little town as the gateway to everything else. With this growing importance, of course, came a growth in population. In 2021 Port-aux-Basques had a population of 3,547 people living in 1,814 private dwellings. In 2022, more than a hundred of those private dwellings were washed out to sea by Hurricane Fiona.

Anyhow, here we are in port-aux-Basques!

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