February 4, 1882
Feb 4, 1882 - Poet Edwin John Pratt was born at Western Bay, Nfld
Pratt, E.J. Poet E.J. Pratt, c 1930 (courtesy David Pitt)
The Ground Swell
Three times we heard it calling with a low,
Insistent note; at ebb-tide on the noon;
And at the hour of dusk, when the red moon
Was rising and the tide was on the flow;
Then, at the hour of midnight once again,
Though we had entered in and shut the door
And drawn the blinds, it crept up from the shore
And smote upon a bedroom window-pane;
Then passed away as some dull pang that grew
Out of the void before Eternity
Had fashioned out an edge for human grief;
Before the winds of God had learned to strew
His harvest-sweepings on a winter sea
To feed the primal hungers of a reef.
The schooner President Coaker was built at Port Union, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland in 1919, by the Union Ship Building Company. In January 1924 she was returning from Pernambuco (now named Recife), Brazil when she ran aground at Shoe Cove near Cape Ballard (about ninety kilometres south of St. John's). The schooner was completely destroyed and her crew of six were lost at sea. No bodies were ever recovered. Credit: unkown