Minnie Paterson, my other illustrious namesake

The 169-foot San Francisco bark Coloma drifted, a helpless punching bag before the sou’easter, each 90-mile-an-hour gust jarring her to her keel and pounding the 850-ton ship beneath the waves.

She was awash, her lifeboats gone, a spider web of collapsed rigging spilled over her sides.

Clutching the stump of mizzenmast were 10 frightened men.

Captain J. Allison had long given up hope. In the raging dawn of December 6, 1906 the sea and sky met in a jagged grey line, offering little chance that their tattered ensign flying upside down in the international distress signal would be spotted.

Then, poking through the murk like an eerie yellow finger was Cape Beale light, marking the entrance to Barkley Sound. From its height of 51 metres its beam cast a slim ray of hope for the 10 frightened who eyed it hungrily, praying for some sign of recognition, of salvation. There was no panic, just a desperate plea for a miracle.

Then they could hear the razor-edged rocks gnawing on the bow, and the old Coloma groaned violently…

Lightkeeper Thomas Paterson was worried. He’d spent the night in the lantern room, 170 feet above the sea, drinking strong tea and chewing on his pipe. His eyes followed the red flash, then the white beacon as Cape Beale light (http://lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=1199)

stabbed outward, 19 miles into the darkness. Above the banshee wailing of the wind he couldn’t even hear his own foghorn. The tower shivered under the onslaught of breakers booming in from 1000 miles at sea to shake the very land.

As a timid dawn broke at 3 a.m., wife Minnie brought him fresh tea. She, too, was restless. As their five children slept soundly below, the couple stared into the gloom, expecting they knew not what.

Suddenly Tom rubbed his eyes and pointed: “Minnie, look! A dis-masted ship!”

One thought sped through their minds. The derelict’s only chance was the lighthouse tender Quadra, sheltering in Bamfield Inlet, six miles away. But the telegraph key was dead. So was the telephone. And Tom couldn’t leave his post.

Even as Minnie said, “I’ll go, Tom,” she was pulling on heavy clothing.

His slippers would offer her better footing on the shoreline trail, and she put them on. With a quick farewell kiss, she grabbed a lantern and with faithful collie Yarrow began her immortal race against time as Tom readied a lifeboat in case the Quadra couldn’t arrive in time.

The trail, just a series of blazes on trees supporting the telegraph line, was difficult to follow at best of times. At the height of a gale, it was hell. Pressed by urgency, Minnie moved as fast as she dared, as rain, driven horizontally, blocked her vision and threatened to snuff out her small lantern. Every few feet, she had to feel her way around the severed telegraph wire that snaked across the path, almost tripping her.

Frightened and bewildered Yarrow remained close by her side as the trail became a succession of windfalls, icy water traps and knee-deep mud. But she pushed onward, over stumps and rocks and through thick underbrush to Bamfield Creek which, swelled by torrential rains, had washed out part of the trail. So she moved downstream, waded across and turning to the unbroken bush, cut cross-country.

Four hours after leaving the lighthouse, her clothing in rags, soaked through and exhausted, she reached the Bamfield home of friend and former Cape Beale lightkeeper Mrs. James McKay, only to be told that Jim was out, trying to repair the telegraph line.

Annie McKay suggested that they take her boat and warn the Quadra themselves.

By this time the storm was abating but heavy swells buffeted their rowboat and slowed their progress. Then they saw Quadra’s longboat coming toward them with Captain Hackett and two seamen. As they neared, Minnie shouted, “Close in to Cape Beale there’s a ship coming ashore with the crew in the rigging. She’s not more than a mile from shore!”

As Hackett got his ship underway the women made their way back to the McKay home, where Minnie declined an invitation to rest. Her baby needed her, she said, as she began retracing her steps homeward.

Thus alerted, the Quadra was able to rescue the Coloma’s crew.

Ironically, because of poor visibility, neither Paterson was aware of the fact until a week later when the telegraph line was finally repaired.

Like the original Grace Darling of lighthouse fame, Minnie Paterson captured the public’s imagination. The Canadian and American governments paid her homage and a public fund was organized to buy her a Christmas present as a more tangible reward. Among the tributes, which included cash, jewellery and silver plate, were a new pair of slippers for Tom.

Like her British prototype Grace Darling* who also rescued seamen in a gale, Minnie paid dearly for her courage. She died of tuberculosis after four years of poor health, said to be the result of exposure and over-exertion. Husband Thomas died on his way overseas with the army during the First World War. Annie McKay died at Bamfield in 1956.

A citation awarded Minnie Paterson by the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific reads in part: “…RESOLVED that we, the seamen of America, fully recognize her sterling worth as the highest type of womanhood, deeply appreciating her unselfish sacrifices in behalf of those ‘who go down to the sea in ships’ and assure her and hers of our undying gratitude.”

*England’s Grace Darling, the 22-year-old daughter of a lighthouse keeper, grew up on Longstone in the Farne Islands, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. She was said to be “intensely shy and private,” traits that didn’t serve her well when she was nationally acclaimed for her heroism in helping her father rescue survivors of the S.S. Forfarshire, sunk in a gale in September 1838.

When nine of the ship’s company were stranded on the wave-swept rocks, Grace and her father risked their own lives to row through heavy seas to their rescue.

Grace (her father’s heroism overlooked in the public frenzy that followed) (https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/womens-history/maritime) became “a virtual cult figure,” the subject of poems, paintings and songs. But, just four years later, she died from tuberculosis.

An ornate monument was erected in her honour in the Bamburgh churchyard and, nearby, is the Grace Darling Museum. ( https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/behind-the-scenes/blog/grace-darling-victorian-heroine..)

All of this was a far cry from the honours accorded Minnie Paterson B.C.’s own ‘Grace Darling.’

I’d love to be able claim Minnie Paterson as a relative but such, so far as I know, isn’t the case. I have to settle for the satisfaction of celebrating her in print, something I’ve been doing, off and on, since the 1960s.

For archival photos of Minnie and Tom Paterson, the Coloma, Quadra, Cape Beale lighthouse, etc. http://elinordewire.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-heroism-of-minnie-patterson.html

For artists’ renderings of Grace Darling’s epic feat, see the Royal National Lifeboat Institution website.

Other posts of interest

See also: Elizabeth Sea