Tale of Two Margarets Recalls Infamous Shipwreck

“It seems that everything went against them that morning,” an eyewitness recalled 60 years later of the loss of sisters Edith and Ada Fenwick sisters and others.

An otherwise dismal spring of 2011 was noteworthy for two events involving two Margarets:

Duncan’s Queen Margaret’s School celebrated its 90^th anniversary and Victoria’s St. Margaret’s School honoured the two sisters who founded it in 1908.

At least the Misses Denny and Geoghegan, founders of Queen Margaret’s i Duncan, lived to advanced ages to die of natural causes.

Not so the Misses Fenwick who were among those lost when the ill-fated inter-island steamship Iroquois foundered off Sidney in April 1911.

Both were born in South Shields, Durham, Eng., Edith Mary in 1868 and Ada Isabel in 1871. In December 1907, Isabel accompanied Margaret Barton, whom they’d befriended while attending finishing school in Germany, to Victoria where Isabel was to teach at Mrs. Blaiklock’s School, Margaret to teach privately. When Margaret went off to be a governess in Japan for a year, Isabel assumed her teaching duties, assisted by sister Edith who’d followed her to Victoria.

A year later, the Fenwicks opened St. Margaret’s School in a boarding house on Cook Street.

For Easter 1911, all three decided on a weekend excursion to Salt Spring Island. Thus it was that they joined the passengers and crew of the small coaster Iroquois at her Sidney dock. It was blowing heavily that morning of April 10–so heavily that some of her passengers, professional mariners among them, refused to board.

So ungainly in appearance, with her high bulwarks and narrow beam, that some had long predicted a tragic end, on this day the Iroquois’ decks were piled high with bales of hay. Then there was that gale, blowing from the southeast. None of this daunted part-owner and master Capt. Sears, however, who was anxious to push off.

When the last passenger, among them the Misses Fenwick and Barton, scrambled up the gangplank, the Iroquois backed from her dock and headed into the wind.

It soon became apparent to those watching from shore that she’d developed a heavy list. As she continued to heel over, it also became apparent that Capt. Sears was struggling to turn towards shore, to beach her, they learned later, in Roberts Bay.

But no sooner had she come about than she capsized–“just like that–just that fast,” according to an eyewitness–and plunged beneath the waves. Only 15 minutes had elapsed from the time she left the wharf.

The ship’s upper deck, torn loose when she flipped, drifted ashore at Mary’s Island with six male survivors. The resulting rescue operation consisting of a motley but hardy collection of motor launch, sailboat and native canoes managed to pick up more survivors. As the motorboat had approached the steward, Herb Moss, who was floating on a door, he shouted, “Don’t bother about me, pick up the two [sic] girls!”

He was referring to the Fenwicks, both of whom were, as was the ship’s purser, drifting on bales of hay. But as the launch approached in the heavy seas, its rudder line snapped, leaving its two occupants adrift. Without oars, they couldn’t even manoeuvre the launch and were reduced to watching impotently, as, one by one, men and women were washed from their precarious floats.

“It seems that everything went against them that morning,” witness and would-be rescuer Sid Roberts sadly recalled in 1970.

The Iroquois’ only survivors were those fortunate enough to have been carried ashore on the severed boat deck, one or two picked up by Indian canoemen from Duncan, and Capt. Sears and Chief Engineer Thompson–who’d rowed to safety in a lifeboat. When rescued, friend and travelling companion Margaret Barton was unconscious, severely burned on her hands from somehow having touched the ship’s boiler, and had to be revived in Sidney. The exact death toll, never confirmed, ranged from 11-22.

Upon her recovery, Miss Barton assumed the Fenwicks’ mantle. Originally from Southwood, Suffolk, Eng., she’d taught in schools in England and Wales before accompanying Isabel to Victoria, four years before. After serving as a private governess she’d joined the Fenwicks in running St. Margaret’s in 1909 and, after their deaths, continued as the school’s Headmistress, at a location on Fort Street.

She sold in 1928 to return to the Old Country, but re-purchased the school in 1936 and resumed her role as Headmistress until her retirement, this one final, three years later. She was 96 when she died in England in 1971.

Today, St. Margaret’s School promotes itself as “Canada’s International, Non-Denominational School for Girls” and as “Vancouver Island’s oldest independent school”.

In April 2011 many SMS students attended a memorial service for the tragic Fenwick sisters at Ross Bay Cemetery. Isabel is interred there but Edith’s body was never recovered.