Aquaforte Harbour to St. John's, Newfoundland

At 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon, we smoothly slid up beside the busy wharf of St. John's, Newfoundland, with Peter parallel parking our boat between another sailing vessel and a large, black tug boat. The couple on the other sailing boat were ready to receive our lines, but Peter did such an expert job that Enis could easily jump from our deck to the wharf. 

This is a busy port city. The container ship dock is off our starboard stern and is active all times of day, and the downtown area is right beside us. After we settled in, we set off to explore, although we were delayed by many people stopping to talk to us about our boat and our travels, including a British couple who are also OCC members. 

St. John's is one-fourth the size of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and we were expecting things to be on a smaller scale but similar. However, unlike Halifax, there is no development on the waterfront for strolling, and we found the pedestrian streets less charming and less vibrant. We had noted in Halifax that the streets were all clean and we had seen no homeless people and wondered if this might be due to universal health care and more safety nets in Canada, but we have had to re-assess this theory here, as we saw litter, particularly cigarette butts, in every corner and many people yesterday evening who, if not homeless, were down on their luck; a couple people asked us for money. 

After walking around several city blocks, we chose a restaurant, the Gypsy Tea Room, for dinner. The food, atmosphere and service were all very good, and we made little effort to resist the temptations on the dessert menu, choosing two types of cheesecake.

This morning, Peter went out and about while I was still sleeping, finding a coffee for Enis and talking with the harbormaster, who stopped by, and couples on other sailing boats, getting lots of information about the eastern Newfoundland coast.

We had a quick breakfast of toast, yogurt and fruit salad, locked up the boat, and set off for Signal Hill. On the way, we passed a more pleasant part of the waterfront, There is a lot of signage around about the history of the town and its former and extant buildings, but, without a basic knowledge of the local history, we found them uninspiring and so skipped many of them. We passed by the Newfoundland War Memorial near the waterfront and admired slightyly bigger-than-life-size statues of the Newfoundland dog and the Labrador dog. 

The War Memorial and colorful houses on Duckworth Street

Peter and Enis by the sculptures or a Newfoundland and a Labrador dog

From there it was a steady uphill walk to reach Signal Hill and the Cabot Tower. We stopped in the Visitor Center and watched a movie about the history of the location as a place where signalmen (and their families) lived, stationed there to raise flags to signal the merchants in town of incoming vessels. There was also a lot of information on the hill as a military fortification and on St. John's role in World War II.

Rocks and plants along the walk up to Signal Hill

Meadow of purple loosestrife

View of the harbor and St. John's

St. John's claims to be the easternmost city in North America (excluding cities in Greenland, which is also on the North American Plate). The Venetian explorer John Cabot, in the service of England, became the first Europeans to sail into the harbour, in 1497. By 1540, French, Spanish and Portuguese ships crossed the Atlantic annually to fish the waters off the Avalon Peninsula. On August 5, 1583, an English aristocrat, Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed into the harbor and claimed the area as England's first overseas colony under Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I. There was no permanent population, however, and Gilbert was lost at sea during his return voyage, thereby ending any immediate plans for settlement. The British government, under pressure from the West Country fishing industry, which had control of the fishing grounds offshore, forbade permanent settlement along the coast at first, and St. John's did not become a permanent settlement until the 1630s (making Jamestown, Virginia; St, George's, Bermuda; and two settlements in Newfoundland older than St. John's).

Over the following centuries, the British had control over St. John's and surrounding area, although battles with the Dutch and particularly with the French occurred over the period of nearly a century and a half, with the French taking the town twice by land. The British were prepared for attack by sea but not watchful for attack by land, which occurred in 1705 and 1708. The final battle of the Seven Years' War in North America was fought in 1762, in St. John's. Following a surprise capture of the town by the French early in the year, the British responded and, at the Battle of Signal Hill, the French surrendered St. John's to British forces. 

During the 19th century, Signal Hill was manned specifically during the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War. A second construction period in Signal Hill's history saw the construction of the Queen's Battery Barracks, which has been completely restored to the period of 1862, where we saw a military re-enactor load and fire a musket. Cabot Tower began in 1897 to commemorate both the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897 and the 400th anniversary of John Cabot's landfall in 1497. The building was declared officially open in 1900. The practical uses of the building were flag mast signaling and as a Marconi wireless station.

Queen's Batttery

Musket firing

Other than in reference to British settlement and military history and empire building, St. John's is famous as the place where, on 12 December 1901, the first transatlantic transmission was received by Guglielmo Marconi in the abandoned fever and diphtheria hospital, which has since been destroyed by fire. The transmission, the letter "S" in Morse code, originated from his Poldhu Wireless Station in Cornwall, England. In Cabot Tower, there is an excellent exhibition about Marconi, the successful transmission, and his development of transatlantic transmission in North America afterwards. The first transatlantic transmission was a daring accomplishment, not based on scientific knowledge of the time, when the existence of the ionosphere and its property of refracting radio waves for long-distance communication was unknown.

From the top of Signal Hill (548 feet above sea level), we took the North Head Trail down the seaward side and walked along the cliffs. Along the way, we found Adirondack chairs for resting, an abundance of wildflowers, stunning views of the harbor and the coastline, and, most impressively, a vertical fault-line crack in the bedrock. We were 90 feet above the water, and we heard the wind in the large crevasse and heard ocean waves breaking. This seemed impossible, but we climbed to the top of the fence and looked straight down and could see the water!

View of Cabot Tower

Wildflowers along the North Head Trail

Peter and Enis relaxing in Adirondack chairs on the trail

Vertical fissure on Signal Hill 

We arrived back at the edge of town, at the colorful neighborhood known as the Battery, where houses are perched on the steep lower slopes of Signal Hill near the entrance to the harbor, some seeming a bit precarious. 

Peter and Enis in the Battery neighborhood

The Battery neighborhood

Part of a mural in the Battery

Having entirely missed lunch, with our only nourishment since breakfast granola bars, we were hungry and thirsty and chose a Mexican restaurant on the pedestrian section of Duckworth Street, once again quite satisfied with our meal out. 

We have spent the evening on board. While it was warm (70 degrees!) in the morning and afternoon, during our dinner the temperature began to drop as a chilly wind blew in, and we have been happy to stay in the warmth below deck.

Tomorrow morning, we continue on our journey north.