P.O. Box 159 |
Newfoundland Tourism Region : Central
Musgrave Harbour: Located on the coast near Gander, at the mouth of Hamilton Sound, the actual harbour is located on the shores of a shallow cove known as Muddy Hole.
Until 1866 the town proper was also called Muddy Hole, but it was changed in honour of Governor Anthony Musgrave, a governor of Newfoundland who served from 1864 to 1869.
The town was incorporated in 1956 and today the incorporated community includes Ragged Harbour to the west and Doting (or Doating) Cove to the east. According to Wikipedia contributors, Ragged Harbour was named after the "the appearance of its harbour which is filled with rocks and coves, thus giving it a 'ragged' look", whereas how Doting Cove got its name appears to be a mystery after checking al the usual sources.
Ragged Cove was settled by the 1830s, whereas Doting Cove was settled later, around the 1850s. The combined population of Musgrave Harbour, in 2016 was 990 residents, a decrease of 6.0% from the 1,053 recorded in 2011.
One of the interesting buildings in the area to visit is the Fishermen's Union Trading Company Cash Store which has been designated a Registered Heritage Structure.
From the Historic Places website comes the following information:
The Fishermen's Union Trading Company Cash Store is a rectangular, two- storey, wooden building with a low pitch roof. This former Fishermen's Protective Union Store is located at 4 Marine Drive, backing on to the sandy beach of the Doting Cove section of the Town of Musgrave Harbour.
The designation is confined to the footprint of the building.
Heritage Value
The Fishermen's Union Trading Company Cash Store is recognized for its historic, aesthetic and cultural values.
its
The Fishermen's Union Trading Company Cash Store has historic value due to age and its origins as a Fishermen's Protective Union (FPU) store.
In 1908 William Coaker formed the first organized protest movement among Newfoundland fishers, the Fishermen's Protective Union (FPU).
The FPU functioned in part as a cooperative, attempting to weaken the monopoly of merchants on purchasing and exporting fish and on retailing supplies. This included opening stores under the Fishermen's Union Trading Company (FUTC).
Musgrave Harbour was a strong site for the FPU movement, with a local FPU council established in 1909, and the first FUTC store in Newfoundland opening at Doting Cove in 1911.
This store was also referred to as the Union Cash Store, as part of its original purpose was to have fishing families deal in cash rather than credit or barter as with the merchant system The Fishermen's Union Trading Company Cash Store has aesthetic value as one of the most distinctive buildings in Musgrave Harbour, against seascape and one which evokes a sense of time and place, set against the seascape.
Its vernacular design, simple rectangular form, low-pitched roof, wood post foundation, narrow clapboard siding and cornerboards, and wooden windows and doors are typical for the time and place in which it was built. These combine with telltale features like exterior double doors on both floors and large window openings, and original interior features like wooden floors and ceilings, visible posts and beams, and retail shelving, all of which make the building readily identifiable as an historic general store.
The Fishermen's Union Trading Company Cash Store also has cultural value as it has operated as a museum since 1977.
One sad piece of history that pertains to Musgrave Harbour is that in 1941, according to the Central NL website, Sir Frederick Banting of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in his role as co-discovered of Insulin, used to treat diabetes, died in a plane crash near the harbour.
Banting Interpretation Center in the Municipal Park.
FUNK ISLAND:
The name Funk, which means evil odour or vapour, is thought to have been given to the island because of the foul
odour which predominates there.
The smell arises from the nitrate and phosphate concentrations found in the guano
deposited by the many millions of birds which have nested there over the centuries.
Some contend that the name
may be traced to a Norse or Icelandic word for a haycock which the island resembles. This hypothesis appears
unlikely, since the name Funk did not often appear on maps until the late 18th century. Before that time the island was
usually referred to by sailors as Penguin Island.
It is believed that Gaspar Corte-Real visited the island in 1501. Shortly after that date it appears on two maps by
Pedro Reinel as Y Dos Sanes (1504) and Ylhas das aves (1520), both of which refer to an island of birds.
Hakluyt, in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation chronicled the 1536
voyage of Richard Hore which made landfall on the Island of Penguin.
A 1626 map by Pierre Mortier labels the place
I des Penguins, while an Italian map dated 1661 has the island marked as I Penguin Abonda di Vecelli (Penguin
Island abounding with birds).
One of the earliest British maps by cartographer Herman Moll, dated 1716, refers to it
as Penguin Island.
The name Funk Island appears on James Cook's 1775 map as it does in the charts and surveys
compiled in 1765.
According to the book Pioneers in Canada (Blackie and Sons 1912) Jacques Cartier in 1534
commented on the great number of birds and polar bears on Funk Island.
Funk Island was probably called Penguin Island because the great auk used to nest on this island by thousands, and
possibly tens of thousands, up to the late 18th century when its numbers declined drastically.
However, the American
Heritage Dictionary suggests the word "penguin", which may be derived from the Welsh pen guyn meaning "white
head", originated with the name of the island and subsequently become a synonym for "great auk".
It is believed that Funk Island was visited shortly after the first native peoples settled in northeastern Newfoundland. Joseph
Banks, who visited Newfoundland and Labrador in 1766, told of a type of pudding the Beothuk people made from eggs which
had been collected from Penguin (Funk) Island.
In earlier times, great auk was also known as the garefowl, from the Norse,
"geirfugl".
In the early 16th century, Europeans were drawn to the codfish schools off the coast of Newfoundland. "Towards the
end of a long transatlantic journey, when provisions were running low, fresh meat was prized, and the ease with which
auks could be picked off the slab [Funk Island] was soon noted."
Many explorers and fishing nations made trips to the
Funks to acquire seabirds for food and oil for their lamps. The great auks were flightless birds that were an easy prey.
In 1578, 350 Spanish and French vessels and fifty English vessels were reported fishing nearby.
Later settlers along
the northeast coast of Newfoundland often made the short trip to the Funks to kill birds for food and lamp oil; they
also used the feathers for pillows and mattresses and gathered the eggs for food.
In 1622 Sir Richard Whitbourne told of how the birds were driven up the gang planks into the boats. He remarked that
it was "as if God had made the innocency of so poore a creature to become such an admirable instrument for the
sustenation of man."
By 1800 the great auk was probably extinct on Funk Island, and by 1844, in the world.
Naturalists and scientists had become interested in the plight of the great auk and by June 1841 a Norwegian
naturalist, Dr. Peter Stuvitz visited Funk Island with the hope of obtaining specimens of the birds, but was forced to
leave due to weather conditions on the island.
The second visit of a scientific nature occurred in 1863, when Thomas Molloy, the United States Consul to
Newfoundland, received permission from the Government of Newfoundland to go to the Funk Island to mine remains
of the great auk.
Thirty-five tons of the decomposed organic material was secured by Molloy's expedition. Of these
five tons was sold locally at nineteen dollars a ton while the other thirty tons was shipped to Boston, Baltimore and
Washington D.C., where it was used to fertilize the gardens of wealthy Americans.
In July 1873 seismologist and naturalist John Milne went to the island and was successful in retrieving partial
skeletons and miscellaneous bones before inclement weather cut short his stay.
He reported that there was an
abundance of terns on Funk Island but that the murre and razorbill population had been almost destroyed by egg
gatherers.
In a hazardous landing and in only the one hour a small, grassy hollow, the skeletal remains of no fewer than fifty birds.
Some of them exceeded in size any that had before been known. His collection of great auk skeletons subsequently found its way into various public museums.
In a scientific paper he wrote in 1875 describing his trip he included a detailed collection of facts relating to the extinct bird that covered five geographical regions, including prehistoric kitchen middens of Caithness.
The most successful of the early scientific expeditions to Funk Island occurred in 1887. It was sponsored by the United States Fish Commission and was under the direction of Frederick A. Lucas.
After a brief sojourn in St. John's, the group's ship, Grampus, arrived at Funk Island on July 22, 1887. They found in their search area, roughly one quarter of the land surface of the island was covered with between .6 and 1.2 m of earth.
The earth contained egg shells mixed with granite pebbles in depths ranging from 5 to 30 cm. Many more skeletons were unearthed and taken away for other scientific study.
This expedition did other scientific work on Funk Island, including the collection of rock specimens. During their search of the island they also discovered several iron kettles, rusted and broken, which were believed to have been used to scald the bodies of the great auks to make removal of the feathers easier.
Near the western edge of the auks' breeding grounds they discovered enclosures made of granite blocks. The Auks had been herded into these compounds to make slaughtering easier.
There have been many other expeditions since, right up to 1982. In 1964 the island became a Provincial Wildlife Sanctuary and landing there was prohibited without a permit.
With the creation of the sanctuary, the bird population began to be protected and is now monitored by researchers at Memorial University and Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Used with permission from "Uncovering the Origin of 1001 Unique Place Names in Newfoundland and Labrador" 2021 Jennifer Leigh Hill
Address of this page: http://nl.ruralroutes.com/MusgraveHarbour