In August 2007, my company sent me to St. John's, Newfoundland, to watch a tank test of a ship I had designed. There were 2 alternative hulls, and testing was extensive, covering resistance, propulsion, seakeeping, and maneuvering. The facility in St. John's is owned by the Canadian government, but the test crew was a private firm, Oceanic Consulting, and it drew many of its people from the Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), on whose campus the building resides. So, having put this rather complex organizational stuff out of the way, I have some photos of the area to show.
Picture 1 shows the sign just so I could get the name straight. NRC Canada (National Research Centre) is the sponsoring organization, and the facility is the Institute for Ocean Technology. This was very hard to remember even when I was there! The building in the background actually is part of the university -- the test facility is off camera to the left.
Picture 2 shows the front of the building. Photography isn't normally allowed inside, and while I talked to the security man about that and found he was very accommodating and quite willing to get me special permission to photograph the model running down the tank, I realized after the first "tourist" weekend that I hadn't brought enough film! (The pictures were taken with an old-fashioned film camera; it's Nancy who knows how to handle the digitals.) In view of this I decided not to bother with photos inside the facility.
Well, I arrived mid-week and quite soon it was Saturday and the tank wasn't running, so I got to be a tourist. I went to Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America, where there was a lighthouse and during World War II, a battery of coast defense artillery manned by a mixed crew of British and US military personnel.
Photo 3 shows typical vegetation, resembling nothing so much as descriptions of Scotland I've seen in print -- so much so that I tried out Scottish terms like heather and bracken to describe it. The displays said the troops complained about the damp, cold environment, although the day I was there is was about as nice as could be, sunny with a high of almost 80.
In Photo 4, a concrete bunker runs into the hill quite a long way -- since it wasn't lighted and I hadn't brought a flashlight I didn't go too far into it. It consisted of a long hallway with rooms off it, and also things that might have been ammunition hoists leading to magazines on a lower level. The labels said the crew lived here, almost entirely below ground. The floor was slightly uneven, and in the low spots were puddles of water. They were home to the only mosquitoes I encountered in Newfoundland. I am sure the labels were right that it was extremely tough duty being assigned to this place in the middle of nowhere.
Seaward of the bunker was a concrete gun pit, without any training or elevating mechanism, just the barrel of the gun in it (two of these). It is not easy to recognize the gun; it appears to be at least 5-inch and more likely 6-inch, but not a very high caliber weapon, maybe a 35 or 40? The breech block is gone, and so is the reloading apparatus and whatever sort of turret it was once in. For this, the labels were not so helpful.
On the landward side the hill continues to rise past the bunker, and on top is the lighthouse (photo 5). It is quite an elaborate lighthouse, with living quarters for the keeper and his family, as well as quite a lot of storage space. The park rangers (I believe this is a national park; anyway, I had to pay a fee to go inside the lighthouse but everything else was free) said that resupply was rather difficult and indeed I needed no convincing! There was no sheltered harbor where anything but a ship's boat could have landed, and bringing supplies by land, a 45 minute drive today, would have taken all day, or more, by oxcart or horse-drawn wagon.
I suppose I need to add that the lighthouse dates from the 19th century, and there was a previous one on the same site in the 1700's.
The accommodations in the lighthouse were rather homelike (see Photo 6). It did not seem that the lighthouse keeper's family had as tough a situation as the World War II gun crews, even though the latter could get fresh food by road every day from St. John's.
Anyway, I had quite an interesting trip. The city of St. John's was also very historic, dating back to the 17th century. But, I was certain that going there in winter would not be so pleasant!
