Coastal Adventures: Kayaking the shipwreck of the Fury on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia

Posted on Jul 11 2007 in Feature Articles

by Scott Cunningham (www.CoastalAdventures.com)

Hidden on the bottom of our rock strewn coastline, invisible to all but the fish and a few divers, lie many a sunken ship. But one large freighter, skewered on a reef at the tip of Cape Gegogan, on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, is in full view of the inquisitive sea kayaker and we can even paddle inside the hold. Driven ashore during a hurricane in the mid 60’s its rusting hulk is slowly succumbing to the ravages of the winter storms.

I first encountered the Fury, a Liberty ship, on a canoe journey around the province in 1981. When its enormous silhouette emerged from the fog, over twenty years ago, the crew had long since gone and it was strangely out of place. On this shoal-infested shoreline even the fishing boat had become scarce.

The following year I returned with a group of kids from a summer camp. A small tear on the port side provided access into the cavernous hold, - and the marine equivalent of the haunted house. We scaled up to the deck and searched for ghosts of the past - and for the elusive souvenir. But anything of value had long since been removed. It was still a magnificent structure back then and little had changed since a hurricane, and a faulty rudder, drove it ashore in the mid-sixties. Planted upright on this shoal, only meters from land, it might have been a tourist attraction except for the fact that no roads lead here - and, as most kayakers already know (and appreciate), if you can’t drive there, few will go.

For the past two decades, except for the few local fishermen who barely take notice, the Fury has been mine. It has aged with each season, gently at first, then with rapid abandon. The once modest hole in the rusty-orange hull has expanded as the winter storms gained purchase, fraying the superstructure and twisting the steel plate with unimaginable forces. I have been able to paddle into the hold, and out the other side. The stack has listed and collapsed, and the bow section torn off, freeing the huge boilers, which will remain long after the remainder of the metal skin has disappeared under the surface. A once proud vessel is now lying in tatters, a shadow of its former self.

Nearby Liscomb Island, abandoned along with its former settlement, was also a reputed site of Capt. Kidd’s booty and treasure hunters!

Initially printed in Kanawa magazine under the title, “The power of the sea and the passage of time,” by
Scott Cunningham, www.coastalAdventures.com