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Captian
Bloomfield Morris
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courtesy of Shirley (Morris) Crocker
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Daniel F Johnson's New Brunswick Newspaper Vital Statistics
http://archives.gnb.ca/APPS/NewspaperVitalStats/default.aspx?culture=en-CADate February 25 1873
County Saint John
Place Saint John
Newspaper The Daily Telegraph
We wish to return our thanks to Capt. CONNELLY and Capt. OLBURN for the able manner and untiring attention paid us during our studies for the Local Marine Board of Canada. Masters - Samuel REYNARD, St. John; Daniel MITCHELL, Campobello; Warren LEWIS, Digby, N.S.; Isaiah B. Morris, Harborville, N.S......................
Date November 7 1881
County Saint John
Place Saint John
Newspaper Saint John Globe
d. 30th Oct., on board barque "Moss Glen" at New York, Carol LeRoy Morris only child of Capt. J.B. Morris and Emma Morris, Harborville, Kings Co., N.S.
The Register,
December 18, 1929
Mrs. I. B. Morris
The death occurred on dec. 4th, at the home of her nephew, Aubrey Morris, Melvern Square, Annapolis County, after a lingering illness, of Emma May, wife of Capt. I. Bloomfield Morris of Harborville, in her eightieth year.
Mrs. Morris was the daughter of Robert Knowlton of Advocate. Much of her early life was spent at sea, with her husband. She was a member of the Methodist church, and beside her husband and a number of nephew and nieces, her loss will be keenly felt by many friends throughout the community.
Internment took place in Berwick cemetery.
Berwick Register,
May 10th 1933
CAPT. BLOOM MORRIS LOSES VESSEL
Yacht "Nyanza," Homeward Bound For Harborville, Is Driven Ashore Off Delaware Bay - Captain And Crew Safe.
Captain Bloomfield Morris, well-known master mariner, of Harborville, who sailed from that port last Fall in his yacht, "Nyanza," for southern waters, where he spent the winter months, arrived home last Wednesday after meeting with the unfortunate experience of losing his ship, which he left beached on Brown's Bank Delaware Bay.
Captain Morris and Frank Marshall, who accompanied him on the trip 20th. When about two days out they encountered a heavy storm, which drove the "Nyanza" aground. Launching the lifeboat, they managed to get safely to shore and also to save some of their personal effects, but the ship, which was hopelessly aground, they were obliged to give up as lost.
The "Nyanza" was built at Port Greville nine years ago and was a beautifully finished two-master. Captain Morris had practically lived in his vessel since it was first launched and in it had made annual cruisers to South Atlantic ports each winter. Needless to say, the trim little vessel will be greatly missed from its accustomed berth at Harborville.
While his many friends will sympathize with the veteran Captain in his loss, they rejoice however in the fact that his life was spared and that he is again with them in the flesh.
Berwick Register,
June 26th , 1935
Veteran Master Mariner Embarks On Last Voyage
Capt. I. B. Morris of Harborville, Rugged Seafarer of the Days of "Wooden Ships and Iron Men," Passes in 87th Year.
Captain I. Bloomfield Morris of Harborville, one of the most widely known master mariners of the Bay Shore and last of Harborville’s great army of sea-farers of the days of "wooden ships and iron men," passed away at Western Kings Memorial Hospital, Friday morning, June 21, following an operation after a few days illness.
Son of the late Isaac Morris and Rachel Robinson Morris, Captain "Bloom" although in his 87th year, was of a particularly rugged type and enjoyed the best of health until stricken a few days before his death. Commencing his long and active sea-faring career at the early age of fifteen, as cabin boy under the late Capt. Samuel McBride of Harborville, he had followed the sea for upwards of half a century, for nearly forty years as commander of staunch craft that sailed the Seven Seas.
Retiring some thirty years ago he had devoted his time and attention mostly to the handling of pleasure craft, maintaining a yacht in which he made regular annual cruises to Southern Atlantic ports. He had only recently returned from a winter spent on the coast of Florida, and had just superintended the building of a tender for his vessel at Scott’s Bay, when he was seized with the illness which resulted fatally.
His wife, who accompanied him on many of his voyages, predeceased him about six years ago. Two children died in infancy.
Funeral services were held from the Harborville church Sunday afternoon at 2 o’clock, conducted by the Rev. W. J. Dean. Interment was in Berwick cemetery.
Berwick Register,
March 2, 1938
Harborville Schooner Awaits Fate
The following clipping from a U. S. newspaper, which has been forwarded to The Register, tells briefly the story of the yacht "Nyanza" and recounts a few details of her veteran skipper, the late Capt. I. B. Morris of Harborville. The article, while not entirely correct as to detail, is interesting.
An old clipper ship captain’s dream of a snug little home afloat that would harbor him to the end of his days lies quietly at a Baltimore shipyard pier, stripped of her gear and fast going to pieces above decks, but apparently sound as a silver dollar below.
She is the Gloucester fisherman schooner Nyanza, built in Parrsboro, N. S., with the long counter and sharply-rising bow that Nova Scotians and Gloucestermen developed back before the turn of the century as the best hull to take the pounding the short, steep Grand Banks seas give a vessel.
According to a writer in the Baltimore Sun, many a sailorman has seen her from the Curtis Creek Bridge during the years she has been tied up there and has enquired at the shipyard about her. Because her present owner, George W. Lukens, had no idea of selling her and did not want to be bothered with all the prospective buyers, the shipyard people were not communicative and few learned her history.
She was built in the early 1920’s and registered under the British flag by Capt. I. B. Morris, an old-time windjammer skipper, who found steam not to his liking and decided to end his days in sail, the way he had started.
A Skipper’s Dream
The old captain, who Mr. Lukens believes still is living in Harborville, N. S., put $19,000 into her and when she slid off the ways she was a sailor’s dream. She was just about the size of the "We’re Here" in Rudyard Kipling’s "Captains Courageous," with the huge mainsail and double topsail rig, of the Gloucesterman. She was sturdy, fast and able, and her only concession to modern times was a little gasoline engine under her cockpit.
It was Captain Morris’ dream to cruise around Canadian waters with his wife in summertime, and head south to Florida and the West Indies when the winter northeasters brought snow and ice to the summer cruising grounds. For a season or two the captain lived his dream, knocking around in the sunlit Caribbean during the months the bankers up home were chopping ice out of their rigging, and cruising around in Thousand Islands after the jam had moved out of the St. Lawrence in the spring.
The captain’s wife died, and Mr. Lukens said, the captain went on cruising shorthanded. When Mr. Lukens first saw Nyanza in Coinjock, N. C., in 1933, she had only Captain Morris and a boy aboard to handle all her heavy canvas. She was bound down to Florida through the inland waterways.
The Baltimorean, himself a sailorman, who served for years in the old training ship of the American Merchant Marine, the barque Adams, fell in love with the little ship at first sight. But he could not buy her he said. Captain Morris would not sell her for her weight in gold.
Not For Sale
One blustery fall day not long after that, people who live along the southern shores of Delaware Bay in the neighborhood of Milford, looked out over the whitecaps and saw a stirring sight. With every stitch aloft and her flag whipping out from her mainsail gaff, Nyanza was making the best of a brave fair wind and lugging it for the open sea beyond the breakwater twenty miles below.
The shore people reached the water’s edge in time to see her strike, burying her long bowsprit in the sand-rolled water and straining until her wire rigging was going strand by strand and her parted sheets were whipping around like cats o’nine tails.
Then she laid over until a ship’s cat would have had difficulty staying aboard. Captain Morris cut loose his sails, took what personal gear he could salvage and came ashore through the surf with his boy. Nyanza worked farther up the beach until the tide let her alone, and waited for her doom. It came in the form of wreckers who took everything that was salvageable, and the wind, sun and salt spray blew and bleached and burned until Nyanza was only a grey ghost of the bright ship that was her skipper’s dream.
Salvaged By Dredging Company
In 1933 Mr. Lukens, who heads a dredging company, went down to the beaches near Milford to look over a project. He saw Nyanza lying there, but did not recognize her. He took a boat and went out, and then he recognized her. Mr. Lukens wrote to Captain Morris, and after a long time received an answer from the old skipper saying he would sell now. Mr. Lukens bought her, got two big schooners alongside at low tide, passed a sling under the fisherman and she floated when the tide came in.
He towed her down through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and warped her into the shipyard docks. He would fix up those dry-rotted bows, he said, and that bashed-in counter and those sun-opened decks and take her around the world. He would ship new pine spars. He would send up new canvas. He got estimates from builders.
That was in 1933. The other day he pulled a worn file out of his desk and sighed as he looked once more at figures he already knew by heart.
"Maybe some day," he said. A big Canadian penny dropped out of the file.
"That was her good luck piece," said Mr. Lukens. "It was under her mainmast. I don’t think it’ll be there if she goes to sea again."