Roaring bellows and burning sparks: The last blacksmith of the Grand Banks

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

Children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Village Blacksmith (excerpts)

One of the great memories of growing up in Grand Bank during the 1950s was to "look in the open door" (split door the bottom half was usually closed) and watching the sparks fly as blacksmithJ. Wilson Osborne worked diligently in his forge.

As we teenagers watched, he would spit on his anvil, hold a piece of red-hot metal over it and with all his strength strike the hot metal with his large hammer.

It made such a loud bangthat itscared the crap out of us. He would stand there with a big grin, enjoying the moment.

J. Wilson Osborne started to learn the blacksmith trade in 1913 when he was only 13. He went into business on his own 10 years laterand retired in 1968, some 55 years after he began as an apprentice with blacksmith George Harding.

The year of his retirement I interviewed this largely self-educated man, who for the last 10 years of his working life was the only full-time blacksmith on the entire south coast of Newfoundland.

He was born in the little community of Hoop Cove, Long Harbour, in Fortune Bay on Jan. 28, 1900. He didn't attend school until his family moved to Grand Bank when he was 10 years old. Just three years later he went to work with Harding at his forge and remained in his employ for nine years.

In 1923 he married Laura Kirby of Kirby's Cove, and moved to nearby Collins Cove, Burin, where he went into business on his own at the time there was one other blacksmith operating there returning to Grand Bank five years later to open his own forge. A few months later Osborne decided to go into partnership with blacksmith William Wood, and bought him out in 1941.

Blacksmithing is one of the oldest trades known to man.The Book of Genesis, Chapter 4, Verse 22, refers to Tubal-cainopening "the first foundry forging instruments of bronze and iron." It is not known when the first blacksmith came to the New World but most of the larger ships going on long voyages had a blacksmith aboard, and the English merchants who built trading stations in Newfoundland brought their blacksmiths with them.

The first record of a blacksmith on the Burin Peninsula was William Harding, who in the spring of 1826 wrote in his diary that he was shipped to William Fox, a businessman in Rock Harbour, to work in his blacksmith shop and store. Harding married and moved to Burin, and itwas from his grandson, George Harding, that Osborne learned the trade.

By the early 1900s,"every port in Newfoundland, where vessels were being built or operated, had a blacksmith shop," said Osborne. "The same thing applied to other maritime provinces and the New England states."

When he started to learn the trade in 1913, there were several blacksmith shops on Newfoundland's south coast: Haystack, Marystown and Burin in Placentia Bay, as well as in Grand Bank, Garnish, Belleoram, Harbour Breton, Milltown, Ramea, Burgeo and Port aux Basques.

"We made horseshoes and shod the horses, put iron bands on horse-drawn carriages and iron shoes for the sleds, railings for cemetery plots, axes, pickaxes and crowbars," said Osborne.

In the spring,Grand Bank would become a beehive of activity.

"At the beginning of April the banking schooners would start fitting out for the bank fishery with men arriving from Trinity, St. Mary's, Placentia and Fortune bays," he said. "At one time there were up to 30 banking vessels out of Grand Bank employing up to 25 men each, and for each vessel there were 10 women employed in curing the fish with more men using horses and carts hauling fish. During those days there were up to 60 horses here."

In connection with the fishery, they had to make trawl anchors, granpnels, hand gaffs, dip-net irons and trap anchors.

"When I started work it was all sailing vessels," Osborne explained. "Men's lives depended on the quality of work done, so the blacksmith had to be well trained."

He built his blacksmith shop in 1945. The years 1940-49 were his busiest;at times he needed two helpers. In 1946 he made more than 500 dory and trawl anchors, he said, and in 1947did all the iron work for nine vessels built in Placentia Bay.

John Price went to work withOsbornefull time in 1958 when he was 15 years old.

"I made thousands of horseshoes and shod hundreds of horses during the seven years I worked there," Price, now 78, told me recently. "When we made the iron bands to put on the cart wheels we would take them out to the nearby brook, where we would heat them, fit them on the cart wheel and then throw them in the water to cool."

Most of the tools blacksmiths used in earlier days were made by them, Osborne explained. There were many different types of tongs, andwhen he retired he had more than 30 pairs, he said.

"We also made our own punches, chisels and other tools we needed," he said. "Things changed so much over the years when I started we used old leather bellows whereas now we have a motor-driven fan. Ifyou wanted a hole bored in a piece of iron, you had to do it with a drill turned by hand and make the drill do it now it is an electric drill with electric motors and factory-made drills."

Besides being well trained, Osborne said, the blacksmith also had to run his own business.

"He had to be able to tell the size of a piece of iron, either round, flat or square,without using a rule. All welding was done by hand, heated in a coal fire, and you had to know how much the different types of iron would stand heat and beating."

The late 1940s, which saw the end of the schooner bank fishery and the arrival of more vehicles in the area, resulted in changes to the type of work Osborne did; instead of wooden schooners there were steel draggers, and trucks replaced the horse and cart.

"Now there are large pieces of iron to be straightened, repairs and some parts made for the truck, springs, bumpers and repairs to U-bolts, knees and many other things,"he explained.

"The blacksmith shop where children used to look in the open door and see the sparks flying has almost ceased to be. Many of the things the blacksmith made, such as chains, shackled and gate hinges, are now factory-made and mass-produced."

It wasn't just a place of business, he said.

"The blacksmith shop was not only a place where people who wanted work done came but also a place where the older men gathered to swap stories, and many a tall one was told and some hot arguments developed."

Price reminisced about his time working with Osborne, pumping the bellows by hand.

"Many old-timers would come in every day to sit, yarn and watch us work especially in the wintertime. Maj. George Wheeler of the Salvation Army would drop in a couple of times each week and before he left he would say a prayer."

J. Wilson Osborne died in 1980 at the age of 80; his wife, Laura, predeceased him in 1972. The couple had no children.

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