Labrador historic sites

2010.08.28

We drove along the coast to L'Anse Amour, current population less than 10. While literally the name means Cove of Love, before the PR spin it was known as Anse aux Morts, meaning Cove of the Dead because of all the shipwrecks along the coast here. This is along the Labrador Straits, also known as Iceberg Alley. The sea route through here for ships going to Europe around the North of Newfoundland have, despite some tricky currents, about 200 miles less to travel.

At Point Amour, just North of "town", is a lighthouse that's a National Historic Site and been in operation since 1858. I walked up to the top to see it in operation. While it now uses an incandescent light bulb, it still uses the original Fresnel lens. There are four light bulbs, one in use and the others as back-ups to be automatically positioned at the focal point if a bulb burned out. The light pattern of this lighthouse is 16 seconds on and four seconds off.

The museum had copies of old maps for the coastline including one used by German U-boats.

The wreck sites of HMS Raleigh and another British warship are just South of the lighthouse.

The other site of interest near L'Anse Amour is a Maritime Archaic Indian burial mound that goes back some 7,500 years. It is the earliest known funeral monument in North America.

After lunch, we went to the town of Red Bay and the National Historic Site there. From 1540, and for about 80 years, Basque fisherman had been coming to this area to hunt whales, primarily the Right whales. The name, we found out, comes from the fact they were not the "wrong" whales. The Right whale is not only docile and easy to kill, but is also so full of blubber it floats after being killed. The museum has many artifacts that go back to that time.

Underwater archeological work located in Red Bay harbor the remains of a 16th century galleon believed to be the "Saun Juan" that broke anchor and sank there in a storm in 1565. It had on board 800-1000 barrels of whale oil at the time. Only a 1/20 scale model of the ship is shown. However, they did have a fairly complete "chalupa" that was also recovered. The chalupa is a smaller hunting boat.

Overnight, we stayed "off the grid" at the somewhat buggy, but otherwise nice beachfront site, in Pinware Provincial Park. Interestingly, the name comes from the French "pied noir" for a black rock resembling a foot at the mouth of a local brook.

Odometer reads 68,274.