Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Port-au-Port

After all the shards I found on Woods Island and nearby Frenchman's Cove I was really thinking I would hit the jackpot on the Port-au-Port peninsula. Boy, was I wrong. I spent a lot of hours the past three days walking the beaches of the Port-au-Port and didn't have any finds significant enough to warrant an extended stay. I found a half dozen shards at The Gravels, a few more at Picadilly Beach and none at Beach Cove, Tea Cove or Winterhouses. Only once I got to Mainland did I find enough to collect, assemble and photograph.

It didn't take long for the waves to take all those pieces away, and I headed on again, this time stopping at Lower Cove where I found a few more. Here is that arrangement, about to be returned to the sea.

All things considered, the scarcity of shards on the beaches was a little disappointing. These few represent many hours of searching and more than a little frustration. Fortunately, something amazing and serendipitous happened: I followed a sign on a trail to the location of a 1941 plane crash on top of the mountain between Mainland and Cape St. George. There was the typical wreckage you might expect, but I also found a bunch of shattered porcelain. I can't be sure the porcelain was related to the crash - it may simply have been brought by a visitor at a later time. But the pieces were quite industrial looking and didn't seem out of place. They made me think of porcelain insulators or fuses, which they certainly could have been. I lined them up on a piece of the wreckage and did a few photos.

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