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Newfoundland1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses
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IN TROUBLESOME TIMES
At the literature depot Brothers Barnes and Dawe met Dougal McCrae, a Canadian pioneer who was about to be deported. He told them that the government was about to impose a ban on all Society literature, and that the supply of recordings and books in the depot was therefore in danger of confiscation.
The brothers hit upon a plan. They loaded most of the literature and records into Brother Howell’s schooner for shipment to Lumsden. More was sent to Princeton and other smaller places. When the authorities did crack down on the depot, it was too late—the shelves were practically bare.
Meantime, Brothers Barnes and Dawe could see that during the war it would be best to confine their Kingdom activities to the distant outports along the wild coast. ‘I was no sailor,’ Gus Barnes admitted, ‘for I knew nothing about the tides and the storms, the charts and the compass, the breakers and the dangers of the ever-turbulent sea.’
It took a lot of ingenuity and determination to re-outfit the Society’s thirty-one-foot motorboat, which, with high hopes for the future, they called “Kingdom Boat No. 1.” The brothers at Princeton were a fine source of encouragement. There Bob Moss joined the crew, helping to build up their confidence for the job they were now undertaking. Says Brother Barnes: ‘The very first day of our seagoing ministry was a wild one, our little boat digging into the waves in a frightening sort of way. Our first port of call, Salvage, was populated by staunch supporters of the Church of England. The result: we soon were being stoned and driven from the harbor as German spies. In fact, someone in the village sent word to the police to the effect that we were playing a phonograph record entitled “Hitler Can’t Lose.” We retired gracefully and got to work in another quieter cove, though all day long we kept hearing that the police were coming for us
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Newfoundland1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses
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The authorities at that time had begun to raid various homes of the Witnesses where they expected to seize ‘outlawed’ literature. But the stores of literature were safely hidden away where only a few had access to them, and so it was possible, from time to time, for congregations and pioneers to replace their stock and carry on with the Kingdom work, using the Bible alone in their initial approach to the homes.
In the early spring of 1941 Gus Barnes and Bob Moss were back in Princeton to spend some weeks readying the boat for another summer’s voyage. That gave opportunity to help the group there to get well organized for Watchtower studies and for a weekly book study in the book Salvation. “While there that spring,” Gus reports, “I often talked with Ford and Bill Prince, two young boys who were extremely interested in what we were doing. I didn’t realize then that both of those boys would move on from those early talks we had to become pioneers and later go through Gilead School and be sent out as missionaries.”
The second summer voyage of the good boat “Kingdom No. 1” was exciting, to say the least. At Lumsden, Brothers Moss and Barnes were baptized, though they had now been preaching for several years. Then they headed for Lewisporte. Gus Barnes tells what happened: ‘The boat was leaking, so we put into a small cove several miles from Lewisporte. We decided to fix the leak here, so early that morning we carried our literature and provisions back into the woods and covered them with a tarpaulin to guard against rain. But news of our presence got around quickly—“a strange boat with speaker horns on the roof, perhaps German spies!” Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by a group of Canadian Army soldiers. They towed us under guard to Lewisporte, where the whole town turned out to see these desperate prisoners. . . . I demanded to see the officer in charge. When this was denied, I told the captain that in view of the agreement between the Canadian military and the independent state of Newfoundland his men were interfering with civilians and encroaching upon the authority of the local police. Then I demanded to be taken to the Newfoundland police. Soon the police were satisfied and we were on our way. We stopped only long enough to pick up our cache of literature, and then we made for the far northern peninsula. Thereafter police and customs officers were often our visitors, but many of them did not even have a copy of the ban, so they left us alone. By fall we were back in Corner Brook after an exciting summer in which we had placed thousands of pieces of literature.’
By the end of 1941, Gus Barnes and his companion were back in St. John’s, living in the depot and striving to build up again what had become a very small study group. Materialism and fear had cooled the affections of many. It was even being said, ‘Perhaps the work is finished.’ With some the wish doubtless was father to the thought. Then came news of the death of Brother Rutherford on January 8, 1942. What was ahead?
CONTACTING BROOKLYN HEADQUARTERS
Brother Barnes tells how the publishers got the answer to that vital question: ‘Jehovah knew our needs and almost as if by a miracle the February 1, 1942, Watchtower came into my hands. It proved to be the right thing at the right time. Its article “Final Gathering” showed how Jehovah purposed to have a great “fishing and hunting work” done. The Newfoundland brothers were familiar with literal fishing and hunting, and this fitted them for the work that lay ahead. The brothers knew that there was much work to be done, and they were ready to do it, but they needed help and instructions from the Society. But how, in view of the censorship and other circumstances of the ban?’
Ford Prince volunteered. Soon he was hired on a passenger vessel as a merchant marine. He was undaunted by the fact that German U-boats were sinking many ships. He knew his mission. The brothers in Newfoundland needed help in getting a good, seaworthy boat, literature and other materials for the advancement of the Kingdom work. In Brooklyn he explained the situation to Milton Henschel of the office of the Society’s president, N. H. Knorr, and was assured that all the problems would be taken care of right away.
Because of duties aboard ship, Ford could not stay for dinner, but he returned the next day. Sure enough, there was a package for him containing literature and phonograph records. This was but the first of many important trips he was to make bearing precious cargo for his brothers at home. Through a letter from Brother Knorr, Gus Barnes learned that funds would be made available for the purchase of a better boat. For only $600, Brother Barnes bought a beautiful forty-two-foot yacht. So, before long, a new Kingdom boat called “Hope” was put to work in spreading the good news.
The plan was to work the south coast from Port-aux-Basques on to Placentia Bay. At Burgeo, a port of entry, the customs men and the Mounted Police boarded the “Hope.” They knew of the ban on the literature, and wanted to act, but they hesitated and decided to await instructions from St. John’s. One of the crew members of the “Hope” relates:
‘That night, as the fog rolled in and the coast was shrouded in blackness we decided to chance it with our small dory and take out all our literature, records and equipment, with the idea of hiding them in some lonely cove. They had posted no watch on us. Then an amazing thing happened! Around midnight we heard the coastal steamer whistle its way to anchor in a fogbound harbor on the outer shores. We quickly got our compass and charts and rowed through the fog until we picked up that steamer’s bearing lights. Climbing the rope ladder and walking along the deck, we managed to contact the purser and told him we had a shipment we wanted to make. He was agreeable to accepting it, and in no time we had our dory empty and all our theocratic equipment was shipped down the coast some seventy miles. In the morning the officers were there, as we had expected, to take everything we had. They found nothing! They were for keeping us in port indefinitely, but we protested to the government and an order was issued for them to release us.
‘Several weeks later we arrived at the port where we had more or less blindly sent our literature. The local merchant, out of curiosity, had opened one of the cartons and was thoroughly enjoying the book Enemies when we arrived. Indeed, he provided us with facilities to wrap up and mail literature back to all the interested persons whose names and addresses we had noted down. When that same coastal vessel headed back up the coast again, it carried hundreds of books and booklets in neat packages addressed to points all the way up as far as Burgeo.’
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