One of a group of seven Isles
From Musgrave Harbour some seven mile
From June to August so we spent
Our time on this enchanted isle

We left in June the family all
In father’s trap skiff excitedly musing
With all our summer gear for fishing
And household goods of mother’s choosing

And when within a mile or so
There loomed the old familiar scene
The lighthouse large with tower tall
Across the marsh at Northwest Point serene

With wind from north the sea it hove
Into the tickle and on to the land
And buffeted those little boats
There idly moored out on the strand

The church that held our heritage dear
Recorded on old Whadam Bible page
The names of families, those who summered there
And were so much part of our age.

And legend has it the Whadam name
Was penned by a British naval scribe
Arriving with Sir Francis Drake
Surveying the coast in fifteen eighty five

The old lighthouse a signal point
On a promontory bold and straight
Between the gulches Rock and Brady
Since October eighteen fifty eight

Then its demise by fire set
By DOT in eighty nine
Marked the end of a proud history
The loss left all to profoundly pine

The list of keepers long indeed
Who loyally tended those old wicks
Families Hennessy, Prowse and Abbott
Pomeroy, Mouland, Way and Hicks

In season all in all there were
Some eighty one houses and four fifty roamers
Living on that isolated space
Amid the rolling windswept combers

But now life’s bustle is silent there
No more do echoes of family time
Waft over the waves to die with time
Leaving memories and ghosts behind

And buildings now gone to wreck and ruin
Returned to nature's original state
Bear witness to things long since gone
Remaining only as memories of late


A poetic description of events in the life of a typical fisherman from Musgrave Harbour, NL while fishing in the summer with his family from the offshore island of “Offer Wadham.” It is adapted from a book by Roland W. Abbott entitled “A Brief History of the Offer Wadham Island Newfoundland the Million Dollar Rock. Creative Publishers, 62 pp. 1994
  Submitted By: John Cornick