I come from a long line of "sea dogs" as my grandfather, my three uncles and two great uncles were all sea captains. There was a line of seven Balcom ships.

Granddaddy Balcom was born at Sheet Harbour, Halifax County on July 16, 1848.

He followed the sea and became a master mariner sailing "bluenose" ships (wooden ships) to all parts of the world during his long and colorful career. He was a pioneer in Nova Scotia's merchant service and was well known in ports of shipping from the Bay of Fundy to Cape Breton.

At the outbreak of the Great War he volunteered his services to the Royal Navy and served on its vessels until the Armistice. He retired the following year and continued to live in Halifax where he had made his home thirty years previously.

Granddaddy married Margaret Atkins who was born at Harrigan Cove, Halifax County, Nova Scotia September 7, 1851. They had six children, William, Burton, Alfred, Jessie (My Mother), Minnie and Alice.

My mother told me stories of how granddaddy was shipwrecked and even lost his false teeth. I remember him sitting on the front steps smoking his pipe and talking to people who passed by. Granddaddy and Nannie lived at 10 Duncan Street and then moved to 89 Preston Street where they lived with Uncle Will.

Granddaddy died October 25, 1939 in his ninety second year. Nannie died February 16, 1941. They are buried in Fairview Cemetery, Halifax.

Uncle AIf was also a well known seaman sailing to most parts of the world. For some years he sailed out of Halifax as mate on sealing vessels. He went west at an early age but continued to follow the sea. He was of a breezy and genial disposition, a true son of the sea. He died at the early age of forty-three and is buried in Vancouver.

CAPTAIN WILLIAM JAMES BALCOM
July 16.1874 - October 3.1954

Uncle Will was born at Sheet Harbour. He began his career as a mere lad going to sea in one of the hardy and valiant schooners of the Balcom line, with his father and brother.

During World War 1, he served in the Royal Canadian Navy with granddaddy and Uncle Bert and Uncle Aif, and later was with the Department of Transport.

He was captain of the 5.5. Larch, the Sambro, and the icebreaker N.B. McLean. He made annual trips to Hudson Bay and the Canadian Arctic, beginning in 1927.

In 1931 he inaugurated the Atlantic Ice Patrol formed to prevent sea disasters.

Uncle Will married Mildred Gallager and they had three children, Kenneth, Beth and Bryant.

Each year he would come home to Halifax and move his family to Quebec for the busy winter season.

The MacLean made history in Hudson Bay for she was the first oil burning ice breaker on service there. Before this, coal burning breakers were used. For 91 days the MacLean steamed through the ice fields travelling 6500 miles and returned with 275 tons of fuel oil in her bunkers proving that the oil burning ice breaker is economic and practical as well as self supporting.

Uncle Will was a man who was wise in the ways of the great waters of the world. He knew not only the moods and tempers of the uncharted waters of the northlands but the whims and hurricanes of the warmer waters that sweep the South Atlantic from the Faulkland Islands to the River Platte where the fur seals make their rookeries.

Sealing between the Faulklands and the Platte was a profitable proposition. Sealers who fought the fur seal in its native waters was more thrilling and dangerous than that experienced by seekers of their seal pelts and fat on the icy plains off Labrador where the animals are clubbed by the hunters.

Once the carcass was aboard it took only a few minutes to remove the pelt and secure the valuable ivory tusks.

The sealer returned to Halifax when the season was concluded and the pelts were shipped to London. Once Uncle Will brought back the pelt of a polar bear weighing well over a thousand pounds.

Uncle Will carried supplies to the three directions, finding stations established at Resolution Island, at Hope's Advance and at Nottingham.

The MacLean was given a royal welcome at each point. Her arrival already heralded by radio, the ice breaker was eagerly expected, and when she came in sight, to anchor some 20 yards off shore the signal of two guns fired at the station notified all that the anchor was dropped. When the officers went ashore, the wharf and beach were thronged with the inhabitants, officials, fur traders and Esquimaux and a stray trapper or adventurer.

Mail from home, books, papers and magazines, fresh vegetables, fresh meat and always a live pig were left at each station.

In recognition of his services in World War II, during the construction of the Goose Bay airport and the chartering of sea passages to Labrador, Uncle Will received the M.B.E. He and Aunt Milly went to Government House, Ottawa, November 23,1943 to receive this honor.

In 1941 he was appointed Superintendent of sea transport at Halifax on loan from the Canadian government to the British War Department and served in this capacity until 1946.

Uncle Will passed away on October 3,1952 and is buried in Fariview Cemetery.

Uncle Bert was born at Sheet Harbor September 14, 1877. He too followed the sea at an early age. He served with the Royal Canadian Navy during World War I.

He took his ship and went to British Columbia where the greater part of his life was lived. He was engaged in the fur sealing, whaling and salmon industries.

He married Daisy Smith of Seattle, Washington. They had no children.

After an absence of thirty-two years, he returned to Halifax and visited Uncle Will. He came up to West Paradise to see us and stayed a few days. Aunt Daisy had died three years before.

I didn't get to know him very well as he died of a heart attack at Uncle Will's a few months after he arrived.

He is buried in Victoria, B.C., beside Aunt Daisy.

My great uncle, Sprott Balcom was born at Sheet Harbor. At an early age he showed an inclination to follow the sea.

When a young man he took a sealer around Cape Horn to the Pacific Coast and took up his headquarters at Victoria, B.C. He ventured too near the Russian sealing grounds and as a result he and his crew spent some months in a Russian prison.

Back in Victoria, without funds and late for the season, he could not secure a vessel. One by one the sealers sailed out of Victoria until there was left only an old vessel, almost unseaworthy. Meeting Uncle Sprott one day, the owner said: "If you'll take her out, I'll give her to you". He took her out and returned high line of the fleet.

He spent his life in the sealing and whaling industries. He was one of the pioneers in the sealing business off the British Columbia coast and the leading spirit in the fitting out of expeditions to the Faulkland Islands and South America. He built up a successful business in the whaling industry and made a comfortable fortune through his initiative and enterprise. He founded the Pacific Whaling Co., in Victoria.

He located on a trip from Halifax the last rookery of seals off the Faulkland Islands and he sent the seven ships of the Balcom Line out to this site.

Uncle Sprott married Rhoda -----.

 CAPTAIN REUBEN BALCOM
1855 - 1929

My other great uncle Reuben Balcom was born at Sheet Harbor in 1855.

He began his sea career off the coast of Nova Scotia at the age of twelve. He was made captain when he was twenty-one.

For several years he commanded ships out of Nova Scotia ports for the West Indies and South America.

In 1893 he was wrecked on a Halifax schooner bound for Cuba with fish. The ship was struck by a hurricane and six members of the crew were washed overboard. Uncle Reub and two others lashed themselves to the sole remaining deck and were picked up three days later by a passenger steamer. They were bruised, battered and half starved.

After this experience, the next year 1894, Uncle Reub went to Victoria and became associated with Uncle Sprott. Urged by the call of the Klondike, he sailed for the Alaska gold diggings in 1897 and remained there until 1899.

Returning from the north, Uncle Reub came to Halifax in 1900 sailing for Cape Horn to catch seal. He remained in South American waters for several years. In 1904 he went to Norway where he superintended building of the steel sealing vessel ‘Orion.’ He took her to Victoria around Cape Horn.

In 1908 he took the schooner Agnes L. Donohue of Halifax to the Indian Ocean. When the ship came in sight of Marian Island a number of men were noticed on the beach, frantically waving clothing to attract attention of those on board. There were seventy-five members of a Norwegian steamer cast away on the barren island. Uncle Reub took them to Natal, on the east coast of South Africa.

After 1909 he lived in retirement at Victoria, with the exception of a voyage to Fiji and the Christmas Islands in 1916 as commander of the sailing vessel Isabel May.

Uncle Reub married Jessie and they had two sons Hughie Dunn and Willis (both sea captains) and one daughter. He died in 1929 in Victoria.

My great great grandfather was William Atkins.

According to family records he was born in Birmingham, England probably in the 1770's or early 1780's. The exact date of his birth is not known.

He fought in the Battle of Trafalgar under Lord Nelson. According to family tradition he lost a finger in this battle.

He came to Halifax with the Royal Navy as an officer shortly after Nelson's famous victory.

He was married in the Old Dutch Church in Halifax but the date is not known. He received an Imperial land grant in Halifax but later was transferred to Shelburne.

Some years later after retirement from naval services he and his wife left Shelburne in a boat and settled along the Eastern Shore in the village now known as Harrigan Cove, Halifax County. The site was an old Indian burial ground.

It is believed he received an Imperial grant of land in that area in return for his former grant at Halifax. According to family history he paid five peppercorns a year (about a dollar) for taxes.

He is buried in a small plot of land alongside of a number of his family of succeeding generations.

George Gray of Dartmouth, a great grandson erected a bronze plaque on a monument at Harrigan Cove. The tablet has the following inscription: - "In memory of William Atkins, who served under Lord Nelson on board H.M.S. Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, October 1, 1805." It is surrounded by a white picket fence.

The story goes from family history that when Lord Nelson was hit, he fell at William Atkins feet.