How a WWI master gunner built a company that was a major Marystown employer for 6 decades

A 19-year-old James W. Wiscombe, after serving in the Royal Navy during the First World War and advancing to the rank of master gunner, returned to his home in Mortier Bay on the Burin Peninsula, determined to start his own business.

He went to work with shipbuilders James Baird Ltd. and then G&A Buffett Ltd. before setting out on his own in 1921, after marrying Gladys Harding of Grand Bank, who was also employed at Baird's. They had five children: Alvin, William (Bill), Charlie, Sam and Ruby, who they lost to meningitis when she was only eleven years old.

According to his son Charlie (now deceased), Wiscombe started in business under his mother's stairs, selling tinned products and other goods before going into the woods when he was 22 and cutting the timber to build a small shop on what became known as Wiscombe's Point.

In 1923 the firm of J.W. Wiscombe and Sons was established and during the next four decades owned and operated five schooners and a retail general store from their premises on Wiscombe's Point in Creston South (now part of Marystown) as well as some 27 branch stores in smaller communities in Placentia Bay as well as Garnish, St. Lawrence and Epworth.

Jim Wiscombe died in 1956 — at age 56 — of lung cancer, leaving the business to his four sons. Bill Wiscombe became managing director of the firm, a position he held until 1966, when he branched out on his own and started a general insurance firm.

The 1950s brought huge changes to the Burin Peninsula: modern fresh fish filleting plants had been or were being built in Burin, Fortune and Grand Bank; men who had braved the Atlantic in wooden schooners to get to the offshore fishing grounds were now manning the steel trawlers. A road connection in 1950 to the Avalon Peninsula now provided another means of transportation for people and freight, resulting in less demand for schooners.

It soon became obvious to the four Wiscombe boys that with the phasing-out of the saltfish fishery and the resettling of many of the smaller outports, the viability of their business model — especially branch stores — was no more. Two of the sons – Alvin and Charlie — sold their company shares to Bill and Sam and branched out in other businesses on their own.

In 1963 the company decided to move the salt-fish store from Wiscombe's Point to the main highway, renovate it and turn it into a supermarket; this was followed by moving the Crest Theatre from its original location and joining it to the supermarket for a dry-goods department.

After Bill left the business in 1966 it was taken over by the youngest of the Wiscombe boys, Samuel K., who continued with significant changes and consolidation by adding fresh meat and women's clothing departments. In 1971 a hardware and building supplies department was added, which doubled the size of the building to 12,000 square feet of floor space.

J.W. Wiscombe and Sons continued to be a major employer in the Marystown area for more than six decades, from 1923 until Samuel retired in 1984.

By the early 1960s the three remaining Wiscombe schooners were no longer involved in the fishery but were being used exclusively in the coastal freighting trade. Then disaster struck; they lost all three of the vessels in just three short years, between 1962 and 1965.

In January 1965, the last of the three — the 90-ton wooden schooner J. W. Wiscombe — ran ashore in a blinding blizzard near Point May on the Burin Peninsula on its last trip of the season.

Fortunately, no lives were lost in the shipwreck, as captain Bernard Whiffen and his four-man crew — engineer Patrick Whiffen, cook James Mallay, mate Arch Ford and seaman James Norman — managed to get into a dory and row to safety. The sternpost was driven up through the ship's hold and the vessel was declared a total loss.

Just over two years earlier, in October 1962, the Ruby Wiscombe, en route to Nova Scotia with a full load of salt-bulk fish, caught fire and sank off the French islands of St-Pierre-Miquelon. The vessel and cargo were a total loss.