Robert Carl Sheppard

Robert Carl Sheppard, MBE (January 31, 1897 – December 31, 1954 ) was a veteran of the Battle of the Somme (Beaumont-Hamel, France) in World War I who worked as a lighthouse keeper at Fort Amherst and was master mariner of two ships, the SS Eagle (1944–1945) and the SS Trepassey (1945–1946), chartered for the secret British Antarctic expedition, Operation Tabarin.

Family Sheppard was born January 31, 1897 including the Nelly, famous for setting precedent for maritime law in the sale of minority interest in a ship (The Nelly Schneider, Admiralty, April 4 and 5, 1878, Sir R. Phillimore). In 1906, his mother accompanied his father to Sydney, AU and back, likely bringing at least one of their children on the months-long voyage, infant Louis Wakeham Sheppard (b. 1905). Three years later, on the same ocean trek, somewhere between Brazil and New South Wales, his father disappeared, lost at sea with all crew aboard the Amy Louise, a 2 mast, 200 ton, wood brigantine.

By March 1, 1920, 23-year-old Sheppard was a master mariner when he married 19-year-old Sadie Addison Kean. She was well-aware of the dangers faced by a master mariner as her father (Captain Nathan Barker Kean), grandfather (Captain Abram Kean, OBE), and several of her Kean uncles were well known sealing masters, commemorated in song. Joseph W. Kean, her father's eldest brother, had captained the SS Florizel, but on February 23, 1918, he was on board as a passenger when the Florizel struck a reef in a heavy sea and split in pieces. He suffered a broken leg, was swept overboard, drowned and washed up on shore. On March 15, 1931, her uncle Abraham Baker Kean, captain of the SS Viking, survived injuries when he was catapulted off the bridge by an explosion of dynamite that blew the stern off the vessel, which then caught fire and sank, killing many on board. The film, White Thunder, for which the ship was carrying dynamite to create scenes of icebergs imploding, was edited after the disaster and released as The Viking.

Sheppard's descendants include his son, Robert Austin Sheppard, II who fought with the British 59th (Newfoundland) Heavy Artillery Regiment, his daughter, Edna Patricia Sheppard (1923–1998), born at the Fort Amherst lighthouse, who was a research chemist for the US Food and Drug Administration and taught at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and his great-grandson, Nick Whalen, a Member of Parliament for the riding of St. John's East.

By 1950 the family was living in Sylvanside, the former summer home of the Hon. John Vincent O’Dea and Sheppard's last residence, which overlooks Bowring Park (St. John's) in the historic Kilbride neighborhood.

Military service Capt. Sheppard was a veteran of the WW1 campaigns in Gallipoli and Beaumont Hamel, serving from September 8, 1914, aged 19 with The First Five Hundred, the Newfoundland Regiment in the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. He was evacuated from Suvla Bay for frostbite in December 1915; returned to the regiment, and again extricated for injuries, this time at the Western Front in spring of 1916 for a shrapnel wound to his face.

According to Dickinson, Too extensively wounded to return to the field, he was honorably discharged in March 1917.

Lighthouse service The Oke family oversaw the light at Fort Amherst for nearly a century, beginning circa 1848 with Robert Oke as the first Chief Inspector for the Newfoundland Lighthouse Service, whose responsibilities were to oversee the budget, staffing and repairs of lighthouses. In 1841, his daughter, Mary Ann Oke (1819–1896), married John Sheppard (1816–1890), an assistant lighthouse keeper at Harbour Grace Island since 1836, and they moved to manage the Fort Amherst lighthouse in 1852. They passed down the lighthouse trade through another 3 generations: their son, Austin Oke Sheppard (1844–1927); grandson, Robert Austin Sheppard, I (1865–1909); and, great-grandson, Sheppard, whose keeper service spanned 14 years from 1924 to 1938.

In September 1934, keeper Sheppard hosted Sir John Hope Simpson, KBE CIE OBJ (1868–1961) and Lady Quita Hope Simpson (1870–1939) for tea and a tour of the lighthouse. who was a telephone operator in the Office of the Colonial Secretary, including for the Hon. Arthur Barnes.

Fort Amherst was designated one of the National Historic Sites of Canada in 1951.

Mariner and harbor master Despite losing his father at an early age to the sea, Sheppard followed in his footsteps, pursuing a career as captain of a square rig. Dickinson suggests he was mentored by his uncle, the locally renowned master mariner Captain Robert Whiting Wakeham, who was decorated numerous times for heroism at sea. According to Horwood, "... in Newfoundland, there were three classes of men that were respected above all others. The first was the man who had become the captain of a square rigger; the second a school teacher; the third a ship owner.”

Recommended by the military for navigation and seamanship studies, Sheppard sailed to the Caribbean and Mediterranean on schooners carrying salt fish in one direction and returning to Newfoundland with rum, molasses and other products. Sheppard personally selected his crew of twenty-seven Newfoundlanders, most with decades-long experience working in ice. The voyage resumed to Brazil, British Guiana, and Trinidad. It was here that Sheppard turned over the ship to another captain as he had orders to fly back to St. John's to outfit a ship to replace the damaged Eagle. off Sugarloaf Head, NL in the vicinity of Cordelia Deeps.

The second ship charted by the British Admiralty FIDS, was the Trepassey, obtained from the Newfoundland Railway. Sheppard steered from St. John's on November 20, 1945, with his wife Sadie and son, seaman Robert Austin Sheppard, II, on board.

Dickinson both credit Sheppard and his crew's devotion to duty in the face of personal adversity as contributing significantly to the establishment of new bases to expand scientific and surveying programs for the FIDS and Operation Tabarin.

Legacy Sheppard was a 5th generation Newfoundland lighthouse keeper and, along with his son, were the last known descendants of Robert Oke to officially practice the trade. He was commemorated in the poem, Fort Amherst - Then and Now, by Rosalind Power, who grew up at Fort Amherst, where her father was a lighthouse keeper (1949–1972). Similarly, a bay on the Tabarin Peninsula and an island near Stonington Island were named after the ship Trepassey. Five postage stamps commemorate the ships under Sheppard's command during the mission, two of the Eagle, and three of the Trepassey.

A tribute to Sheppard was published in the June 21, 1945, edition of the newspaper, Hope Bay Howler, edited by medical officer, Eric Back: "... did not Capt. Sheppard prove conclusively within the spell of four short weeks that he was well worthy to be listed among the great seamen of the Antarctic? Cook, Bransfield, James Weddell, the redoubtable James Clark Ross, Larsen the Swede, David the Australian and now Sheppard of Newfoundland".