Peter Polson and Jim Cummings, two Richibucto
fishermen, decided just before midnight to have a drink. When they walked
into the bar, they were greeted by a young German sailor, Olan Lutzer,
who rolled into them after falling down the long stairs. Lutzer
had been stabbed. He was unable to identify has assailant. One bloody
hand gripped the wall, the other held tightly onto Polson. And still
clutching to Polson with the other bloody hand on the wall, Lutzer breathed
his last. The bloody hand kept re-appearing until the house was torn
down.
While the Sailors Home brought death
to one man; it carried yet another back to his dear mother. Robert
Cady, of Richibucto left Chatham one morning on the British barque,
"Brayson". Twenty-Five years later he visited the bowery district of
New York. At the mission, one man mentioned he hadn’t seen home since
he was a boy but feasting on hot coffee, fruit and pies like mother
made brought back memories of home.
Cady spoke out that it was a quarter
of a century since he had been home. Where did you come from?" asked
an American sailor. "Wasn’t it a place called Richibucto ?"
"Richibucto! " echoed another. " I spent
two weeks there at the Sailors Boarding house! "
How long ago was that?, gasped Cady.
"Why I was there summer before last. Say your name wouldn’t be
Cady, would it?"
"There is an old women living nearby
who haunts the sailors home!" Cady groaned, "I didn’t live far from
there!"
The sailor intoned the final words, "Someday"
, she says, "I will meet a sailor who knew my boy, who sailed away
so long ago and never returned!"
Cady lost no time in returning home to
his mothers love.
The saddest story has to be the saga
of Andrew Scott. Scott lived on the riverbank in Richibucto opposite
the Anglican Church. In 1861, he disappeared.