Before Bermuda became a part of the real world it stood in isolation out in the Atlantic Ocean, a tiny archipelago six hundred and forty miles from Cape Hateras. It was the only sentinel standing guard for ships seeking refuge from raging seas, and for hundreds of years Bermudians were content to scratch out a living as best they could. The isolation and sparse living moulded a hardy people who, by necessity, were adept at doing almost anything, and mastering most.
One such man is white-haired L.N. ‘Dickie’ Tucker who has, in his lifetime, been a cook for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; an undertaker; an investor in penny stocks; and founded both the Bermuda Sailor’s Home and Guild of the Holy Compassion. He even once studied to become a priest.
If there is any thread to this egregious career, it lies in a lust for life and a love for his fellow man; in all that Dickie Tucker has done he left those around him better for having known him. He has also drawn on his varied vocations to earn a reputation as one of the Island’s most renowned raconteurs. At eighty years of age he still has a good deal of story-telling to do.
Dickie Tucker’s youth was as unremarkable as that of any other child brought up in the East End at the turn of the century. As the son of Canon Arthur Tucker, the Rector of St. Peter’s Church in St. George’s, he lived an austere and spiritually surfeited childhood. But it was while a lad of 15 years that an event occurred which would not only stay with him for the rest of his life, but which would also affect the lives of countless seamen. The event was the 1918 murder of an Australian sailor named Thomas Creely, who had been shot in the head by two of his mates while their ship was alongside St. George’s. As a young boy Tucker spent a good deal of time on the docks of St. George’s, and out of respect for the dead sailor, he attended the funeral.
“I went to the funeral out of sheer compassion for the young man,” says Tucker in the recess of his small South Shore Road cottage in Devonshire. He lights up a cigar, puffing hard and peered out at me from behind thick glasses. “The Roman Catholic priest came down from Hamilton along with the roughest looking crew from Creely’s ship. They all had obvious hangovers and were a miserable looking crowd. One of the meanest-looking sailors from the ship leaned forward and asked me what ship I was from. ‘I’m from Bermuda. My father’s the Anglican pastor here,’ I replied. ‘Well, you look after our pal’s grave,’ the sailor demanded more than asked.
“I was so taken aback that I said yes right away, and ran as quick as I could to my father to tell him what I had undertaken. He was a man of few words, and asked if I had really promised to look after the grave. I said yes, and he told me in this stern voice: ‘Well, keep your promise’. That was the kind of man he was.
“So, I used to go there every Saturday, clean up the grave, and put flowers on it. And then one day I suddenly thought that there must be many, many other graves of seamen out there.” Tucker went through the records of burials at St. Peters, and indeed found that there were numerous graves of seamen in the Anglican cemetery, some of which were little more than mounds of earth. At that time merchant sailors who died at sea were taken to the nearest port where local agents would arrange fro a proper Christian burial. But once the body was in the ground, there was no obligation for the upkeep of the graves, and without the care of relatives and friends who were often thousands of miles away, the graves would fall into disrepair.
Once again Tucker went to his father with a promise, telling him that he was going to start up a guild to look after the graves of merchant seamen.
“My father asked me if I knew what I was going to call it, and I don’t know what made me say it, but I told him I would call it the Guild of the Holy Compassion,” says Tucker. “My father then asked me if I knew what it meant, and I said no. ‘Neither do I,’ he said.
“But I do know what it means now. It’s holy because it’s in God’s holy acre that the seamen are buried. It’s compassionate because we have compassion for the seamen and their loved ones in foreign lands. And it’s a guild because we have a lot of church people to join it.
“What we do now, and what we have done since 1918 is to assure people that the seamen will have perpetual care for their graves throughout the Island. We’ve reclaimed over 108 graves since then and have put little bronze plaques upon which are engraved the names of the men and their ships. And each All Soul’s Day (November 1) wreaths are placed at the mariners’ graves.”
Tucker is the last founding member of the Guild still alive, and he realizes that it might die with him. “If I were to be remembered, I would like it to be by someone carrying on the work of the Guild of the Holy Compassion,” says Tucker. “When you get to my age you’re lucky to get out of bed.”
Tucker describes a youth that was bare of material possessions, but rich in experience. He wasn’t much of a student, always looking out the classroom window thinking of almost anything but his lessons. But what he failed to absorb from his studies he picked up on the streets of St. George’s, and today the experiences of his youth make up a good part of his repertoire – admittedly embroidered over the years and punctuated with repartee. Now, squinting over his glasses and grinning at me, he launches into one of his many anecdotes:
“On the Island that I was born – St. David’s – there was a famous man, Tucker Hayward,” says Tucker, adding hastily as clouds of smoke from his cigar fill his small study. “All Tuckers are related no matter if their names are in the middle, behind or in front. Anyway, Tucker was postmaster general, and he wasn’t terribly energetic. He spent most of his time sitting on a cedar log smoking an old clay pipe. In the winter he used a broken pipe to keep his whiskers warm.
“Tucker Hayward had a horse called Razorback, and one day as I remember, it was taken ill, so Tucker went to the veterinarian surgeon who prescribed pills for the horse. ‘Now Tucker, do you know how to give this horse a pill?” asked the surgeon. ‘Oh, yes, of course, what do you think I am. Of course I know,’ replied Tucker Hayward.
“Going back over to St. David’s on the ferry boat run by an old Swedish sailor named Charlie Christianson, Tucker asked Charlie if he knew how to give a horse pills. ‘I don’t know nothing about horses, but I’ll tell you what to do. Take a pawpaw stalk and cut it at both ends so you can blow through the middle. Then tie up the animal and push the stalk down its throat. Quickly put the pill in the stalk and blow it down.
“Well, Tucker loved an audience, and it wasn’t long before he had a couple of dozen people gathered to watch him administer to the poor animal. He was advising them all that if they had a sick horse this was the way to give it pills. But as he went to blow the pill down, the horse suddenly sneezed and Tucker got the pill instead. He was desperately ill, and they asked my father to come down and give him his last rites, but for some reason or other – owing to the strong use of tobacco, I suppose – he recovered. But he never gave a pill to his horse again. I can’t think why not,” Dickie chuckles.
Following a very elementary education in St. David’s and then St. George’s, Tucker was sent to boarding school just outside of St. John’s, New Brunswick, where he studied for three years, two of which were spent in the same grade and classroom. “My wife used to say that I was a very clever person; that I could tell a joke four different ways in less than 24 hours. And I could do languages – French, Greek, Latin. But when it came to subjects like mathematics my mind just went blank,” says Tucker.
His dilatory academic efforts continued at a seminary school in Wisconsin, where Tucker studied a year before returning north to Canada, uncertain of his future, but convinced that preaching religion was not for him.
“I went to Calgary, Alberta after one year of theological school,” says Tucker. “I went to see my sister who had been ill, only intending to stay the winter.” But Calgary in the early 1902’s was booming and full of opportunity to make money. It wasn’t long before Tucker was out looking for a job that could provide him with the means to return home to Bermuda where he could get a start on his own.
“I wouldn’t tell my sister what I was up to, but I was out looking for a job, and one day, while I was riding on the street car I overheard someone say rather loudly that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police wanted a cook,” he recalls. “So, the next day I went down to the RCMP barracks. I’ll never forget that morning when I walked in and a corporal asked me what I wanted. ‘I’ve come to apply for the job of cook,’ I replied. ‘Hmmm. Well, sit down and someone will see you.’
“I guess I stayed there for about an hour before a sergeant finally came to take me to the commander. I think he came from England. His accent was terribly regimental,” says Tucker in mock British military fashion. “I went in to talk to the commander who was wearing enough weaponry to scare anybody to death. He was a fine looking man, going on for 60, but still wearing enough to run a war. He had a sword and a revolver and God knows what else. ‘What’s this about cooking?’ he snapped.
“I said that cleanliness was my keynote, having overheard on the streetcar that his other fellow had been fired because he had been caught drying the dishes with his shirt tails. I knew the commander would never know where I got that from, and added for good measure that, ‘I want to please you sir,’ with a jack-knife bow. ‘What kind of cook are you?’ he asked. ‘I’m a home cook, sir. I’ve cooked for my wife, my sister and my mother in St. David’s.’
‘Take his number sergeant if he should be wanted,’ the commander said, then turned to Dickie. ‘Mr Tucker, thank you for applying, and if you are wanted we will call you.’
“Two days later while my sister and I were having tea the telephone rang. She went into the other room to answer it, and came back white as a sheet, telling me it was the police of the line. I took the telephone and the man on the other end said that I had the job as a cook, and would I report for duty on the first day of April.
“I wanted to test his sense of humour and said would he mind if I started on the last day of March because I was very superstitious, and always made plans the night before April Fool’s Day. He replied that I was very eccentric, but could come in on March 31.’Now we come to the question of uniforms,’ he went on, ‘What type of uniforms do you have?’
“I had a blue shirt – that’s all I had at the time. But I thought fast and told him I had a blue Cambridge shirt, a white cap, an apron and white trousers. ‘Oh, very smart’, he said, adding, ‘I expect you on Saturday morning, bright and early!’ The following day I went down to a second hand shop and bought all the clothes I needed. “I stayed and cooked for the Mounted Police for two years, then I invested in oil.
“I knew that a poor man could never win because he could not hold onto his money long enough. So, I started off with fifty dollars and prayed for a piece of Calgary and got it. It was the most extraordinary thing, you could buy shares for a dollar, so even a newspaper boy could become and investor. Everytime I made $250 I would put $200 in the bank and continue playing with the rest until I had saved about $3,000.
Then in 1925, at the age of 23 years, Tucker decided to return home to start up what he had always dreamed of doing – a home for sailors. It had humble beginnings in a small St. George’s shop opposite the Bank of Butterfield. But it soon became the center of activity for merchant seamen coming to Bermuda, and during the Second World War years, more than 200,000 seamen passed through its doors, later to be located on Front Street in Hamilton, and then finally at its present location behind the Rosebank Theatre.
The Bermuda Sailors’ Home was run as a charity, and Tucker survived through a modest salary paid by the British Sailors’ Society. Tucker’s motivation was simply to make seamen who stopped over here feel more at home. But his efforts went far beyond the charter of the Home, and many of those who passed through Bermuda would never forget the kindness he showed them. His work did not go unnoticed. Britain’s King George VI made him a member of the British Empire. Sweden gave him the country’s highest civilian honour, the Vasamedalij, and Denmark bestowed upon him it Freedom Medal.
And all through the years Tucker kept his promises made as a youth, keeping Thomas Creely’s grave in good repair, as well as a growing number of other graves reclaimed or recently occupied. It was an odd combination – caring for both dead and living seamen. And it wasn’t long before Tucker made the oddity more complete by becoming an undertaker.
“I became an undertaker because I liked the work,” says Tucker. “I thought it was my hidden vocation…” (Continued in Part II, printed in June 1982 issue).
