This is a tale of a life-or-death moment at sea for a furry lil puppy.
I was a young teenage deckhand working on a fishing party boat. One day a family came aboard with their puppy they had just got that week.
It wasn’t all that far past weening, but it was pretty fast on its four paws when exploring around the deck and scampering out of the way of fish coming over the rails. As the day wore on and the seas grew bigger, the pup tired, and the family took turns holding it.
The skipper had called for all lines in because the seas were becoming steep and tall with short intervals. It was time to head for harbor and it was a long uphill (against the seas) run back in.
There was some spray coming over the rails and the puppy was shivering. A surprisingly big wave reared up ahead and the skipper throttled down, but still that wave broke over the bow and shivered the boats timbers.
That shuddering feeling freaked out the little puppy who suddenly bolted out of the mom’s arms and landed on the deck. The wave put the decks under a foot of rushing water that whooshed the pup toward the stern.
That boat had pretty good size scuppers to quickly drain the deck, and that little puppy was being rinsed right toward a big, gaping scupper. The girl in the family, who was about 10 years old, launched herself after the pup.
The puppy went overboard out the scupper, just as the girl (who was fortunately bigger than the scupper) slid into the stern, shoved her arm way out through the scupper and caught that puppy by a foreleg. I got there a split second later and pulled the girl away from the scupper and out of the water. She kept a firm hold on the pup.
Everyone aboard cheered wildly as that puppy came back up through that scupper in the girl’s hand, sopping wet, bedraggled and terrified. Once we got back to the safety of the harbor and berthed the boat, the skipper came down and announced we were going to have a dog-naming ceremony, so all hands remain on deck.
Passengers were intrigued and stayed. The skipper declared, with great pomp and ceremony, that the dog’s name was to be Scupper.
The family loved it, the dog seemed happy with it, and so it stuck. A fitting name for a lucky sea dog.
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
