At the height of the devastating October gale of 1867, a small schooner, the Sea Clipper, was driven onto a reef at Spotted Island, Labrador. Already seriously damaged from an earlier collision with another schooner, she was being pounded to pieces by the raging sea. Miraculously, a young sea-captain from Renews, William Jackman, appeared on the scene to undertake one of the most amazing sea rescues ever known, and to earn for himself the Silver Medal of the Royal Humane Society of London and the undying adulation of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.