Fort Cove and The Chimney

I regret to say that I don’t have good detailed photos of some of the coast in this area: Polletts Cove was now very much in view and so much of my attention was focussed on soaking in the views there that I neglected to capture enough photos of what I was passing by (and on the return trip, I was still concentrating on Polletts Cove as it was receding in the distance). Photo #1, a moderately wide-angled view from well south of the mouth of Wreck Brook, has been significantly cropped to bring out the area in better detail; it looks at the coast immediately south the cliff face seen at the far left (and in greater detail in photo #6 on the previous page) to the mouth of Wreck Brook, seen at the right of the photo to the right of the large stand of evergreens. The topographical map places two labels in this section of the coast: Fort Cove and The Chimney.

The low headland at the centre of photo #1 and the headland on the north end of the cliff at the far left, delimit Fort Cove, a small bay of water about 300 m (1000 ft) long that extends below “Malcolms Brook Mountain” across the left two thirds of photo #1. I do not know why Fort Cove is so named: I don’t believe a fort ever existed here. Perhaps the name is due to the high cliffs of the area, making it look like the walls of a fort? Or perhaps it is due to the low headland at its southern end, which looks somewhat like a small fort or blockhouse?

“Malcolms Brook Mountain” fills the entire scene here, with its folds and knolls making for a beautiful scene that clearly deserved more of my attention than it got. Notice, too, the small dot of white in the upper right of the photo: it is another of the many birds we saw this day, most likely a gull.

Finding what the label The Chimney refers to is a far harder task than identifying Fort Cove. The map places The Chimney offshore north of, but adjacent to, the southern end of Fort Cove. It might name the headland, which bears a passing resemblance to Chimney Rock off Port Reyes in California, as a friend observed (for a photo of it, see here); it might refer to a rock pillar, though I see none large enough to merit its own name; it could use the meaning of chimney that the dictionary defines as “a steep narrow cleft by which a rock face may be climbed”; or it might have some other provenance.

Photo #2 is a very wide-angled view taken from off the north end of Fort Cove, i.e., looking southeast; it has also been significantly cropped to concentrate on the area in question. Towards the right of the photo where the waves are splashing, one can see a small triangular black rock pillar off from the shore that is approximately where, allowing for the distortion of this vantage point, The Chimney ought to be (and note the shoal to the left, which appears on the topographical map). This is the only rock pillar candidate I have found that is in the right place, though it does not look much like a chimney to me, unless it has been significantly altered since it was named, making it now a misnomer. Other larger rock pillars are found south of the mouth of Wreck Brook (to be seen shortly¹): why this rock should be worthy of a map label when they are not, I do not know. I am by no means convinced that this smallish right triangle of black rock is The Chimney, but, it is, I suppose, a candidate.

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¹ The topographical map is quite clear that The Chimney is just north of the southern end of Fort Cove, so one of the pillars south of Wreck Brook Mouth cannot be The Chimney.↩

Photo #3, a telephoto view from a bit south of the southern end of Fort Cove, shows a “steep narrow cleft” in the words of the dictionary definition that extends quite some distance up the side of “Malcolms Brook Mountain”; whether or not it could be climbed I cannot say (I have no rock-climbing experience). Like many other such features all along this coast, it is apparently the bed of a brook or run-off channel and its course is not marked on the topographical map. Note the headland which runs across the right half of the photo, well separated from the cliffs behind.

Photo #4, also a telephoto view, but from a bit further north, shows the base of this chimney in greater detail (the dark grey shape at the bottom looks more like a fiddle to me). From this vantage point, the headland is at the far right of the photo. So, is this feature The Chimney?

The placement on the map of the label off shore makes this meaning of the word unlikely here, although perhaps that placement was simply a matter of clarity (the contour lines are quite close together here). Moreover, this sense is pretty rare outside rock-climbing circles and I question whether it would have been in use by whoever was responsible for naming the feature.

Effectively, then, what The Chimney designates remains a mystery to me, as I find none of these speculations very convincing. If anyone has information about this label’s actual referent and how it came by the name, please notify me using the contact address in the footer.