Newfoundland man, 79, survives violent collision with massive humpback whale

WHITBOURNE, N.L. — When his son’s small boat hit a 40-tonne humpback whale and almost capsized, 79-year-old Tony Morgan remembers flying through the air, hitting the water and then — utter blackness.

He thought he was about to drown as he inhaled a few gulps of sea water from eastern Newfoundland’s Trinity Bay.

“I went right down into the dark part of the water,” he says, recalling the bizarre collision Monday, somewhere between New Harbour and Chapel Arm.

“I kept my wits with me and I tried to get my rubbers off, but I couldn’t. So I … tried to get up out of it. And I wasn’t making no headway. So I took a couple gulps of water and everything flashed for me … I said, ‘I’ll end my life right there.’”

Then something strange happened.

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Morgan recalls seeing a brief vision of his youngest brother Jerry, who died a few years ago of Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 62 years old.

“He must have pushed me up out of the water,” he says. “Everything brightened right up … Within one second, I broke up to the top and I saw the boat.”

His rubber boots were filled with water and he wasn’t wearing a life-jacket, but Morgan managed to swim to the boat, where his son Roger grabbed him by the belt and hauled him aboard.

Morgan says he never saw the whale, but his son later told him the behemoth barely budged when his six-metre boat hit the animal.

“The boat almost turned over,” he says. “It turned 60 degrees — spun around.”

In hospital, Morgan was treated for exposure and released, a bit sore and missing a front tooth but otherwise in good health.

“I still have a bad neck and a bad rump,” says Morgan, who has lived in Whitbourne, N.L., for 70 years. “But I feel best kind right now.”

“I’m in good shape. I’m on the go all of the time. I’m in the woods, I burn wood and … I don’t stop. I’m at it all day.”

Morgan works part-time at his nephew’s chicken farm. Before he retired, he held several jobs, including stints at a phosphorus plant in Long Harbour, managing a chicken farm and working at CN Rail.

On Monday, when he was on the water, Morgan was intent on catching cod as part of the province’s popular recreational fishery. He says he plans to return to the bay to fish next week — and he says he’s not worried about another close encounter with a whale.

“That’s only a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

— By Michael MacDonald in Halifax

Follow @NovaMac on Twitter

The Canadian Press