It's not quite like the North, though. There are so many like houses and things, you know. Compared to St. Anthony or whatever.
How do you guys find your stories? It's probably the most common question we get while filming this series.
And yet, honestly, I don't really have an answer.
We just stumble across them. There's no way for me to explain this with words,
so instead, I thought I'd just make an episode about it.
[Evan] It's a huge ship. Why is it there? [Francesco] Let's go check it out!
[Evan] Oh, an there's an airplane too! Spirit of Harbour Grace. That must be one of those ones that flew across the Atlantic.
[Francesco] Let's go see! [Evan] Do you suppose, they're connected? I fee like they're not connected.
[Francesco] Probably not. [Evan] I mean they're very close to each other.
[Evan] My shoes are undone. I was not prepared.
[unintelligible conversation]
[Evan] Wow, it's really rusted, eh? She's got some rust on her.
[Evan] She's seen better days. Oh, there's grass on it too. Do you see the grass on the roof? There's grass.
[Evan] That thing's been there for a long time.
[Francesco] Yeah, I wonder what it is though? [Evan] Well, it's a ship, Francesco. [Francesco] Well, yeah.
[Evan] I agree, I don't see a name. I'm going to call it Rusty. Ol' Rusty.
There's got to be something. Is there a plaque? There's a gazebo. There's wetlands. I'm going to call it wetlands.
[Evan] It is wet. I don't know, I don't know. We'll have to find something. [Francesco] Yeah, we'll go. We'll find out.
Come one, come all to see the spectacle that the town of Harbour Grace website says draws in hundreds of visitors every year.
That local internet critic Eric Cheeke describes as "cool".
It's the big attraction, the main event, the S.S. Kyle.
It is a passenger ferry rotting in the harbour here. And what else is there to say about it?
No, really. What else is there to say about it?
I'm like two sentences in and honestly, I don't have anything more to say about this ship. Shit!
What am I going to make this episode about?
[Evan] Okay, so I looked up the boat. Or the ship. You're supposed to call it the ship.
They'll get mad at you when you call it a boat.
I'm probably going to call it boat in the script, we'll see how the comments are about that.
So the S.S. Kyle. The ship that was in that water there.
It's actually much more boring than I thought it was going to be. I'm not excited
about the story. So I researched it, I would describe it as a generic passenger ferry.
Like a ferry. It's not, you know, there weren't guns on it.
It didn't do stuff. Okay, it did stuff, but it was a passenger ferry for people.
Which is not a super, super exciting story. So obviously, I still want to tell the story.
It is cool, I mean it looks cool. I would like to take the drone over top.
I think that that would make, you know, a worthwhile image.
[Francesco] Make sure we don't crash it because of the wind.
[Evan] So I mean we're gonna have to go backwards on this just to try to figure out something.
I don't want to tell a story of a passenger ferry. That to me is not interesting.
But regardless, we will probably have to tell its history, so..
[Francesco] Yeah, but let's try and make it not too boring for the viewers I guess.
[Evan] Oh, you know. I'm a boring guy. What can I say? There's just, you know, there just isn't really a story here.
Okay, okay, okay. I might have exaggerated a little bit. There's always more to the story.
I think if you took even the most generic rockwall by the side of the highway,
and just went up to it and started filming, I bet you could find a story there too.
So let's look at the history of this boat.
The Kyle was built in England in 1913. As part of a merchant fleet owned by the same monopolistic industrialist
that owned just about everything in Newfoundland and Labrador at that time.
For the next 55 odd years, the ship lived an unassuming life doing exactly what she was intended to do, ferrying things.
She ferried passengers to Labrador, soldiers to England and sealers to the ice,
and while although no great individual story ever splashed across her bow,
many people in this region felt that the ship was part of their community.
She was a ship for the commoners. For the working man.
In 1967, after five decades of crushing through the frozen Arctic Ocean,
she was finally wounded beyond repair.
Like most things here in Newfoundland, it was a storm that tore the Kyle down.
She washed ashore in Harbour Grace, where she's been rotting in this harbour for almost as long as she was in service.
If the ship has no story, then the story has to be about the ship, right? In a different way.
It has to be about it being in a harbour or something.
I mean because there's a story to everything. There's a story behind it. I'm sure.
It's not the story of its life. I mean that's clearly just history in some way,
but I mean it's been there for 60 years or something like that. Really long.
50 years or whatever it is a really long time in that harbour.
And I guarantee everybody who's ever passed through there noticed it or stopped, took a picture or whatever it might be.
As ridiculous as that, you know, tiny town is, I bet everybody knows that ship.
And there's a story there in my opinion. To me, I think the story is probably its presence.
It's the fact that it's there. Because I'm sure that that has led to something.
[Francesco] Well, I guess the first thing you think when you see it is like 'why is it there'. Really?
[Evan] That's a very substantial ship. And it's got, I don't know if you could see it from the shore there, but it's got grass on it.
I mean it's not just been there for a while, it's grown into its own life,
it's become its own part of the landscape. So yeah.
[Francesco] Do you think the people there are proud of it? Like having it there?
[Evan] Oh yeah, I mean it's a landmark, right. Absolutely. And it's right next to,
they put the lane right up next to it, right. So clearly they're trying to get a tourism connection.
Yeah, good luck to that!
[Francesco] Fly in from Europe to go check out the S.S. Kyle! [Evan] 2.5 minutes of a photo.
[Evan] No, but I bet a lot of people stop there. I bet almost every single person who's driven past that, stopped.
I doubt any of them learn the history, because that's not the point, right. And I think maybe that's where to go with the story
is that you don't need to know the history to see the ship, to have it as a symbol.
But the thing about the Kyle is, that simply by being present here in the harbour, it almost gave it a new life.
As far as things to talk about go, it's hard to avoid the giant dead ship in front of everybody's window.
You can tell that the local tourism board really wants this ship to have a story.
They want that explosive bit of text to sell it to potential vacationers.
If only she'd done battle with German submarines, or narrowly saved some Dutch princess or something.
It would certainly help sell this video too. More people are clicking on "Nazi Hunter" than "Passenger Ferry".
But the reality is, Eric Cheeke was right. There may not be much to this four star attraction.
But it is cool to see a ship washed ashore. Driving by, we certainly stopped immediately.
So that ship being in that harbour, it living its life, and dying in the way that Newfoundlanders die, living in a way that Newfoundlanders live,
I think is the true symbol.
If it was really exciting, if it had done all these great things, it wouldn't be representative here, right.
Because that's not what the life here is like.
I mean not a lot is happening to the point that a ship is not removed from the harbour for 50 years,
even though it's rotting out there, right.
No. But that's the point. If we're going to make a documentary, if we're really telling the story of what happened here,
is the story of what happened here not the everyday life of the worker,
rather than the glory of some giant ship. So to me, I mean the S.S. Kyle, I'm not going to say
that when I read this story I got excited. But at the same time looking at it, trying to present it in a new way,
I think that's what it is.
The silver lining, the eye of the beholder, whatever you want to call it.
This is our real life. So why wouldn't we show that as the symbol.
[Francesco] And it looks cool. [Evan] I just want to make it because there's a cool ship, let's be clear.
Let's be clear. This is backtracking from a cool ship in a harbour to a script.
I found a bunch of websites on it though. They're trying really hard to make this famous.
Which I respect, because it's what they've got.
Which is what we were saying earlier, it's them. They're doing their best to say we've done something, we've got something,
it's interesting over here, and I mean they are right.
I'm not going to fly from Europe to come see it, but when we were there,
absolutely, there right. And I think that's Newfoundland, period.
[Evan] Have you heard about Newfoundland before coming here? [Francesco] Yeah, I heard but not really.
[Evan] I mean it's very much so the unassuming, hard-working, real people part of the world.
[Evan] And the S.S. Kyle is a pretty good symbol of that, I think. [Francesco] I absolutely agree, it's a pretty good symbol for that.
Want to go film some A roll? Drive to a ship? It's like an hour away. [screaming excitedly]
Now that I'm standing here though, I honestly can't imagine a better symbol for Harbour Grace than this ship.
For all the weather of time, it still hosts the beauty of a bygone era.
A memento to a world now lost visible only to those few lucky enough to stumble across it.
Nobody is flying across the planet just for this town or this ship,
but few who see either are disappointed.
The people of this region know they didn't much change history.
The passengers of the Kyle weren't the names you'll learn in school.
But I bet they were people worth knowing.
We have such a fascination with the greatest, the biggest, the fastest, the first
that it can be easy to forget that there's a story in everything.
And yet, when you'll come across something like this while driving through the countryside, you stop.
Because it's a reminder that you don't have to be the first and the biggest to be cool.
Just ask Eric Cheeke.
This is Rare Earth.
And oh my god, I'm going to die up here.
[Francesco] Actually, before I start editing this, come have a look. [Evan] What?
[Francesco] I need to show you something you did. [Evan] What did I do? [Francesco] I'll make fun of it for the rest of my life.
[Evan] Aha. What did I do? [Francesco] Look at this! [Evan] Ooh! Oh, it's the drone shots! Well, fair enough.
[Francesco] You're ready? It's harsh. [Evan] Oh yeah? This is a 20-28 dollar drone shot. Is that what you're saying? [Francesco] So far so good.
[Evan] Oh it's that...Oh no! [laughing]...[beeping]
[Evan] Well, that's disappointing. It's particularly disappointing. [Francesco] It is kind of disappointing.
[Evan] Cost us $28 to get that shot. I'm just saying, you know. Better be worth it!
[Francesco] Actually, though before we finish this. Actually, Jonah, hand me the camera for a second!
[Francesco] We've got a new character. [Evan] Is this a part of you? [Jonah] Yes, yes it is.
[Francesco] You were born like that? [Evan] Oh my god, that was a lot harder to pull down than I thought it was.
[laughing] [Evan] We want one of these! ...Bye!