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9. impossible, and so it did not matter faced straight forward. Ship of the Month - cont'd. that a blank section of pilothouse wall The pilothouse roof had a low dome, complete with decorative finial, and a little low rail ran around the edge of the roof. A large companionway ran up behind the pilothouse on the port side to give access to a small open n a v i gation bridge set on the after portion of the pilothouse roof where the top of the companionway formed a small platform. (Many of these early ships had double companionways behind the pilothouse, so access could be gained from either side of the hurricane deck, but in the photo of CELTIC we cannot see whether there were stairs on the starboard s i d e . ) If one looks closely at our photograph of CELTIC, one can see a b o w l er-hatted individual in a dark coat standing atop the open bridge, almost undoub t e d l y the CELTIC's master. The man standing on the hurricane deck at the bottom of the steps is probably the chief mate. Immediately abaft the pilothouse rose the tall, fidded mast, complete with gaff and boom. A u x iliary sail was carried on the mast, and probably was used frequently in the steamer's early years to conserve fuel. The galley s m o k e stack rose high above the boat deck on the port side, athwart the pilothouse. (The cooking would have been done down in the forecastle and the food carried up into the cabin by the young and h ard-worked m e s s b o y s . ) There were two large lifeboats on the port side of the hurricane deck, and although our one photo of CELTIC does not show it, there very likely was at least one additional lifeboat, or yawlboat, carried on the starboard side. All of the boats seem to have been worked with radial davits, whose curved heads present a modern look in an era when many steamboat davits had straight, angled heads. Set well aft on the hurricane deck was the steamer's single, tall and u n u sually heavy (for the period) funnel. It was surrounded by several large ventilator cowls, placed there to draw fresh air downward to the nether regions where fresh air was a rare commodity indeed. A straight steering post was set at the stem, but CELTIC also carried a long, hinged steering pole w hich could be adjusted to whatever angle the w h e e l s m a n desired, via a rope connected to the mast and worked by line and pulley from the forward deck. This "spearpole" featured decorative designs at its outer end. A large jackstaff was set at the stern, from w hich an immense Red Ensign was flown. There were sidepoles down each side of the boat deck for the flying of decorative bunting on suitable occasions. It will be noticed that, in our photo, CELTIC is "dressed" overall, indicating that the appa r e n t l y posed phot o g r a p h was taken on a special occasion, quite possibly Dominion Day, July 1st. CELTIC had white cabins and an all-black smokestack. The hull was a dark shade, but not as dark as the trim on the mai n deck gunwale and rail, which leads us to think that perhaps the rails were black and the hull dark green. It is indeed u nfortunate that the early b l ack-and-white photographs could not give us more reliable renditions of shade variances between colours. However, c onsidering the fact that photographers had to lug around heavy equipment and w ork with "wet" glass-plate negatives on w hich to record images, we are lucky to have any photographic images of ships from this period at all, so we will not complain. In 1875, CELTIC, commanded by Capt. Taylor, and in company with CANADA, CALABRIA, DROMEDARY, LAKE ERIE, LAKE M I C H I G A N and PERSIA, was in the daily service of Mackay's Lake and River Steamship Company from Montr e a l to Toronto, H a m i l t o n and St. Catharines. In the following year, 1876, CELTIC was the first ship of the line to enter service, when she cleared H a m i l t o n on Thursday, May 4th, wit h flour for Montreal. In those years, of course, there were no big government icebreakers at work, and ships had to break their own ice. As a result, wooden hulls were at particular jeopardy in the spring until the channels cleared themselves of ice.