Gale on Lake Ontario

Extract from a letter from Sackets Harbor date April 18 to a gentleman in tis city.

There has been a severe gale on our lake. The steamboat United States is up the lake and has been due at this port agreeable to her advertisements three days. The Avery, Captain D. Reed, is about twenty miles up the lake and could not get back again to this port. She would not steer, and rolled broadside in the sea until her anchors brought her up off Pillar Point in Chaumont Bay,whee she rode out the gale, and pitched so as to split her knight heads and hause holes with her chain cable. The Oswego was in the river and was here today. The America has not been out yet. The Great Britain is ashore near York and will probably be lost.

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From the Albany Evening Journal May 4.

From our correspondent - dated

Oswego, April 26, 1835

Sir, - We have just received your paper from a letter from Sackets Harbor under date of the 122 inst. containing an extract from a letter from Sackets Harbor under date of April 18th, in relation to the late gale on the lake and its effects on the Steamboats. Without impeaching the motive of the writer, his statement in relation to the Great Britain is utterly untrue, and common justice requires that it should be contradicted.

The gale was very severe, probably more so than we have seen for twenty years past. Some of the Steamboats were in their respective ports on the River St. Lawrence, where they prudently remained until the gale was over; others however were caught in it, and among them the Great Britain. She was on her first trip up and met the gale accompanied with snow, thirty miles from Toronto.

Notwithstanding that she continued on her course and entered the harbor; but as no buoys had yet been placed and the snow was so thick that nothing could be seen half her length, it was extremely difficult to keep the channel. The Captain however, with all hands were where they always are on board this boat, that is, every man at his post, and while crawling slowly in the guard against accidents, she grounded on the edge of the channel not far from her wharf.

A short time after another steamboat in passing took her off with a single hawser and without the least difficulty or injury to her, and her detention was so short that it did not interfere in any way with her regular time for leaving Toronto. This is a correct history of the alleged shipwreck of this fine boat, notwithstanding the unqualified assertion in the letter above referred to.

If the object of the author was to injure the character of the boat or its Captain it was not only ungenerous but unjust. She now and has been for many years pas commanded by Captain Whitney, a thorough bred American seaman, whose gentlemanly deportment and great skill and experience in the management of steamboats have long been known, and full-justify that high character which he sustains among our lake navigators. Under such circumstances I submit to your acknowledged candor the propriety of publishing this correction.