Blue Oak and Old Anchors: Schooner Days CCCCI (401)

NAUTICAL research is coming into its own on Lake Huron. At Southampton they have dredged up an anchor which they say belonged to the schooner Ontario, wrecked forty or fifty years ago on the beach south of the Saugeen River. It is now in the garden of Mr. Robert Murphy, manager of the Plywoods factory, Southampton, and he, with true Southampton patriotism, is in favor of a movement to have it mounted on a base in the town park.

Schooner Days has been asked for the history of the schooner Ontario, and would like to be able to give more than the following fragments:

The wrecked Ontario was a white fore-and-aft schooner of a little over four hundred tons carrying capacity, which, of course, would be double her registered tonnage. She hailed from Goderich when she was lost and had been owned there for a number of years, but she had come to Lake Huron from “below,” as Lake Erie and Lake Ontario were called. She was engaged in the salt, coal and lumber trade of Lake Huron from about 1880 onwards.

Half a dozen sailing vessels named Ontario have plied the Great Lakes, taking their names from our own lake, the bluest of them all or from counties on its shores.

There was probably an armed sloop built by the British at Oswego during the Seven Years War, and certainly a square-rigger, a “snow,” built at Carleton Island later. She was lost with all on board, during the American Revolution. There was also a schooner named Ontario in Commodore Chauncey’s American fleet in the War of 1812, and an anchor said to belong to her is shown in the museum at Niagara on the Lake. The identification is doubtful. The anchor is of more modern pattern than one would expect in Chauncey’s fleet;, and much like the anchor at Southampton, but of only half the size. These were war vessels.

Two and possibly three commercial schooners named Ontario also, plied the lakes. There was a little vessel of 30 tons in which the late Capt. David Reynolds, master for a quarter of a century of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club launch Hiawatha, once loaded tanbark for Clifton at Port Union; the only cargo of which any record is discoverable from that little forgotten port near the mouth of Highland Creek. In its time, like so many other lost harbors,did a flourishing business in grain, stone, cordwood and lumber. Can anyone tell more about Port Union’s activities?

There was, too, a three-masted schooner named Ontario, large for her time, one of the biggest in the historic Globe list of Aug. 4th, 1856. She and the three-masted schooner Superior share the honors in size at 380 tons, which would make her larger than the “old canallers,” who ran from 320 to 360 tons register Both these vessels are listed as built at Quebec in the year 1851 and per­ haps they were brought to the lakes at the same time. H. Waters is given as the owner of the Ontario and Taylor and Hooker as the owners of the Superior.

The vessel whose anchor comes to light is probably the two-masted schooner Ontario, built at Whitby in 1856 by H. Chisholm for Jas. Rowe and Co. She was of 218 tons, 112 feet long, 23 feet beam, 9 feet 6 inches depth of hold. John Albert Phippen was her registered owner in 1872. She seemingly succeeded a smaller Ontario, mentioned in the Port Whitby Harbor Co.’s records as early as 1843. The later Ontario brought in a cargo of marble in 1858, and so supplied memorials for many Ontario county pioneers, who sleep in Whitby cemeteries. The Ontario was one of the first coal carriers, bringing 100 tons of Blossburgh coal, then a comparative novelty, into Whitby in 1862. That same year she also brought in 400 barrels of salt from Oswego. Salt was still being imported into Canada then.

Later the Ontario was bought by Prince Edward county owners. Capt. John D. Vanalstine sailed her in the barley trade and she “went above,” that is, travelled to Lake Huron, where many years afterwards she was wrecked. More information about her will be welcomed.

ANOTHER piece of nautical research in Southampton concerns a steamer, the old Kaloolah or Collingwood, wrecked almost eighty years ago. During recent dredging operations a quantity of heavy oak planks and ribs were brought up by the dipper. Brock Macaulay has the dried-out woodpile and has made several cribbage boards, as souvenirs for his friends. Despite the long immersion much of the timber is in perfectly sound condition. It is known locally as “blue oak,” and has acquired the deep tint of indigo which white oak always shows after being stained by the acid of iron fastenings and long soaking in water. Irish bog oak, which is blacker than ebony, was pale straw color in the living tree. Schooner Days can oblige about the Kaloolah to a limited extent. She was an American side-wheeler built in Buffalo and bought by Charles Thompson, of Toronto, in 1853, for the route between Dunnville, on the old Grand River canal, to Lake Erie and Sault Ste. Marie. A fter four years she was bought by Collingwood partners and renamed the Collingwood.

In July, 1857, she ran on a rock two miles from Michipicoten Harbor in Lake Superior. She had the Canadian Red River expedition on board, and the accident happened in a fog. She was refloated with considerable difficulty, and plied as the Collingwood for three years more, under the command of Capt. Frank Granville. She was wrecked off Southampton in 1860.

P . LEACY, of 214 Eighteenth avenue east, Calgary, Alberta, writes of a recent Schooner Days article about the Chicora: “When this steamer came up the St. Lawrence canals from Montreal on her way to the Great Lakes, when she was passing through the Galops Canal, lock No. 26, I was at the lock with hundreds of other boys and girls from our school. As you know, she was too long for locks in those days and this was overcome by cutting her in two parts, bow and stern. The Calvin Towing Company of Garden Island, opposite Kingston, Ont., used two of their tugs, the William and the City of Hamilton. The City of Hamilton handled the forward part and the steamer William the after parts, passing our village. At that time it was called ‘Edwardsburg,’ now Cardinal, Ontario, the home of the Edwardsburg Starch Company.

“I knew afterwards she was on the Upper Lakes and had read of her coming back to Toronto.

“I am not sure, but I think I sawI her on Lake Superior one time on her way east, the other time going west. This would be the summer of 1876. I was on Lake Superior all that summer.”

[Captions]

SCHOONER “ONTARIO” off Kincardine, Lake Huron—two glimpses of the little vessel when she hailed from Goderich. She seems to have been partial to the reefed mailsail.

Anchor from schooner ONTARIO now in garden of MR. ROBERT MURPHY , Southampton, Ont. oak” from the KALOOLAH.

STR. KALOOLAH, from a drawing in the John Ross Robertson Collection of Canadian Historical Pictures, Toronto Public Library.

AFTER HER NAME WAS CHANGED

Steamer “Collingwood” (Kaloolah) on a rock near Michipicoten, July, 1857, while en route to Fort William, with the Canadian Red River Expedition on board. Water color by John Fleming, assistant surveyor, Canadian Red River Expedition, in the John Ross Robertson Collection of Canadian Historical Pictures, Toronto Public Library.