Side Wheelers and "Props": Schooner Days DCCIII (703)

by C. H. J. Snider

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Had large place in building the Island Empire described in “A Saga of the St. Lawrence"

Some of the steamers of the Calvin fleet

It is not possible to enumerate, off hand, the very extensive argosy which made up the fleet which served the “island empire” created by Delano Dexter Calvin, on Garden Island opposite Kingston, so interestingly described in “The Governor’s” grandson’s book A Saga of the St. Lawrence. The firm must have owned at least sixty vessels in its history. Twenty might be the maximum strength of the fleet in any one year.

The Calvin Company built many vessels in the shipyard at Garden Island, some for their own use, some for others, and they also bought some ships in the early days and chartered some later. Many vessels trading to Garden Island so regularly that they are supposed to be Calvin vessels were the property of customers or associates of the Calvin firm. Such was, for example, the big topsail three-master Stuart H. Dunn, which for years carried the Toledo oak of E. L. Kelsey of Detroit for rafting at Garden Island for Dunn and Co. of Quebec.

SAIL’S LIMITS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

D. D. Calvin’s Saga speaks of thirty steamers, some chartered, most of them owned by the firm, but not all at the same time. The firm built, owned or chartered at least thirty more barges and schooners. In addition they built and used the ocean-going full-rigged barque Garden Island, to carry their timber to Britain from Quebec.

As practical Delano Dexter wrote almost a hundred years ago, the St. Lawrence below Kingston is not beating ground for schooners, that is, does not afford room or depth for tacking properly when the wind and current are both adverse for sailing progress. So the firm “went into steam” early, first as an aid for their rafts, barges and schooners, and eventually to replace them all. The first steamer launched at Garden Island seems to have been the Prince Edward, built in 1838 for the Bay of Quinte run. Maybe she survived in the barrel sectioned ferry-scow of that name we saw at Glenora in the Bay in 1906.

OLD PADDLE WHEELERS

An early Island steam product, the 100-ft. Raftsman, launched in 1841, lived for ninety years in various incarnations. To “The Governor” she looked “like a big pumpkin seed,” with her 32-ft. overall beam and her wide paddle boxes. She was intended to tow the rafts from Montreal to Quebec. Once she got down the river—which she did under sails and sweeps—she could not come back until the pestilently small canal locks were enlarged, so she lived in exile on the lower river for years. In 1876 she was brought back to the Island and remodelled as the screw tug William Johnston. This was surely not to honor Pirate Bill Johnston, the hero of the Thousand Islands! The remodelling was successful, and she was again lengthened and rebuilt, lasting almost up to the end of the timber era. The firm built—on contract—another steamer in Quebec in 1851 which was 180 feet long.

They also had the pioneer steamer William IV, one of the earliest prides of the lake, and her remains lie behind the island yet. In 1855 they built the Wellington, in 1856 the Hercules, in 1876 the second Traveller, a second and third Chieftain in 1875 and 1906. In 1860 they built a William, succeeding the one named for the Royal Tar. In 1866 they built a John A. Macdonald, named after Delano Dexter Calvin’s great Conservative friend. They built the Hiram A. Calvin in 1869 and the Parthia, successor to the second Traveller, in 1896.

NAMED FOR SAILOR KING

Some of the steamers they acquired were mail and passenger vessels well known in early lake navigation, like the first Traveller, the America, Highlander, William IV, Gildersleeve, Sir Charles Napier, Bay of Quinte, Charlevoix, and so on. Some were, following early custom, “schooner rigged, with standing bowsprit and scroll figurehead,” and were built up with upper deck cabins. Glazed doors from early steamers are to be seen in the “Big House” on Garden Island yet.

The William IV, Chieftain, Raftsman, Traveller and Charlevoix were employed in the government tug line which the Calvins operated between 1849 and 1874, to the great benefit of the timber business. The Hercules became a gunboat for Fenian Raid repulsion, with bulwarks of Island oak, iron plated.

The river barges, used to freight the firm’s timber down the St. Lawrence instead of rafting it, were built flat-bottomed, round-bowed and round-sterned, with low bulwarks and no superstructure but a box-like cabin. Their names ran to ornithology—Thrush, Lapwing, Condor, and so on, following earlier Carolines, Glasgows and Eclipses which were little larger than the Durham boats they succeeded. Other barges had Indian names, Dakotah, Cherokee, Hiawatha. Some were for the Calvin firm, some for customers. Tugs towed them.

Even the biggest Calvin steamers “loaded on the shore” along with their tows. That is, they picked up the timber where it was to be found, whether boomed in a rafting basin in a harbor, or skidded on an exposed beach or floated down a river. This was the way the early schooners got it. It was a hard, wet, hazardous process, often interrupted by weather.

NEXT, LAKE PROPELLERS

These paddle wheel vessels were for Bay and river work. The firm’s first lake steamer was the D. D. Calvin of our tale, launched in 1883 and carrying a bigger load of timber than any of the barges she towed. This led to the purchase of the Armenia, a second steam barge, and the Bothnia, an unlucky one, and the India and Simla, still larger steam barges, both built at the Island.

These were all of a pattern--high bowed, with timber ports cut in them and their sterns slightly curved and raking backwards, their bottoms flat, sides straight, and stern; round, for convenience of the tow-line; their engines and single smokestack away aft, to make room in the hold, giving the hull a cocked-up appearance except when loaded. They were typical lake propellers of the wooden era, painted green, with white upperworks forward, white engine house aft, and a “spear pole” or steering rod projecting from the stemhead to give the wheelsman in the high perched pagoda forward called the pilot-house a range. The earlier ones steered with a hand wheel which some times kept two men sweating.

The Simla, 1,200 tons gross, 225 feet long, was the best output of the Garden Island yard in the steam barge line. She had steam steering gear. Well remembered is how high she loomed in the slip when she was getting engined at the Polson Iron Works in Toronto in 1903.

She also serves to add this gem to the specimens Mr. Calvin gives of yard orthography:

“TH NU BARG TOIN THERO.”

This was scrawled in chalk on the Simla’s keelblocks when she was laid down at Garden Island. Inter preted, it means “The new barge (that is, the one about to be built towing the Hero.” The Hero had been “a fine steamer in her day. The scrawl was under a crude depiction of a large steam barge snaking an old passenger steamer through the water.

FROM THE FIRE-FLY

Orleans, Ont. On Board the Barge “Mouche a Feu”

Sunday, 29 July, 1945.

The Editor of Schooner Days, Toronto Telegram,

Toronto, Ont.

Your article on the “Garden Island” was very interesting, but was sorry we didn’t hear something of the history of their other steamboats and tugs, such as— (were built)

The D. D. Calvin

Simla

India

Barge

Ceylon, and

Burma.

The Tugs,

Chieftain, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

Parthia

Reginald (were built)

William Johnston (were built)(and if she was over 100 years old)

Frontenac

Little Yacht

Blue Bell

and latterly,

the Prince Rupert.

ELZEAR JEUNAU.

We hasten to comply.

ROUGH NIGHT ON THE COAST

One of those yachting magazines which tells everybody “how to” do everything, says: “There are few more uncomfortable moments on shipboard than when the boat starts to drag her anchors, with breakers ahead..."

Relax, brother. You’ll never get into trouble at anchor with breakers ahead. You only have to worry about breakers astern.

You would have to run your engine wide open to push yourself and your anchors into breakers ahead. The anchor is that thing shaped like a pick which you a-weigh so lustily in song. In practise it is cast from the bow. The bow is the front end. With anchors down, you need not fear breakers ahead; it’s the breakers astern that worry the anchor watch.

THE D. D. CALVIN loading timber in Toronto Bay at the end of the century.