Drum Led to Launching in the Old Days: Schooner Days DCCVIII (708)

by C. H. J. Snider

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Garden Island Timber Fleet covered most of Europe with their Names

A CHANGE began in the nomenclature of the Calvin fleet of timber vessels from Garden Island soon after the echoes of the Rebellion of 1837 died away. It was completed by the time of the Fenian Raid of 1866, although neither rebellion nor raid had anything to do with it. The enterprise was not unaffected by either event, however. Alexander Muir, when one of the sailors in the Calvin fleet, was somewhat satirical over doing garison duty at Kingston in the winter of 1837-38.

D. D Calvin, in his Saga of the St. Lawrence, quotes Calvin and Breck’s Letter of March 14th, 1866: “There is a good deal of excitement... about the Fenians. Our volunteer company are doing duty here on the Island,” and on Sept. 14th their sidewheel timber tug Hercules became H. M. S. Hercules under charter to the government at $45 a day, with option of purchase at $22,000. “We hear she looks well as a gunboat and hope she suits the officers.”

War brings curious contrasts; today we have wooden minesweepers outfitting in Toronto harbor with Russian crews. The wooden Hercules with her iron-plated bulwarks was based on Toronto when she was a battleship. Her Island volunteers, mostly Irish, were the Garden Island Naval Company, 38 strong, Henry Roney, foreman in the shipyard, Captain.

But reverting to ship names and particularly to those of the schooners, it may have been noticed that the vessels up to 1850, with the exception of some purchased vessels built by others, were the names of members of the Calvin, Counter, Cook and Breck families. Wm. Penn was not a partner but the brigantine built in 1840, or 1842 and called after him became the Marion L. Breck, when rebuilt and schooner rigged in 1863.

REAL SQUARE RIGGER

From 1845 onwards the system of naming began to be geographic instead of personal. In that year the Island yard built a brig or brigantine of greater size than anything yet attempted, measuring 324 tons, and they named her Liverpool. Alexander Muir mentions her having topsails and topgallantsails, indicating that both her masts were square rigged. Mr. Calvin calls her a brigantine, indicating that her mainmast was fore-and-aft rigged, and Thomas’ Register of 1864 calls her a brigantine, showing that she was fore-and-aft rigged by that year. But she may have been entirely square rigged in 1845. The same register names a tow-barge of 130 tons, named Liverpool, built by Calvin in 1847 at “Grand Island” (probably Garden misspelled), and owned in Montreal. This could hardly be the brig Liverpool cut down, unless her upperworks were destroyed by fire. Of this there is no record.

The brig Liverpool was followed seven years later in 1852 by the London, still larger, 380 tons, and rigged as a barquentine, three masts, square sails on the foremast, fore-and-aft on main and mizzen. Mr Calvin points out that the Liverpool and London carried 12,500 and 15,300 cubic feet of oak. If these were full loads the system of tonnage measurement must have been different in the first half of the 19th century, for the “Old Canallers” of the 1870’s could pack up to 26,000 cubic feet of timber and their registered tonnage ran around 350 tons, usually less. Earlier Calvin vessels, the Minerva Cook and Wm. Penn, carried 6,000 and 7,000 cubic feet, the first vessels considerably less.

The barquentine Plymouth, launched at Garden Island in 1854, measured 354 tons. She was strongly built and fastened, a saga of the St. Lawrence giving these specifications for her by the Calvin firm: “Gunwale 4 inches thick, butt-bolted, spikes throughout 10-inch by 5/8, rounded and made by ourselves. Ceiling 2 1/2-inch plank except five bilge strakes to be 5 to 6 inches. Keelson cedar, great pains taken to obtain. Best of oak used throughout, all frame heads oil-soaked before covering.”

The Calvin firm built steamers at £6 per ton carpenter's measurement and barges, and presumably schooners, at £5 per ton, which would be $20, if "Halifax currency" prevailed. The figure was from $5 to $10 cheaper than individual builders could quote, for the Calvins used their own timber. Such a vessel as the Plymouth would cost them $7,000 to build and another $2,000 to outfit.

GEOGRAPHY OPENED

Having made the departure from personal names, the firm followed that policy in naming the larger vessels when the timber had to be brought from farther away. In a few years they built a new fleet of schooners after the style of the timber droghers being built by Alexander Muir and his brethren at Port Dalhousie. They commenced in 1855 with the Ayr, “full canaller” but two-masted, a “fore-and-after” in lake parlance, which meant heavy work for men and horses handling the big lower sails. The three-masters and square riggers had from ten to seventeen smaller sails; the big fore-and-afters had all that rig in eight pieces involving larger sails and heavier spars, giving much more labor in hoisting.

The first of this full canal model for Garden Island was the Oriental, built in 1864.

She was followed by the Denmark in 1867 and the Sweden in 1870. The first two vessels were fore-and-afters, that is, two-masted, like the Ayr, Albacore, Antelope, Albatross and A. Muir, the great “A” fleet the Muirs, built at Port Dalhousie. These vessels, were so heavily rigged that tugs were used to help hoist their foresails and mainsails until “iron sailors, ” or donkey engines, were installed at the foot of the foremast in them, about 1890. Mr. Calvin says in his book that the Garden Island vessels were known at a glance by their big rigs and the long doublings of their mastheads, so the Calvin fore-and-afters were probably even heavier on the halliards than the Muir fleet.

THREEMASTERS BEGIN

The Sweden of 1870 appears to have been the first of the Calvin three-masters, the addition of a mizzen mast making all the sails smaller and easier to hoist. Scarcity of tall pines also entered into this improvement, for the best of the old Ontario pine trees had been taken by this time for masts and yards in the royal navy or for mainbooms and masts for the lake schooners. Pine was still to be had, but in smaller diameters and shorter lengths.

The year the Sweden was built the Garden Island yard also built the three-master Cayuga, possibly for a customer, for she is not mentioned in A Saga of the St. Lawrence. She was slightly smaller than the Sweden. These vessels were followed by the Siberia, Prussia, Bavaria and Norway, possibly not in the order named. The Norway launched in 1873, appears to have been the last of the Calvin schooners built. She capsized in the Great Gale of 1880 and drowned her crew. She lived as a towbarge for seventeen years afterwards. The Bavaria lost her crew in 1889, mysteriously, and was sold to Southampton owners. The following year the Jessie L. Breck capsized and drowned her crew. She too became a barge. She was not built at Garden Island and although in the Calvin timber trade was owned in part by Captain Booth, coal merchant, of Kingston.

“Your description of the Jessie L. Breck,” writes an old friend of Schooner Days, Mr. W. R. Phillimore, of 23 Millbank avenue, “is correct, built, if I remember rightly at the Andrews yard in Port Dalhousie where my father had charge for many years of the mill where was sawn the timbers floated down the canal, or hauled in from some not far away bush.

“Muir Brothers built for themselves, Andrews for others under contract, and where the mill stood is now Lock 1 of the canal, which precedes the last deep water canal, every piece of timber which went into making of the lock gates passing through my hands.

“I well recall the holidays coming to us youngsters at school when there was to be a launching at the Andrews yard, and marching in proper formation (the master was said to have been an officer in the Civil War, and looked it), drum beating at the head.”

FEW INCHES DIFFERENCE

These vessels were much alike, both in appearance and dimensions — straight stemmed, square sterned, with timberports in the transom and below for stowing the deck as well as the hold. They sailed well with a “fair wind” on the quarter and could log 12 miles an hour loaded, but light or loaded they were hard to work to windward, with their bluff bows and almost flat bottoms. They had centreboards. The Calvin schooners were all painted black above and lead color below.

We have the dimensions of some of them. These are:

Oriental, 1864, length 137.3, beam 25.3, depth 12.5, tonnage 384.

Denmark, 1867, length 136. 9, beam 25.6, depth 11, tonnage 353.

Sweden, 1870. length 138. 3, beam 25.9, depth 11.9, tonnage 384.

Norway, 1873, length 135, beam 25.9, depth 12, tonnage 334.

Cayuga, 1870 length 136.9, beam 25.6, depth 11.9, tonnage 361.

QUEBEC SQUARERIGGER of 40 YEARS AGO

MAJOR LONGSTAFF, Vancouver, inquires if the above sample of marine architecture can be identified. She is a "pinflat," such as were common on the St. Lawrence up to the end of the century. Remember overhauling one coming up to Montreal in the CPR steamer Missinabi, in 1915, in the old war. Eight years later in a voyage up the St. Lawrence, not a pinflat was to be seen, except behind a tug. They had been shorn of their masts and square sails. They could only sail with the wind abaft the beam. Some, as in the picture, had fore-and-aft mizzens and jibs. They worked tide and current and were great carriers of hay, lumber, cordwood, tanbark and country produce. The basin below Bonsecour's Market used to be full of them. They were really good examples of the polacca rig, their square sails folding up as they slide down the mast like a Venetian blind in reverse. Most of them had saints' names. The one here pictured was probably the Pointe du Jour, or Peep of Day, of Montreal.