On Beam Ends, Up Again On Way For Bermuda: Schooner Days MXCIV (1114)

By C.H.J. Snider

HARD to please everybody. Last week's Schooner Days promised plainly to tell next of Anne McDonald's adventures in New York in 1805, but some readers got the idea that her priceless diary was at an end.

It isn't, not nearly, there's a lot more to tell. But in deference to the unintentionally misled, let us postpone the Happier Bride's experience long enough to give a chapter in another lady's adventures more recent - Kingarvie's.

Capt. W. Lamour's ketch Kingarvie, RCYC, on May 30, 1953, sailed from Toronto for the salt water where she was born. She's had it.

"She certainly got her salt water on her return," Capt. Lamour writes. "It went over the rail instead of through the scuppers!"

As already told Kingarvie made a record run down Lake Ontario to Cape Vincent, 160 miles in 15 hours. Then there were the canals to Montreal, and down the St. Lawrence River s far as Murray Bay.

Capt. Lamour did not like his anchor. "So hove up and got out, and a good job. High wind and big sea and dense fog all that night in the North Channel. At 6 a.m. close into Cape Dogs under the 3 lowers. Gave her the power and got out, passed White Island and into the Gulf, the middle, and out of shipping lanes.

"When we had got as far as Cape Chat the two boys were worried about getting back in time for the wedding, so gave her the power and ran for Gaspe.

"When slowing down to pass the lift bridge there the engine froze. With remaining weigh I ran out of the channel and dropped the starboard anchor. Then came a heavy squall, and we dropped the port anchor. When the squall subsided we hoisted the 3 lowers and sailed Kingarvie through the bridge and alongside Davis's Dock, to the admiration of the townsfolk."

"The boys," Jerry Worden and Gerald Keenan of Toronto, caught a train which got them home for the wedding, and the engine got the necessary repairs. Capt. Lamour and Mrs. Lamour kept ship comfortably till they returned.

'"At 4:30 a.m. July 4 we sailed for Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, where Kingarvie was built. At 8 a.m. we were off Peree Rock under the 3 lowers, doing 10 miles an hour. At noon the wind was 25 to 30 mph from the west, with high sea and swell. The following 24 hours were not pleasant.

"At 6 p.m. July 5 passed East Point, Prince Edward Island to the Straits of Canso. Fog so thick that at 6 a.m. we could not see the mainmast from the cockpit.

"So we mistook Emery Cove for Port Hawkesbury, and ground in clay on a falling tide. By noon our ship was on her beam ends, supported by the spinnaker boom and staysail boom, with the kedge out to windward.

"I came to shore
When the sun it was rising,
A barque o'er the waters
Move gloriously on;
I came again when
The sun was declining
The barque was still there,
But the waters were gone."

It wasn't that bad for us. At 3 the tide was making, at 4 we were on an even keel, at 5 a launch pulled us off, undamaged, and at 6 we made fast at the Embree jetty in Port Hawkesbury, Kingarvie's birthplace. Several small jobs around the deck are now proceeding, and we are having a quiet restful time in the Nova Scotian port until Jerry Worden returns from Toronto with another lad, when we hope to have a pleasant run to Bermuda."