Scowlin' and Partner: Schooner Days CIX (109)

"MOST generally there was a reason for a sailorman having a nickname," The Long Old Man observed. "Oncet in awhile he sort of accumulated one as he went along. For instance there was Scowlin', who never scowled any to speak of in his life and was as good natured a man as you'd want to meet, and master at one time of as smart a vessel as you'd want to sail in, the J. J. Card of Detroit.

"He was a grown man when I was a boy and he's been dead a long time now, but I sailed with him a lot and got to know him pretty good, and he told me a lot about himself at one time and another. Outside of being as you might say afflicted with friendship for a tough old loose-jointed rooster nicknamed 'Partner,' who had only one eye and drank a lot, Scowlin' was a good, level-headed man and a first-rater to sail with.

"He was born at St. Catharines in 1840 when St. Catharines wasn't much of a place from all accounts except for the Welland Canal. As a nipper he worked along the canal, where there was plenty of jobs for a boy if he wanted them. There was considerable cordwood and stave bolts carried on scows in them days and quite a lot of it came down the feeder canal from Grand River, which was navigable, after a fashion as far up as Brantford, the fashion being mostly scows and johnson barges, which were scows with their bow ends rounded off.

"Sailing scows used to be plentiful on the lakes, for their box like shape made them easier to build than regular vessels. They were good carriers but poor things to get to windward.

"Scowlin's right name was Leonard Anderson and he was called Len for short, at first. Then when he got to be handier on scows than most fellers and stayed at it steady, they got to calling's him 'Scow Len,' and after awhile it was sort of shrunk up into 'Scowlin.' Lake sailors often got nicknamed from their ships. Old Capt. Sassy Jack Oliver was neither named John nor saucy to anybody in his life. He was christened James, but he once bought the schooner Saucy Jack of Port Dover, and "Sassy Jack" Oliver he continued to his dying day.

"From the time he was a boy Scowlin' wanted to be a tavern keeper, and finally was, in spite of 'Partner' and other visitations of Providence, but it took him a long time to save up enough to get started, and he sailed a lot and got a master's license and one ting another while he was getting around to it.

"Having, as you might say, started life in scows, it looked like Scowlin' was kind of fore-ordained to stay with 'em for a while. The first sailing that he did on the lakes was in a scow schooner, the John Puggsley, which was afterwards sold to Toronto and rebuilt by John Goldring and named Helen. I think he sailed in the scow Sunshine with the old man Dolph Corson, and after knockin' around in other vessels with Pat and Dinny Dacey and other old-time timber dragger captains, he went mate in a big three-and-aft rigged scow called the Bay Trader, hailing from Port Dover. He was master of her the next year.

"He sailed the Grace Amelia, that afterwards had engines put into her and was called the Gordon Jerry. She was a scow, too; you'll remember her pottering around Toronto forty years ago, if you're that old. And he was sailing a muskrat scow, the M. J. Spaulding, when he got a chance of a mate's berth in the J. J. Card, and after two years as mate of her he was master. The Card was a fine big vessel of 1,000 tons and carried a square fors'l, double tops'ls and a t'gants'l. She was no scow, but a full topsail schooner, a 'barque,' as the lake lads called these square-riggers.

"I don't know just when Scowlin' and 'Partner' met up nor why they even were chummy. They were as different as two men could be. 'Partner' was tall and boney and rowdy. He could soak up whisky like a sponge and never show much effect of it except cursing' and wanting' to fight, which was as you might say a normal condition with him anyway.

"He wasn't no ways a truthful man. Some that knew him said that he was born in Flamboro Township and never out of sight of fresh water in his life. Many's the time I've heard him tell how he used to sail on salt water and had signed on a Liverpool ship, the Laird Athol, at Montreal, and had a good sociable jag on when somebody invited him on board a lake schooner that was unloading timber alongside the Laird Athol. He said he got into a fuss before he was aboard the schooner five minutes and the whole crew piled onto him, so he took to the rigging' and could climb better than any of them and kept clear of the crowd until he was tired out and hid himself in the stow of the fore gaff tops'l, which I admit he might of done it if hadn't been stowed right.

"Anyway, he claimed he went to sleep in the gaff tops'l and didn't wake up until somebody was takin' the gasket off it and the vessel was on her way up the river. He said she was short handed and the old man was glad to ship him for'ard and after he licked all the crew he got to likin' the vessel and stayed with her.

"No matter what faults he had, and they was plenty, 'Partner'was a smart sailorman. The first I knew of him he was sailing a stonehooker that probably had a name, but was called 'The Flatiron' because she was built like one. Scowlin' Anderson had made a down payment of fifty dollars on her for him, and 'Partner' was to pay of the rest by installments and pay Scowlin' back, and maybe he did, but I doubt it.

"He sailed several hookers, including the Hope, which he rebuilt, flat as a pancake and leaving no sheer in her at all. Then he built the Una, which was the most like a box with sloped ends of anything I ever see afloat. 'Partner' wasn't an educated man. When he painted a name on the Una's bows he made it U-N-A on port side and A-N-U on the starboard side. He wasn't so terrible dumb at that. He'd found a sand pit up near Burlington which was the best one of the very few pits of moulders' sand in Ontario, and for a long time he did a good trade carrying it to Toronto in the Una and selling it to foundries. He also sold loads of friction sand to the railroads and I guess he actually made more money than most of the other hooker men. Certainly he spent it faster.

"Every once in a while he'd ship in some big vessel for a change and he'd always wind up by getting Scowlin' Anderson to lend him money or get him started at something else.

"Scowlin' finally got enough money together to buy a tavern and quit sailing. He was tickled to death with the new berth, but went badly in the hole right off the reel by inviting lakes men and all is other friends to have drinks and meals at his place. He recovered his sanity before it was too late and quit dishing out anything that wasn't paid for.

"There was an old three 'n' after, the Nonsuch, lying in Buffalo Creek. She carried about seven hundred tons and there wasn't much carrying for vessels of that size to do on the American side at the time and she was offered for sale very cheap. She was Canadian built.

"'Partner' persuaded Scowlin' Anderson to buy her from him, givin' him a great song and dance about how much he could make out of her pickin' up lumber and pulpwood salvage and small jags of cargo along the shores of Georgian Bay. Scowlin' knew the Bay and he knew there was really good money picking' up along the shores. There was thousands of logs that had gone adrift from rafts, and all kinds of drift lumber and timber, and as a matter of fact there were men that made big money at that trade.

"'Partner' didn't. He picked up a cargo easily enough and brought it down to Tonawanda to sell it. He was pickin's for those Tonawanda lumber sharks. Some broker took the cargo on consignment and before he got through with it 'Partner' owed him money for handling it.

"Scowlin' knew of some small jags of grain waiting to be loaded at Frenchman's Bay, Whitby, Oshawa and Darlington. He sent 'Partner' over to the north side to pick up what he could get and take it to Oswego. 'Partner' was gone thirty-four days ad got back to see Scowlin' two days after a letter had come from Parson's chandlery and grocery store at Oswego, demanding payment for gear and supplies.

"'Now,' says 'Partner' to 'Scowlin', I haven'y done so good with the grain, but there's a swell charter for carrying' soft coal from Ashtabula to Kingston and all it needs is about five hundred dollars to put the Nonsuch on the dry dock for caulkin' and a little patchin' up and some new gear and a new jibboom and—'

"'And there's a pond besides the old canal just below the draw bridge at St. Catharines,' Scowlin' busts in. "If you don't put the Nonsuch in there and lead her, I will myself. She isn't goin' on any cockeyed dry dock and she isn't goin' to be patched up nor have no new gear or a jibboom. She's goin's to be shoved in there on the mud and she's goin' to stay there forever.' That was one of the times that Scowlin actually scowled.

"He was more of a prophet than he knew. The Nonsuch was abandoned in the pond and lay there for years falling to pieces. Her bottom was there fifteen years ago, and then the pond was filled in, and what's left of the Nonsuch is buried there. She stay there forever allright.

"Partner wasn't the least bit discouraged. In fact he never was in is life. He went to stokehookin' and sailing before the mast. He was a wheelsman for a while in the Niagara, one of the old Matthews' boats, and got out of her a couple of days before she foundered with all hands off Long Point. He jim-crowed around at one thing and another, including a job as captain of a manure scow, and finally talked Bill Corson into buying an old fore'n'after named the Come Along, which was to have been the great-grand-uncle of all stone hookers, but never got around to it in a profitable way.

"There was a big demand for stone at that time and Partner figured he could take the Come Along down to the Bay of Quinte and load thirty toice of stone at a crack and make a lot of money at it. They patched up the Come Along and painted her good and renamed her the Full and By, and I think she made two trips with stone before sinking.

"Last I saw of Partner he was pushin' a wheel barrow at the Hamilton smelter.

"'I quit sailing and drinking and smoking and all kindred vices.' He told me, 'and I've quit swearing, and by the the holy so, such and such cockeyed this and that. I'm gonna quit chewing' tobaccer as soon as I use up the pound that a feller let me have on credit yesterday.' I'm not repeating the exact words that he used after quitting swearing, but if they weren't profanity they'd certainly have led to it soon.

"I asked him what had become of the Full and By, late Come Along. I haven't seen her for a long time,' he said. "I got out of her because she was a sinful and ungodly vessel. In fact she was liable to contaminate me with wickedness. The first trip down the lake wasn't so bad. The crew was orey-eyed and I wasn't exactly beastly sober myself. Next trip a feller woke me up at two o'clock in the morning to tell me that there hadn't been a man at the wheel for two hours and that a giraffe was playin' a bull fiddle sitttin' on the peak of the fore gaff.

'When I got on deck there was nobody at the wheel and no breeze and no giraffe. I went for'ard to rouse somebody out of the forec'sle and they were all cockeyed except one feller that claimed a big catfish kept comin' over the bow and goin' to sleep on the windless end. On my way back aft two mud turtles climbed aboard over the lee rail and one of them asked me for a pipeful of tobacco.

"'Now I ask you,' Partner says, 'Would any decent man want to sail on on a vessel like that?'"