The THREE FRIENDS: Schooner Days CXLVI (146)

FOR years and years there lay on the lake beach at the mouth of Duffin's Creek, down Pickering way, a sixteen-foot yawlboat, such as schooners used to swing on their davits astern. It was so dried out with the sun that you could see daylight through its seams, and the paint had checked and peeled off until its color had merged with the grey weathering, of the planking. On the stern, among undecipherable characters, could be distinguished the letters F-R-I-E-N-D-S, if you had patience and imagination. Someone with both and a jack-knife had whittled NO in sprawling letters above. It was a work of supererogation, for it was very evident that nobody loved this poor old yawlboat, nor had, for a long, long time.

This abandoned yawl was the sole memorial extant of a well-known waterfront character of sixty years ago, Three-finger Jack Malone. Tri-digital John may have had many virtues, but discretion was not one of them. He was an Oswego man, and he sailed a fore-and-after named the Three Friends, the sixty-four shares of which were held in his wife's name. She sailed with him. The Three Friends was a Canadian bottom, built at Port Dover in 1864, and there is a belief, perhaps incorrect, that she began life as the Two Friends, built in Port Burwell; and owned in 1874 by Mr. George Suffel, of the village of Vienna. This Two Friends, according to her registered dimensions, 136 feet long, 23 feet 6 inches beam, and 11 feet depth of hold, was of "Old Canal" size, 336 tons register; and the Three Friends, from what one learns of her, was not that large.

Capt. Malone leapt into fame by sailing her into Toronto harbor on the Twelfth of July, 1875, with the green flag of Old Oireland at the masthead, which was one instance of indiscretion. The Mayor of Newgate street (now Lombard) turned out his battalions in full force to repel invaders. It took the old Harbor Board several seasons to dredge up all the brickbats and coal lumps that were hove at that schooner before she docked, and the police reserves, consisting of both Esplanade constables, had to be called out to assuage the thirst of the loyal Orange longshoremen for Threefinger Jack's gore.

Nine vessels left Oswego in company on the afternoon of Thursday, Oct. 28th, 1875, in a light southerly breeze threatening storm. One of them was the Three Friends, and she was loaded with 215 tons of Blossburgh coal, shipped by E. M. Fort, of Oswego, for James Myles & Co., of Toronto.

"Mr. Myles," to quote the Toronto Globe of Nov 2nd, "did not know of the coal being shipped to him, and had no risk on the cargo."

The load was a light one for the Three Friends. Although only eleven years old at this time, she had been "classed down" to B1, which was about the lowest then that could get) a grain charter. But she was insured for $3,500.

Off Little Sodus, as Joseph Lennox, the mate, afterwards deposed, the wind canted to the eastward, and they "wung her out," that is, sailed her with the wind dead astern, and the sails on opposite sides, mainsail to port and foresail to starboard. The wind kept canting, until at midnight, when they were abreast of Charlotte, and forty-five miles on their course, one-third of the way to Toronto, they could not, with the sails so spread, keep her better than west-by-south, which was drawing them in on the land. So they jibed the foresail over, and hauled up west-north-west, to clear Braddocks Point. The wind canting to northeast and sea making heavy, they clewed up the main gafftopsail, the fore one having been clewed up already for the jibe, and furled both, and hauled up to northwest, steering straight for Toronto.

The vessel lay down with the heave of the sea and force of the wind, and was steering wild, so they settled away the mainsail and reefed it. She still lay down alarmingly, and they hauled down the jibtopsail and foresail, leaving her under the reefed mainsail and staysail and flying jib. But still she rolled down more and more, and would not come back.

The Three Friends was manifestly waterlogging, but as reported in the Globe, neither captain nor mate mentioned sounding the wells or pumping. Perhaps pumping was the chronic condition aboard the Three Friends, for she seems to have had a permanent trough to carry the water overboard. They hauled down the flying jib and staysail, in an effort to bring her to the wind under the reefed mainsail, but still she would not come. The flying jib was blowing out, and the mate and three men were trying to muzzle it, so as to let her head up, when the captain, at the wheel, heard a crack. He put the wheel in a becket and ran forward to find out what was wrong. The men said he must have heard the trough washed against the bulwarks by the sea.

So Capt. Malone came aft and "went down into the after cabin to see if there was any water coming in at the windows." The Three Friends, like most Oswego vessels, seems to have had round ports, or deadlights, in her stern. He found the ports tight.

His wife, in bed, asked him if it was blowing heavy. He told her it was blowing a good stiff breeze, with a heavy sea. She asked if there was any danger, and he said he thought not. But he went back on deck and called the mate aft and told him to lash two oars in the yawlboat on the davits. He himself produced rope-yarn for the purpose, and a sharp axe for cutting the davit-tackle-falls, the ropes which attached the yawlboat to the davits. Then he went back to the cabin and came up with his wife in his arms. All she had on was her nightdress. He should have grabbed enough clothing for her, if it was his last act in life, but he put her in the boat, and the crew lowered the yawl down by the tackles.

The schooner was by this time wallowing in the water, and the yawl had only a few feet to drop. All six of the ship's company of the Three Friends got into the boat, but before they could cast off from the vessel the mainmast fell, and the topmast struck the yawl, almost swamping it. The mast had cracked at the deck; that was what the captain had heard at the wheel.

In prying the boat clear of the top-mast and its rigging one of the two oars was broken. At four o'clock in the morning, just when the yawl rode free, the Three Friends went down stern first.

With daylight they sighted land away to the northward, the high land back of Darlington. The mate, relieved occasionally by the three sailors, tried to steer tor it, sculling with the remaining oar over the stern. They could not do much more than keep the boat from being swamped. The captain tried to keep his poor wife from perishing in her shift by holding her in his arms.

All this Friday they sculled and steered, without food and without fire. When night settled down on them, bleak with the blackness of the last of October, the three sailors gave up in despair. They slumped in the bottom of the boat, numb with cold and hunger. But the mate stuck to his steering oar, and long after midnight they began to hear the grumble of the surf on the north shore. Then a hailstorm lashed the lake, pelting the poor creatures in the open boat, fasting and fireless, with pitiless pieces of ice.

At five o'clock Saturday morning, while it was still "black dark," they drove in on Spark's Point, six miles west of Whitby, and three from Frenchman's Bay, or Pickering Harbor, not far from the mouth of Duffin's Creek. More dead than alive, they staggered out on the beach, but only the mate, who had worked the longest and hardest could walk. He scouted ahead, and roused Thomas Field, a hospitable farmer, whose family had tilled the lakeshore acres for generations. There are Fields yet on Duffin's Creek. Mrs. Malone was unconscious, and could not be roused nor made to walk. Both her legs were frozen. One of the crew was almost as helpless. They were all carried to the Field farmhouse and cared for, and the yawlboat was left where it came ashore for so long that its weathered planks fell apart from its bleached ribs like broken barrel-staves, and its name and story were alike forgotten.