From the Wreck of the "MARY AND LUCY": Schooner Days CLXXVI (176)

___

NO sooner was the story of the black Nemesis in Schooner Days on the street the other week than Montye Macrae, bond dealer and yachtsman, made a remarkable discovery of a corollary to the rescue of the crew of the Mary and Lucy therein related.

Homeward bound with The Telegram in his pocket, Mr. Macrae dropped into the shop of the late Wilbur Smith, Oakville watchmaker, whose stock was being prepared by the executors for sale by public auction. Mr. Macrae was still thinking of the long-ago Mary and Lucy wreck, but had no expectation of finding anything connected with it, when he was shown a dulled silver watch of the old key-winding pattern, which the Smith executors had found among the articles the late watchmaker had taken in trade or in part payment-on other goods.

The watch had the initials "E. B." in an escutcheon on the front, and on the back, engraved on the inner case, was this inscription:

Presented

by the

Government of Canada

to

Mr. Elgin Belyea

First mate of the steamer Quebec.

in acknowledgement of his

humane exertions in attempting

to rescue the shipwrecked crew

of the Mary and Lucy,

of Goderich.

4th Sept., 1879

What a flush of excitement flooded the businessman's mind! He had just been reading one half the story of the wreck and rescue of fifty-five years before, in which the brave volunteer lifesavers, Ross Lambert, the lighthouse keeper's son, and Murray, the purser of the steamer Manitoba, whose boat was used, were drowned. Here was the other half of it, shouted from the back of a watch case, and honoring a former townsman. Mr. Macrae's home is in Oakville, and the Belyeas have lived there, or in Bronte and Trafalgar Township for generations.

In fact, Alexander Belyea, a brother of Elgin Belyea, is living with another brother, E. C. Belyea, and a sister, and a nephew, Jack Belyea, on a farm on the 3rd line, Trafalgar Township, at the present time.

Elgin Belyea was, like most of the Belyeas of a generation ago, a sailor, and in 1879 he was second mate of the Beatty Line steamer Quebec, Capt. Anderson. She was lying in shelter at Southampton along with the steamer Manitoba, Capt. Symes, at [of?] the same line, when the schooner Mary and Lucy, laden with pine lumber, struck the reef south of Chantry Island in the northwest gale which destroyed her.

The volunteer life-saving crew was organized from the two steamers and a few brave Southampton men, among them a merchant tailor of the town, and Ross Lambert, son of the lightkeeper on Chantry Island. Samuel McClelland, first mate of the Manitoba, was another who took part in the rescue and is the only survivor of the gallant band.

A few years ago Jack Belyea met him in Winnipeg. He was surprised to find that the gentleman introduced to him as Colonel McClelland, of the Winnipeg Grenadier Guards, was the former first officer of the Manitoba and his uncle's oar-mate in the lifeboat; but the colonel showed him a silver watch, the match of the one which has just now turned up unexpectedly in an Oakville shop. It had been given to him for his gallant work, and had an inscription similar to Elgin Belyea's.

Elgin himself gave up the water and went to Mexico, where he turned to mining. He died there in 1907.

The picture of the Quebec here reproduced is from a faded photograph handsomely framed in the Belyea farmhouse on the 3rd line, Trafalgar. It is interesting as showing the old-style passenger and freight steamers, strengthened with great wooden arches like bridge-spans, which were the latest word in lake commerce sixty years ago. The Quebec and her sister ship, the Ontario, were built at Chatham in 1871, and were the finest vessels of their time. The Manitoba, of similar size but different model, was built in the same year at Thorold.

It is a far cry from these old wood-burners, which creaked their way up and down the lakes and welcomed every fuel pile and harbor of refuge, to the oil-fueled Empress of Britain, crossing the Atlantic on a four-day schedule. Yet the connection is not remote. The Beatty Line, which possessed these early paragons, was operated by J. and H. Beatty and Co., consisting of William Beatty, his sons James H. and John B., and his nephew, Henry Beatty. The latter, who became manager of the line when it was known as the Northwestern Transportation Co., was the father of E. W. Beatty, K.C., present president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, operating the Empress of Britain. Mr. Henry Beatty joined the C.P.R., in 1882 and managed their lake traffic for ten years.

From the contemporary account in the Globe of Sept. 5th, 1879, it appears that the steamer Quebec arrived off Southampton after midnight on Wednesday, in calm weather and fog so thick Capt. Anderson could not make out the light. After repeated soundings he resolved to lie to and await the break of day. Although the water had been as smooth as a millpond in the lull of the wind, at three o'clock in the morning a squall struck the Quebec with terrific force, and to save her from driving on a lee shore. Capt. Anderson tried to run her down the lake for Sarnia. She rolled so hard in the trough that he had to abandon this project and head her up for the Michigan shore, but with daylight the harbor of Southampton was visible and he put her about and got her inside the breakwater, and moored in the lee of Chantry Island.

Before this was accomplished the Manitoba was sighted some miles to windward, making for the harbor, which she had left twelve hours before, bound for the Soo. She was deeply laden and rolling heavily. Steamers carried sails in those days, and the Manitoba's foresail was set to steady her, but she steered wildly in the swell. She was so tossed that very often one paddlewheel, and sometimes both, were seen by the watchers on shore to be spinning in the air instead of the water. The Quebec's crew and passengers and the gathering townsfolk cheered heartily as the Manitoba, handled with splendid seamanship, swung alongside into the shelter of the breakwater.

Then the growing light revealed the scow-built lumber schooner Mary and Lucy of Goderich, grinding on the reef which runs south from Chantry Island, with sails in tatters and the crew in the rigging, waving for help. She had struck about daylight, trying to make the harbor. As soon as the two steamers were moored a yawl was lowered from the Manitoba and manned, according to the Globe, thus: "Capt. Symes of the Manitoba took his place in the stern to steer, and her crew was made up as follows: John Byers, first mate of the Manitoba, Elgin Belyea, first mate of the Quebec, Samuel McClelland, James Murray and Daniel McKay, steward, purser and watchman respectively of the Manitoba, and Ross Lambert, son of the lighthouse keeper on Chantry Island. The yawl made her way with considerable difficulty across the wind, keeping more than a mile from shore, and after running about two miles down the harbor she was headed for the wrecked vessel."

The Mary and Lucy, meanwhile, had been pounded over the reef by the mountainous seas, and, floated by her lumber cargo below decks, was driving before the northwest gale down Southampton harbor toward the mainland shore, where she struck and piled up.

"The breakers," says the Globe, "proved too much for the lifeboat, which was almost immediately overturned, and the seven men, weighted down with heavy clothing, were in imminent danger of perishing. By dint of great exertion the captain and the mates succeeded in getting themselves and the others into the boat again, but it was afterwards overturned three times during their desperate run for shore, where many of the people of Southampton and Port Elgin were waiting to render what assistance might be possible.

"Before the boat was righted for the last time Lambert was separated from the others, clinging to a pair of oars, and Murray was seen to sink in utter exhaustion. Lambert, after floating shoreward for some time, threw up his arms and also sank. The steward and watchman were back in the boat, and with the captain swimming at the bow and the two mates in the water astern the yawl was kept upright with her head towards the shore, which was reached not a moment too soon for the exhausted sailors.

"Strange to say, those on board the stranded Lucy and Mary made their way safely to shore on rafts made out of the lumber which formed her cargo, so that the only lives lost were those of their would-be rescuers.

______

MICHIGAN HEARS OF THE MARY-LOU

Dear Sir,—I greatly enjoy the privilege of reading your exceedingly well written and very interesting series, "Schooner Days."

Your Scotch sailors of your recent articles sure were a picturesque bunch, and braw tars, too, but it was well they stayed away from this end of the lakes -they would have starved to death in competition with our Dutch seamen.

I was disappointed that your articles have not yet referred to the Mary-Lou, if that's the way to spell it. Anyway, we had a man here from your parts and he was loud in his praises of the marvelous speed of the Mary-Lou. Claimed she crossed the Atlantic in eight days. Of course, we know that was impossible, but if she was half as good as he maintained in his numerous yarns, she was a remarkable schooner, and I would dearly love to know more about her.

Cordially yours,

EDWARD SOULE,

Grand Haven, Mich.

Thanks, Mr. Man from the place where the famous Grand Haven rig originated. Never heard of the Mary-Lou. Can you or any reader, tell more about her? She couldn't have been the Mary and Lucy, heroine of to-day's tale, for this one was scow-built, and never essayed the ocean. But an eight-day passage of the Atlantic under sail, from landfall to landfall, is not impossible, for Newfoundland and Ireland are little more than 1,700 miles apart. Capt. Robert Maw, of Toronto, related to Schooner Days a passage he made in eight days nine hours from Newfoundland to the Lizard in the schooner Gulnare in 1865. The story was repeated in these columns four years ago. In this passage for three days in succession the Gulnare ran 366 miles of longitude in 24 hours. Her course was 2,050 miles.

But come on with more about the Mary-Lou.