VIENNA Of Port Burwell: Schooner Days CLXXXVII (187)

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VIENNA, the little inland village which occupied such prominence in Port Burwell’s affairs and commemorated the once-gay capital of Austria, was itself commemorated in the name of a schooner, one of the handsomest that ever left the ways. The Vienna of Port Burwell on Lake Erie had a full-sweeping clipper bow, beautiful sheerline, and rounded tumblehome quarters. She was very fast, but inclined to be “cranky,” which was no reflection upon her disposition, but only indicated a tendency to tip over when not loaded. Like so many of her sisters she was sold to Lake Ontario. She is said to have come through the great gale of 1880 on this lake with dry decks. If so she was the only vessel to do so, for sixteen schooners, which were in sight of one another off Twenty Mile Point when the gale broke, were lost or damaged. The Vienna was owned by the Ewarts of Coburg up to 1896, when she was bought by Capt Sexsmith, of Toronto, who painted her green with a red bottom. Before that she had been black and red, with a red covering board. In 1900 she was sold to Lake Huron, where she was later lost.

She was then owned and sailed by the late Capt. Murdoch Macdonald, of Goderich. He was taking her to the Mississaga Passage, when she carried away both masts and jibboom and bowsprit in a northeast gale. Unmanageable in the trough of the sea, she began to leak. The crew were all night at the pumps, and burning distress signals all the time. When the water was washing above the keelson and gaining on her the steamer Sir Thomas Shaughnessy got alongside and picked the crew off. In the rolling the Vienna received a tremendous bump, and went down in Lake Huron, between Thunder Bay Island and Middle Island. The crew were taken to Milwaukee, whither the Shaughnessy was bound, and then back to Sarnia. Later, in 1926, Capt. Macdonald was drowned off Goderich.

The Vienna, built in 1871, was only 90 feet on deck, 21 feet 7 inches beam, and 9 feet 1 inch deep in the hold. She was shorter, sharper and deeper than the ordinary run of smaller lake schooners. While she registered 166 tons it was hard work getting 300 tons of cargo into her. Blockier vessels of her size, a foot less deep in the hold, could carry that. But her model made her a clinker to sail, although she was a little tender when not loaded - and “The Vienna’s the girl to go!” was a waterfront proverb.

I raced up Lake Ontario in her in 1895 from Oswego to Toronto. We were neither the first nor the last of a fleet of five that towed out one calm summer afternoon and evening in July. I remember we passed the Kate, of Oakville, coming in, light, after the tug had dropped us.

At daylight next morning we were all in company, the L. D. Bullock, of Napanee, leading, then the E. A, Fulton, of Toronto; the three-master Oliver Mowat, of Port Hope; the Vienna, and the Dauntless, of Port Dover. The Dauntless had to send down her gafftopsails for mending and dropped astern at breakfast time, although she had been ahead of us all through the night. We had the wind well aft, about east; in fact, the last we saw of the Dauntless, at sunset, she was running wing-and-wing, with both gafftopsails aloft again.

The Mowat jibed over and crossed our bows in the afternoon, but when she jibed back again we left her on our lee quarter. The Bullock kept a half-mile lead until the freshening breeze forced her to furl her main gafftopsail. She had a sprung masthead. Then the Fulton passed her, and so did we, about dark, with the foam boiling up into our hawsepipes, five feet above the water level.

Through the night the wind lightened and we passed the Fulton, which was of twice the Vienna’s tonnage, and counted a very fast vessel. She was formerly the A. Boody, of Rochester. The second morning found us queen of the fleet, with Toronto Island in sight, the Mowat becalmed three miles astern, the Fulton still further back, and the others far behind out in the lake, for they were loaded for Hamilton. It was a great race; we carried everything we could string up, including the sail-covers, hung under the booms for water sails, and loose tarpaulins lashed between the masts and rigging. The late Capt. John Ewart was master of the Vienna then, and very proud of her.

Soon after that race the Dauntless was lost off Thirty Mile Point, after her crew had had 24 hours at the pumps. They were picked up by the Clara Youell.

The picture at the top has, like the flowers that bloom in the spring tra-la, nothing to do with the case. It is a little glimpse I had of the sloop Viking of Port Dover, thirty-three years ago, looking out of the old “Hospital,” as we used to call the filthy slip at the foot of Jarvis street.