"D. Freeman" Long Afloat--Lawyer Who Made Chips Fly: Schooner Days CLXXXIX (189)

His Name and Fame Recalled by Forgotten Coal Hulk Which Was Once a Proud Barley-Carrier

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SOMEWHERE around Kingston harbor there may still linger a black hulk which was there a few years ago, with a "whirly" or revolving derrick on deck for the unloading of coal, and in her long monkey-rail, under ages of blistered paint, the carven inscription "D. FREEMAN."

My own first acquaintance with the D. Freeman was forty odd years ago, when she was a regular caller at P. Burns & Co.'s lower dock, beside the old sugar refinery at the loot of Princess street. My friend Will Wakeley's was twenty years earlier, when he was in his 'teens, and shipped as mate in the D. Freeman at Port Hope. She went to Port Credit in the fall of the year to load grain there and at the Etobicoke, and while she lay windbound there was a big goose supper and party at the old hotel that used to face the Lake Shore road at the bridge. The Freeman crew had a row with some of the Port Credit sailors, and they all agreed to fight it out with bare fists the next day in an old barn; but with morning came a fair wind and out the Freeman sailed, with the gang grumbling at the Old Man for disgracing them forever in the eyes of the Credit belles or bullies for running away from a fight.

My last sight of the Freeman was in 1907 in the Long Reach of the Bay of Quinte, working up with sooty sails against a crimson sunset. Capt. Wm. Savage, of Picton, owned her about that time.

The Freeman used to be a fore-and-after—two masts, three jibs, seven sails in all—and-until shorn of her spars and reduced to the status of lighter or coal-hulk was customarily painted white, with a lead-colored stripe at the covering board and a lead-colored bottom. Port Hope was her hailing place fifty years ago, and she was later owned in Belleville and Picton.

I had a talk recently with Mr. Johnson Palmatier, 134 McGill street, Toronto, retired contractor and builder. He gave up sailing in 1884, his last vessel being the Two Brothers, in which he was mate. But in 1880 he was before the mast with his brother. Capt. Nelson Palmatier, of Picton, in the D. Freeman.

The Palmatier boys (sprightly young fellows now around the eightieth parallel of latitude) remember the D. Freeman well. In fact, Capt. Nelson Palmatier wrote about her recently in the Picton Times:

"The D. Freeman ran that season is late as the ice would permit. She was frozen in in Belleville harbor. That was the season of 1880. We came home on the stage. The ice was so thick that a team of horses brought us across the bay at Ferry Point or Rossmore.

"Before that, on November 5, 1880, we loaded barley at Belleville for Oswego. The men before the mast were Johnson Palmatier, Alex. McCormick, Nelson Palmatier and Bernard Palmatier. The mate was Albert Palmatier, my brother. The captain, Nathaniel Allan, was part owner with the Downey Company.

"We left Belleville with a strong southeast wind blowing and rain falling. We came down the bay working all night. The wind increased into a gale. The captain lived at Stella, Amherst Island. He said he would run down to Fish Point and let go the anchor there for shelter, and the schooner's deck had to be washed and cleaned up.

"When we had the anchor down we commenced the work. Johnson Palmatier was standing on the rail hauling up water in a bucket. The foresail was left hoisted to dry. The wind would get in it and blow it first to port side, then to starboard. The rail of the vessel was about 14 inches wide. Johnson stood with his back to the foresail and did not see it coming towards him. The foreboom touched his head and shoved him overboard. He went down and came up close to the vessel's side. I had a broom in my hand and reached over to him. He got hold of it and we pulled him aboard. He had his oilskin clothes on, and it was quite a pull to get him up to the rail. He was all right, but good and wet.

"The next morning the wind came around to the west, and we hove anchor and started for Oswego; had a good run over. We passed the little schooner, Robert McDonald; she was formerly called the Parthenon, built and sailed by the late James Andrew, of Oakville. She was taking water over her sails and seemed to have all the sea she could stand. A mess of halliards and gear was trailing overboard on either side of her. We were going with dry decks.

"We got to Oswego nicely. The tug Charlie Ferris came out of the harbor and towed us in and landed us at the North Western Elevator. We unloaded and came right out again; had a leading wind across the lake, and with flattened sheet worked up the bay to Belleville, and made several more trips."

Even Will Wakeley and Johnson Palmatier did not remember where she was built or who the "D. Freeman" was whose name she bore. Had she been christened simply "Freeman" in the first place the name would have had a pleasant appeal, but might have excited little curiosity. But as it was it was as intriguing in its abrupt reticence as was the schooner's own bow-profile. She was neither a plumb-stern nor a clipper, but straight stem slightly canted forward but without any curve, as though the builder had intended to work a cutwater knee under his bowsprit, but had never got around to it Another curiosity about this vessel was the of the topgallant rail or monkey rail which encircled her aft. In most lake schooners this was a short subsidiary of the main rail, of about the same length as the vessel's cabin, but in her it extended from the stern to a point forward of the mainmast— something very unusual except on salt water.

Perhaps the D. Freeman showed the strong salt-water influence of her Port Burwell birthplace. Although Port Burwell is an "inland" town tucked away on the north shore of Lake Erie, it was settled by Nova Scotians from the beginning in 1812, and Nova Scotians were its first shipbuilders. No name is better known in the maritime province- to this day than the Freemans of Liverpool, N.S., who came to Queens County in the middle of the eighteenth century and established themselves as fishermen, farmers, millers, mariners, privateersmen and ship-owners—

"Freeman's boys they built a mill,

Part of the time it did stand still.

But when it ran it made no noise

Because it was built by Freeman's boys."

is an old Queen's County jingle.

The D. Freeman was built in Port Burwell in 1867—built for and named after a shipbuilder who must have been a scion of the old Nova Scotian stock.

"Dan Freeman, Big Dan, was a lawyer from Simcoe," says T. H. Mason in his reminiscences of Port Burwell. "He stood six feet six, and weighed about 300 pounds. He came to Port Burwell before 1870, found the legal business there too little to absorb his energies, and engaged actively in ship-building.

"Two of his ships whose names I remember were the Edward Blake and the Lady Dufferin. He must also have built the Lady Macdonald. He became interested in bog iron ore deposits in south-eastern Bayham and Houghton townships, and shipped several thousand tons to 'he Cleveland smelter. In prosperous times he bought the Iroquois Park property on the west hill and began to build a mansion there; but foreseeing the collapse of the lumber and shipping business, he suddenly "pulled up stakes" about 1876, went to California, became a millionaire, and I am told, established the University of Southern California."

ABOARD THE D. FREEMAN thirty years ago—Capt. Wm. Savage, of Picton, and his crew.