Wife's Tragedy Made Husband’s Fortune: Schooner Days CCII (202)

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Triple Drowning Was the Beginning Eighty-five Years Ago of the Great Drydock Enterprise at Port Dalhousie, Which is Still Going Strong

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ALL good things come to an end, and here we are at the last round-up in the career of Alexander Muir, whose name lives in Muir Brothers’ Drydock at Port Dalhousie still, and in the memory of all the old-timers of the lake marine.

In point of time this round-up was the principal portion of Alexander Muir’s life: over 40 years. His memoir, which we have faithfully followed through half a dozen chapters of Schooner Days (one of which was mis-numbered. which accounts for the clock running backwards in the number of this one) gives in interesting detail the story of his beginnings as a lake mariner, from the time of the Mackenzie rebellion onward.

But the second phase, that of shipbuilder, dock-master, vessel-owner and timber merchant, commencing after 20 years of sailing vessels for other owners, is compressed into a few paragraphs of the record he compiled in 1890.

Alexander had made copious notes of his activities in this second period, and it is possible that he contemplated another memoir dealing with it. This may have been frustrated by a fire which destroyed the Muir shops at Port Dalhousie and swept away much priceless material, including the models of the fleet of sailing vessels with which he populated the lakes.

We left Alexander master of the lucky Liverpool, the old-style brig which had the remarkable sequences of north winds to go up the lake and southwest winds to come down, when he sailed her in the timber trade We told, too of his going into steam with the “pollywog” tug Marion.

Here, following his memoir, is how he became a drydock founder — through his wife, the former Miss Jane Lang of Kingston, losing three brothers by drowning:

“While on the Liverpool and Marion we sometimes had to go into Mr. Shicklunas drydock at St. Catharines and often had to wait our turn to get in, so I concluded that more drydocks were wanted. I had then saved $4,000 and I made up my mind that I would build a floating dock and give up sailing. My wife had lost three brothers by water, two this season, when all hands had been lost with the Christina in Presqu’isle Bay. These brothers were all young unmarried men."

What of this Christina?

This is the only mention Alexander Muir makes of her. or of his brothers-in-law being drowned.

There may have been more than one Christina on Lake Ontario, but the only one of which I have any record is the little bald-headed schooner with a barn door rudder which “Fisty” Masterson, old-time man-o’-warsman, sailed in pre-rebellion times.

This Christina was more than suspected of being a smuggler. The broad-arrow was being chalked on her deck, indicating her seizure by the customs, when Fisty jumped overboard with Inspector Carfrae in his one arm. He had lost the other in action.

Fisty got out of that scrape and had the audacity to get the Christina repaired in the government drydock at Niagara. He was able to point to several bullet holes which, he said, the schooner received while conveying stores in the new Queen’s service, during the Mackenzie rebellion. Later he sold the Christina and settled down to paths of peace at the foot of Bay street, on the shore of

Toronto harbor, where he had a boat livery and his wife kept a tuck shop for the young lads of Upper Canada College.

Perhaps the Lang brothers, drowned in the Christina, bought her from him. The picture of her was made 30 years ago from a sketch and description by the late Capt. Wm. McClain, and was pronounced by him to be a good likeness. He knew Fisty and the schooner well.

This, however, is all by the way.

“Mrs. Muir insisted that I should quit sailing, so I informed Mr. Cook (this was one of the firm of Calvin and Cook, timber traders of Garden Island, for whom Alexander had sailed several vessels) of what I intended doing, and he told me if I required some assistance while building the drydock that he would give me all I needed.

“His promise gave me great encouragement, and that fall when I came home Henry Anderson, Silas Rose, Peter Coons and J. Hilts were hired to cut down elm trees and hew them into square timbers for the bottom of the dock. We purchased elm trees three feet on the stump at 75 cents each.”

The new floating drydock was 150 feet by 43 feet by 12 and was built “where the Welland Railway Depot now is.” The drydock at St. Catharines was then the only one in Upper Canada. There was a marine railway at Kingston and had been one at Niagara from 1836 to 1845. The Muir dock at Port Dalhousie was completed in 1850. It—at least the original bottom of it—is still in existence, although Muir Brothers’ Drydock, the modern institution, is a vastly enlarged and improved affair.

The original dock was simply a large box, sitting on the bottom at the mouth of the Twelve-Mile Creek. One end was hinged. This would be pushed open and the “patient,” or vessel to be drydocked, would be floated in and moored over the keel blocks. Then the door would be closed and the long process of pumping out the dock would commence. When the dock was empty of water the vessel would be shored up and work would start. The floating dock was replaced by one of timber and stone, built into the bank, and this in turn by the concrete dock now in use, maintaining the record of eighty-five years’ continuous operation.

Alexander wisely brought to his aid his four brothers, William, Bryce, David and Archibald, whom he had introduced to lake navigation and who had, like him, become mates and captains of other people's vessels. William, walked a hundred miles to join him. Bryce was the business agent. David and Archibald sailed vessels for the firm of brothers, not only from one end of the lakes to the other, but from Port Dalhousie to England, Ireland and Scotland.

The partnership was, seemingly, an informal one at first, and apparently Alexander devoted his whole time to the drydock building and operation, while his brothers sailed others’ schooners in summer and worked with him in winter. Soon the enterprise demanded and received all their attention, and they organized as the firm Muir Brothers. But they remained a "crew,” of which Alexander, by age and energy, was the captain. Early minutes of their business meetings read like a Conrad account of a forecastle gathering. They wind up with, “Agreed By All Hands.”

It was a matter of pride with these grand Scottish pioneers that, while their resources were so limited that the farmer who sold them the elm trees on the stump had to have his 75 cents cash before each tree was cut, their enterprise paid its way from the beginning.

They leveled off the creek bank with shovel and barrow and provided a shipyard, for they intended to do more than merely repair work. In 1853 they began a schooner of their own in the new yard, and when she was launched they called her the Ayr—either after

"Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a toun surpasses

For honest men and bonny lasses,”

or after their native Ayrshire, which they had left twenty years before.

She was the first of a long line of vessels with names beginning with "A” which they built for themselves —Alexander, Advance, Arctic, Asia, Ark, Antelope, Albatross, Albacore, A. Muir. They also built the Margaret A. Muir and the Niagara, and the Groton, and rebuilt two steamers for towing purposes, the Albion and Enterprise.

"When we built the Ayr, we paid the workmen every week of the two years she was building out of the earnings of the drydock but had to borrow $1,500 from Mr. Cook for rigging, sails, anchors and chains. As soon as the vessel was finished he gave us oak timber to freight from Bear Creek to Garden Island at $100 per thousand cubic feet and after making two trips we repaid Mr. Cook in full. The total cost of the vessel was $17,000.”

A relic treasured by Mr. Wm. C. Muir, present head of Muir Brothers and a son of the original brother William, is an oak walking stick made from the Ayr's timbers.

As has already been told, the drydock did so well that Muir Brothers were soon building their own vessels to carry overseas their own timber, cut from their own timber limits. They had their own pond, where the timber was stored, and they had their own horses to work the dock pumps and tow their vessels through the canal. They had their own farm to feed their horses, and they had their own sail loft where their schooners were canvased, and their own spar yard and blacksmith shop, where their blocks and chains and mast-hoops and jibhanks and all their gear was made.

Eventually, like Abraham and Lot, the brothers parted company because the land—or in their case the lakes— was unable to bear the greatness of the business they had built up. Another drydock was established by them at Port Huron, under David and Archibald.

Alexander, hero of this lengthy saga, died a quarter of a century ago when he was ninety. I like this diary entry of his, made in his 83rd year: “Oct. 18th—Thank the Lord I was able to get up to the top of our large apple tree and pull off the apples. Wind southwest”

He planted the apple tree in 1852, before he began the Ayr.

So may we all set sail for the far horizon with a fair southwester fanning our way and our pockets full of apples from the topmost bough, plucked with the same worn hands which planted the tree.

A FEW "CUSTOMERS" at the present day Muir Brothers drydock in Port Dalhousie.

THE LITTLE CHRISTINA, as old Capt. McClain recalled her.