Aboard a Pollywog: Schooner Days CCIV (204)

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Two Smokestacks, Two Boilers, No Steamgauge, No Watergauge, And No Rubber Gaskets — Alexander Muir Describes Steam Conditions More Primitive Than Sailing Ones

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FOLLOWING the life story of Alexander Muir, master mariner, told by himself here in Schooner Days, we are now coming to the closing chapters. Not of Schooner Days, which promise to go on forever, but of Alexander Muir's share.

It will be remembered that the hardy young Scots lad left the family farm, Hayocks, near Kilwinning, in Ayrshire, at the age of 13, with no belter seafaring outfit than his mother's paisley shawl. By the time he was eighteen he had discovered the Great Lakes of Canada, as far as their possibilities for a sailor's living. When he was twenty-six he was in command of Calvin and Cook's biggest timber drogher, the Liverpool, and had a house and lot in Port Dalhousie, to which he brought his bride.

This was in 1845. Three years later Capt. Muir "went into steam," although steam was never to his liking. He was a sailorman first, last and all the time.

"In 1848 the steamer Marion was built on Garden Island and I took charge of her. The Marion was what was called a pollywog. She had side wheels, the buckets of which were only 3 1/2 feet long, and there was a recess in the sides of the steamer in which the wheels worked. Her engine was 50 horsepower, and both it and the boiler had been on the mailboat Cobourg. She had two smokestacks and two boilers. Steamers at this time had no steam or water gauges and no rubber packing."

This pollywog model was a popular one with the early steamers. Only last week the writer of Schooner Days was shown a beautiful study by Rowley Murphy, of the launching of the Royal William, the first steamer to cross the Atlantic under her own power, in 1833. Something odd about the run of the plank seams and the narrowness of the wheel-buckets— the Royal William was a side- wheeler, too—raised the question whether the artist's perspective was correct Mr. Murphy is too good a sailor and too good a marine artist to slip up on that and he pointed to the original plans of the Royal William. Sure enough, they showed a recess in each side of the ship's hull in which the paddle wheel worked, like a mill wheel in its flume.

"This was the first season that lake vessels attempted to load for Montreal. Calvin and Cook was now the name of the firm, and they contracted to keep three steamers to assist vessels up and down the river. As the old forwarders did not want these vessels to pass Kingston and Prescott with their cargoes they would not bring them up the river after discharging at Montreal. All the locks were finished just as they are at present (1890) with the exception of Matilda and Galops, have been connected. Marion was stationed to tow between Dickinson's Landing and Prescott.

"This was the first season that lake vessels attempted to load for Montreal, This brings up the old question as to which was the first vessel to take a cargo from the Great Lakes overseas, because, of course, if a vessel were able to load on the lakes for Montreal, and get down the St. Lawrence canals without having to transship her cargo, it would be possible for her to deliver it on the other side of the Atlantic. In schooner days fifty or sixty lake vessels made this enterprising voyage. One went around Cape Horn, one to India, one to South Africa, and more than one to South America. Many went to England. Alexander Muir and his brothers built two vessels which made this voyage more than once, the Niagara and the Alexander.

But which and when was the first to try it? Although Alexander Muir, writing in 1890, says 1848 was the date when lake vessels first attempted to load for Montreal, it is asserted that the barquentine New Brunswick made a voyage from Chicago to Liverpool with a cargo of 18,000 bushels of wheat as early as 1847. Capt. Muir's statement may be quire correct; the New Brunswick's trans-Atlantic venture may have been an isolated experiment, encouraging lakers to load for Montreal regularly next season. In 1848 two Lake Ontario sailing vessel the Lillie of Kingston and Pacific of Toronto made the voyage overseas, and doubtless many others, Capt. Muir said, carried their car goes direct to Montreal down the new St. Lawrence canal system.

This New Brunswick, by the way, is the vessel with the cargo of black walnut, sunk in Lake Erie in 1859, which Mrs. Margaret Campbell Goodman was going to salvage last year. What became of this enterprise? Last heard of it they were going to re-locate the wreck, the first location apparently failing to stay put.

Continuing his account of the Marion, Capt Muir says:

"We towed all season with this boat, and the following season, 1846, Calvin and Cook dissolved partnership and the Marion became the property of Mr. Cook. False sides were put on her and she went into the general freight business between Port Stanley, Dover, Hamilton and the date when lake vessels first at Montreal. The following season she tempted to load for Montreal, it is was fitted up with cabins to accommodate 100 passengers."

Alexander Muir left the Marion for something very much larger; the drydock enterprise which still bears his name. The story of this forms the concluding chapter in his life tale, and will be given next week.