That Wreck in Navy Back Going Back to Times of 1812: Schooner Days CCXV (215)

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WITH Major Leroy F. Grant, and Major Bert Sterling Wemp presiding, this unpaid private in the sappers and miners dug for three hours in the water, mud and shingle of Navy Bay at Kingston on a recent Saturday until he got down so deep that the late boy Emperor of China broadcast that something was coming up through the floor of his cellar and it wasn’t home-brew. By this time the cold water on this side of the earth, seeping into the excavation, was up to the top of the D- handled shovel, and the lower gudgeon-strap of the rudder-post of the old-timer being investigated could be felt, with the round-headed bolts that through-fastened it from side to side. The board of majors representing the artillery and the air force intimated that sufficient advance had been made Chinawards for the day, so the private, remembering his not to reason why, desisted.

They say it’s like that in the army.

We fell to with buckets and baled all of Lake Ontario we could out of the excavation, and so had an opportunity of measuring the gudgeon-strap on which the rudder had been hinged. It was a band of iron about 30 inches long on each side, two and a half inches wide, and about an inch thick, which enclosed the stern-post of the ship and provided a loop or eye, three inches outside diameter, in which the pintle of the rudder had lodged.

The rudder had long vanished, torn away by ice, but what remained of the white oak sternpost was sound and the gudgeon-strap was as solid as it was on the day when the blacksmith hammered it out on his anvil; and he had been dead this hundred - years.

There were three or more of these straps on each side, bolted through the deadwood. They were like three pairs of hinges. The wreck had been destroyed by time, frost, water and decay, until only the lowermost strap was left. This was thirty inches or more below the topmost fragment of stern-post remaining, and it was at least one foot and probably two above the keel, buried deep in the sand and gravel.

And now, having got as far on land as the gudgeon-strap and the basement of the late imperial court in China, let us take to the water and see what we can find about this old veteran of 1812, which has been revealed by the lowering of the lake levels a hundred and twenty-three years after that war began.

The wreck, as told last week, lies in Navy Bay back of the Royal Military College, crosswise from a gravel spit which forms a pond in the northern part of this little natural harbor, where the fleets of 1812 came into being.

From the north end of the bar, which seems to mark the site of a former wharf, the wreck extends westward into the old spar pond where the pine trees for the masts and yards of the men-of-war were kept afloat before shaping them for their required purpose. The bow of the wreck is about sixty feet out in the pond, and the water remaining around it is here two or three feet deep. There is three feet of mud below it. The stern is embedded five feet deep in the gravel bar for a distance of twenty feet or so. The wreck is tilted to the port side, and more of that side remains, because it has been under water. Only the starboard side shows above the surface.

Of course all the upper works and the decks have long since vanished. What is left is just the bottom of the vessel up to the turn of the bilge, where the bottom rounds into the side. One can wade around in rubber boots within the wreck. The water comes to your knees.

From the tip of the sternpost at one end of the wreck, to the outermost projection of the stemson, or curved timber binding the stem to the keel at the other end, tapes 78 feet the timbering and planking are in place, and readily measured and identified. Planks of white oak, twelve inches wide, are spiked to the oaken sternpost, which is or was eight inches wide and twenty-four inches fore-and-aft, and notched to four inches width to take the ends of the planks. These have been worn or decayed to two inches thickness, but apparently were three 3 inches originally, because the rabbet into which their ends lodged, in the sternpost, is cut that deep. From the acute angle the planks make the vessel had a clean sharp run or clearance below the water -- the mark of fast sailer. At the stern two strakes of plank have been uncovered by our digging, and it is probable that one or more will be found before reaching the buried keel.

At the bow end the construction is more confused, pieces being broken off and displaced by the action of the ice of a hundred winters. A section of half a dozen port bow planks, sharply defined where their hood-ends once fitted against the stem, lies on the bottom, under water.

Above water the stemson and a twelve-foot piece of keelson or keelson-backing show. Most of the keelson is submerged, but it can be traced along right back to the bar. It is oak, fourteen inches wide and a foot thick. It lay on top of the floor timbers, which were like the ribs in the human back, and bolted through to the keel, which corresponded to the spine. The keel, now buried deep in sand, gravel, mud and water, would be at least twelve inches square. The keelson is narrowed to eight inches at the sternpost and here is very much decayed.

All along, on both sides, the ribs of the wreck, the frames and floor timbers, are easily traced. Amid-ships they are practically contiguous, square timbers of oak, eight inches by eight inches, side by side. Further forward and further aft they are in places twenty-four inches apart on centres. The reason for, this seems to be that what survive are the main timbers. The fillers of soft wood, used for lightness, have decayed or been rooted out by the ice.

This is in accordance with the construction of all the wooden walls of 1812. The vessels were given a complete framing of oak ribs, with fillers of pine, maple, cedar, or other wood in between, preference being given to wood which would splinter less easily than oak when struck by a roundshot.

Outside of this a layer of oak planking would be spiked in strakes from end to end. Inside the framing would be a similar layer of planking called: the ceiling. Thus a three-ply wooden: wall with no hollow spaces was formed. This particular vessel was one of the smaller ones in the war fleet, but even she had a bottom and sides of solid wood, mostly oak, fourteen inches thick; proof against grapeshot, and against cannon balls of small calibre except at close at range.

All the bottom of the wreck has silted over during the century she was sunk, and big stones have been forced into it. Some were carried by the ice and some may have been the remains of her ballast. But neither ice nor ballast would account for the quantity of brick on the port side of the keelson, well forward. Supposition is that this marks the location of the galley, and that she had a brick fireplace and base for the cook’s coppers, as in a whaler. Or, perhaps, this was the furnace for heating the cannonballs red hot.

Keeping these wooden warships fireproof was a constant anxiety, for they carried great quantities of gunpowder, and with so much wood, oil, tar and hemp in their construction and rigging they would burn like torches. Their boats were seldom sufficient to save more than half of the ship’s company. Therefore, fire hazard was fought at all times. There was no stove in the forecastle for the crew, and sometimes the officers’ cabins were unheated, even in winter. All cooking was done in one place, and the galley was lined with copper or lead, or built up with brick, so as to keep all sparks and flame in one non-inflammable place.

Well, what was the name of this lake lady of last century, that may have carried Brock to Niagara, and heard the crash of the explosion when Pike was killed at York, and played hide and seek with the American fleet, and fought against the batteries of red-hot shot at French Creek or Sackett’s Harbor?

Next week we shall try to identify her.

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MAJOR GRANT “CASTS REFLECTIONS” ON THE WRECK

AND BACKS THEM UP WITH A VIGOROUS WORKOUT WITH THE CROWBAR.

YES, HE’S GOT A BIG FELLOW!

Putting the tape, on the wreck in Navy Bay.