Saints, Sailors, Saloons, Sawdust: Schooner Days CCXX (220)

_______

THIS Christmas card to Schooner Days from J. H. Safford, of Detroit, native of that Sawdust Empire whereof Grand Haven, Mich., was the capital, is redolent of the fragrant forests which were the thrones of the lumber kings. It ought to be. It is a clean chip of planed white pine, and on it Mr. Safford has penned a snapshot which epitomizes the vanished era—an old lumber hooker of reduced "Grand Haven rig," her decks creaking under thousands of feet of fresh sawn lumber, and thousands of feet more tied and dunnaged in her close-packed hold.

It was marvelous how much those old hookers—both the Lake Michigan ones and those in our own Lake Ontario—would pack away. Some of the big fellows would walk off with a million feet board measure. They were the exceptions. But schooners, which "piled out" from two hundred to four hundred thousand feet were as common as whitecaps. These were not big vessels. They were not much 'more than a hundred feet long on the keel. The Michiganders specialized on wide decks and shallow holds, for quick discharge. A big deckload was quickly handled by the lumber shovers, either in loading or unloading. We on the lower lakes, built to climb the narrow stairs of the Welland Canal, were narrower in the beam and deeper in the hold. This was a better model for going overseas, and some of our lake vessels carried lumber to England and Africa and the West Indies. But it involved a lot of labor in stowing and unloading. I do not recall any Lake Ontario schooners built specially for the lumber trade, but they all had a whack at when they could. "Up above," that is, on the upper lakes, hundreds of schooners were built for that and nothing else.

L. E. Merrill, of Chicago, pious Presbyterian mentioned aforetime, owned some of the trimmest three-masted schooners on the lakes a half century ago. Some were lumber hookers and some grain carriers. When he had pictures of his ships made—and he took a pride in them— the pictures always carried this warning, Harris Vennema, of Menominee, tells me:

"POSITIVELY: THIS PICTURE MUST NEVER BE EXHIBITED IN A SALOON, BROTHEL OR OTHER PLACE OF AMUSEMENT."

Merrill acquired two vessels in 1881. One was known as the J. and A. Stronach, the other as the C. L. Johnston. The Stronach had been built in Milwaukee in 1854 to the order of Milwaukee men whose name she bore. J. and A. Stronach owned a lumber mill in Manistee, Mich., and their schooner carried much of the lumber from which the houses of Milwaukee were built during Civil War days.

Merrill called in the carpenters and painters when he purchased the ships and they were promptly over-hauled and rechristened the "A.B.C.F.M." and the "Z.Y.M.C.A."

There is a clue to the meaning in the letters Y.M.C.A., obviously Young Men's Christian Association, but why the Z? Well, there are five letters in A.B.C.F.M., and Merrill wanted the initials in his ships to balance, so he added the Z, which stands for zealous. The A.B.C.F.M. was named for the American Board of Christian Foreign Missions.

In 1885 the A.B.C.F.M. passed to the ownership of John Saveland, of Milwaukee. Until the vessel was abandoned in 1902 she remained under the same name. The ribald lumber shovers at Milwaukee used to refer to her as the "All Bad Chickens Come From Milwaukee."

Old Merrill had a predilection for juggling the alphabet. The following letters appear on a 53-year-old picture of the schooner A.B.C.F.M.:

B.S.O.I.H.M.W.E. & B.S.S.N.W. E.C.A.B.C.O.F.M. - C.S.S. & W.C. T.U. - S.W.B.M.I.C.B.F.Y.M.C.A. M.C.S. & C.C.S.S.A.S.

Written beneath in an italic script is "Christianity in Trade, In Politics, In Everything and Everywhere. — A Memorial Tribute to President Garfield! Sept. 26, 1881."

Beneath were a series of scriptural texts such as Genesis i:1, Corinthians; x:31, with special attention called to Exodus lv:2, as follows:

"Dear Reader, let this last text , (God spoke it) never find in your hand the 'glass which inebriates' or other harmful preparation. Think of this also: Matthew x:46, and who are they who have eternal life and who are they who will have everlasting punishment."

Merrill's specifications of "places of amusement" sounds narrow in these days, but there is no doubt about it, whisky was one of the curses of sailing times, and he was a true friend of the sailor as well as the shipowner, in crusading against the "glass which inebriates." More vessels were lost on saloon bars than foundered in gales, but much worse was the misery which whisky wrought on the poor sailors and their families. Decent lads, bred on the farm or in little lake villages, the saloon and the brothel were the only places of entertainment open to them in the big ports; and they would be robbed of every nickel and poisoned body and soul in these hell-holes of Canal street or South Clark street when they blew in with their wages.

But let us get back to the clean sawdust of Grand Haven. Will have another word or two from Mr. Safford next week.