Last Fore-’N-After At Cherry Valley: Schooner Days CCXXXVII (237)

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THE FORE-’N AFTER.

Oh sailor on the steamer,

With the comforts of a landsman,

Did you ever vision those who broke the trail?

Men who braved the foulest weather

While the hooker held together,

Or sailed a race with death before a gale?

 

With your more than ample free-board,

And your horse-power in the thousands.

You can laugh at storms that used to take their toll

Of the little fore-’n’-afters

With their fearless crews and masters,

And a cargo far too heavy in the hold.

 

From Duluth to Kingston city,

With a foot or so of free-board

They’d take a chance like Vikings of the past;

Give their best and trust their Maker,

Where their owners willed they’d take her,

Doughty skippers, and stout hearts before the mast.

 

They are gone, yes gone forever,

And the rugged roads they travelled,

But the wakes they left behind will never fade;

Not a port that didn’t know ’em,

Not a wind that didn’t blow ’em,

As up and down the lakes they plied their trade.

 

Now the lakes are just a highway

For the plodding bluff bowed freighters,

Run on schedule from the day they leave the ways ;

Though now steel and steam is master,

Still my love's the fore-’n’-after,

And the glamour of the old wind jammer days.

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It was wonderful, down in Prince Edward County on Sunday, to participate in the Mariners’ Service at Cherry Valley, with the whole county, as much of it as could shoehorn itself into the United Church in the village, listening with one ear to the hymns and prayers and sermon and songs and exercises for those who go down to the sea in ships, and straining the other ear for Jim Hunter’s broadcast of the wonderful news of finding alive those who had gone down to the earth in a mine.

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There was a great contrast and a great similarity between the “eager eyes a-watching, longing,” for the lights along the shore, or word of loved ones on the lakes, and the rapt attention to the radio, telling second by second, blow by blow and round by round the progress of that mighty battle of men against the mine.

In schooner days—and in these days, too, of steam, when the boys of Prince Edward farms and villages had left for their season’s job before the mast or on the bridge, or in the engine room, they vanished from sight perhaps for six months, perhaps forever. In Schooner Days they might never be heard from until they came home for Christmas with pockets stuffed with bills or heavy with silver dollars; or until a slow postcard came from a reluctant writer telling how Bill or Moses or Manly or Jim had been knocked off the mainboom while reefing, or missed his footing on the stringpiece getting out the bow-fast.

It’s easier now, in steamer times, for the women, and they have the arrivals and departures in all the lake ports in The Telegram nightly, to keep them in touch with their loved ones’ ships every twenty-four hours. And there’s the radio, too.

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And yet it is to be questioned if the miracle of instantaneous wireless communication lessened the anxiety pictured in the ten-day drama of Men Against the Mine.

Radio communication helped speed up the agonizing work of rescue. Yet it is certain that radio communication helped pile on the agony with ten times the intensity for the millions who listened in to the struggle of Men Against the Mine—ten times the intensity as compared with the vague anxiety of the few hundreds who, a century ago, were vaguely anxious and almost completely ignorant about the fate of Bligh and the Bounty in that epic struggle of Men Against the Sea.

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But this is running into the shoals of philosophy, and we only wanted to talk about the Mariners’ Service and the best things in it.

It is impossible to classify these.

There was the congregation, singing “Forever With the Lord” after dear old Capt. Nelson Palmateer, his venerable hands waving a quivering benediction over the service of which he is the father, had read the list of seven sailors and fishermen who had made their last port since the last service.

There was the Picton Male Quartette’s presentation of “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning,” favorite hymn of all sailors.

There was Miss J. Insley’s beautiful duet with Mr. M. V. Dow, “Love Divine,” and the same lady and gentleman, with Mrs. D. L. McLeod and Mr. H. W. Hunter, in “God So Loved the World,” from Stainer’s Crucifixion.

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Then there was Amos MacDonald’s impassioned “Memories.” Without quoting them again, the mind goes back to one sentence: “The answer came, in language not the most commendable that could float upon the breeze, ‘There‘s not enough water in the lakes to drown the Helen of Hamilton!’ ” It is not necessary— nor is it possible—to tell what happened after that. The man who made the boast was never seen alive afterwards; nor were his hapless crew.

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And there was Capt. Jas. McCannel, commodore of the C.P.R. on the lakes—you can’t keep these Highland Scots off the top of the tree, afloat or, ashore. He was the guest speaker of the evening and held the audience spellbound, as he had done just the week before, at the Mariners’ Service in his home harbor, Port McNicoll, and as he will this weekend, at the annual Masonic Service there.

Native eloquence, native wit; they are not taught in universities. Capt. McCannel made no concealment of the fact that his alma mater was a sailor’s boarding-house in schooner days, and that he had graduated with a receipted bill as the only sheepskin. Honor graduate, I call him.

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Rev. Mr. Wrenn’s sermon and the spiritual exercises were fine, too. But best of all, to my mind, was the Rev. P. F. Gardner’s reading of the ringing verses which run at the top of this trifle. They were written by Mr. S. A. Clark, of 47 Woodlawn avenue west, Toronto; an old Prince Edward County boy, with a particularly soft spot in his heart for Milford and Black Creek.

His own title for them was “Windjammers,” but we have taken the liberty of changing it for this reason: “Windjammer” has been worked to death by landsmen and pulp magazine writers who wouldn’t know a sailing vessel if they saw one outside of a motion picture theatre, and Mr. Clark knows his schooners, the “fore-’n’-afters” of his, love, from truck to keel and gudgeon strap to stemhead.

In strict practice, on the lakes we used to confine the term to two-masted schooners only, but that was just our little way of having fun with the greenhorns who wanted to know what we would call a four-master. We called three-masters “three-’n’-afters” for their further bewilderment. As a matter of fact “fore-and-after” describes accurately any vessel with fore-and-aft sails, no matter how many masts she had, nor how few; and so it embraces comprehensively the thousand sails of schooners whose gleaming! wings once surrounded Prince Edward County like flocks of grown-up gulls. It’s the grown-ups in the gull families who wear white.

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When the Captains’ Row was called upon to rise, in Cherry Valley Church last Sunday night, only four men stood up; Capt. Palmateer, Capt.Van Alstine, Capt. D. B. Christie, who presented the memorial flowers, and the guest speaker, Capt. McCannel. Other captains who are usually at the service were away already fitting out their steamers, or were unable to come, through indisposition, or had “passed Skillagalee Light, bound for the westward,” like the veteran Capt. Byron Bongard, who died since the last Mariners’ Service.

The number was small, due to these various causes. But the significant fact was that only one man, Capt. Nelson Palmateer, was a survivor of the glorious days of sail in Prince Edward County, The last of the fore-and-afters.

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Capt. Nelson Palmateer

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And the little church at Cherry Valley from which mariners move to five Great Lakes when the ice melts.