Port Credit Light's Last Spark Out The Harbor It Once Marked: Schooner Days CCXLVII (247)

AND so the last traces of Port Credit light have disappeared, like the vanishing of a high cloud which carries the sun's rays in reflection, long after the sun has set.

Port Credit light was darkened by the Government in 1919, but for seventeen years after its lonely white tower stood, isolated on its little timber crib, a "lighthouse" by day only. Yesterday morning a smoker's match did what all the ice and all the water of Lake Ontario could not do in half a century's assaults. The tower burned to the edge of that water which it had defied so long, the water which failed to save it in its need.

The late lighthouse was built 56 years ago. Long before that—from the time of the Indian Mutiny and the Crimean War, or say 1855— there had been a "Credit light." Perhaps there was a pine-knot flare at the river mouth when La Broquerie drew his map and marked the spot "Riviere au Credit," in 1797. But the first established light was a lantern on a pole at the end of the old pier which used to run northeast and southwest, where the mail steamers used to call at Port Credit, in the middle of the nineteenth century. Later on two piers, running northwest and southeast, were built to protect the entrance to the harbor. The east pier extended south to the west end of the old steamer pier, and here a lighthouse was erected.

It was pretty poor, judged by the note in Atkins "Pocket Compass of Lake Ontario" in 1871: "The lighthouse is on the E. pier, low and bad, and not even lighted with that regularity which the safety of vessels trading to the port absolutely demands."

After that the lighthouse which has just been burned was constructed 20 feet high, and although its light was only an oil lamp burning a pint of coal oil a night it was visible all the way from Toronto on the east to Oakville on the west. In the twenty-one years that the late John Miller kept it it was only dark once. That was after a big sea washed over the top of the lighthouse, in an easterly gale, and smashed the front panes of glass in.

Dear old Capt. Miller, stonehookerman, ship builder, lay preacher, rum battler, and sailor of the Great Lakes from Duluth to Ogdensburg, kept that light burning night after night, when the piers were washed away and unreplaced, and the tower stood on its single crib, two hundred yards from shore. He used to reach it by rowboat, accompanied by his little dog, Teddy, if the weather wasn't too rough. Sometimes it blew so hard and such big seas came over the decaying piers that John himself would be capsized, and have to finish his trip by swimming. That was why he kept a stock of dry matches in a corked bottle in the lighthouse; and that was why, if the seas were big, poor Teddy wasn't allowed to come. John got a special fishing skiff from Collingwood to be able to navigate to the lighthouse in all weathers; and he always did.

Although the Lloyd refinery, with its tugs and barges, does great business at Port Credit now, the old harbor has been deserted for twenty years, save for power fish-boats, the occasional small yacht, and the decaying hulls of stonehookers and dredge scows. The oil trade all goes to the privately owned cut west of the river. It is hard to visualize the Port Credit harbor into which the old lighthouse guided busy fleets. On the outside was the steamer landing, where the mail boats called and refueled from the piles of cordwood stacked as high as their funnels, or loaded apples, flour and potatoes. There were several storehouses on the east pier, with planked runways leading up to them, and several elevators. Here schooners loaded wheat and barley, sometimes in 10,000 bushel lots. Some oak and pine lumber was shipped out of the Credit as well, and logs were floated down and formed into rafts at the river's mouth, for towage to Quebec.

In its later years Port Credit was the favorite haven of the stonehooker fleet, small schooners, many of them scows, which gathered sand, gravel, hardheads, cobblers, pavers, and building stone. As many as twenty-five of these would be moored of a Saturday evening below the two old wooden highway bridges which spanned the harbor.

There were three shipyards in Port Credit. One, the oldest, was at the foot of the high bank on the east side of the harbor, just south of the lake shore road; it was here the old blockhouse and government trading post once stood. The other and later yards, which will be remembered by this generation, were down near the lake, one on each side of the harbor, at the shore ends of the piers. Capt. John Miller and Capt. Abram Block, J.P., had the one on the west side, and forty years ago they did a large business with Toronto yachts for repairs and winter storage. They also built and rebuilt many stonehookers there. The other one, on the east side, was patronized exclusively by independent stonehookers. A large cottonwood tree, burned a few years ago, was close to this yard. It was a prominent lakemark.

There still stands, on the west side of the harbor, a large frame building, which in the palmy days of sail was known as the Sailors' and Fishermen's Boarding House. There were, in addition, seven hotels and three saloons, for the cheer or otherwise of the mariner in from the sea.

The earliest trading vessel built at Port Credit mentioned in the Dominion shipping register is the Highland Chief, given in the book of 1874 as built in Port Credit in 1841, 72 feet length, 14.6 beam, and 5 feet depth of hold; 52 tons register, with Wm. Gorman of Pickering recorded as owner.

This information is not completely correct, for the Highland Chief had been wrecked the year before (in 1873), on the boilers of the sunken steamer Monarch, off the Eastern Gap, Toronto; and she was then owned by Capt. Alex. Ure, of Dunbarton. She had been owned in Dunbarton, Pickering Harbor, or Frenchman's Bay for a number of years. Two unofficial registers give Frenchman's Bay not only as her place of ownership, but as her place of building as well. The Globe list, of 1856 records her as built at Frenchman's Bay in 1840 and owned in 1856 by Scott and Bellchambers of that port, and measuring 40 tons. The Thomas register of Great Lake shipping of 1864 registers her as built in Frenchman's Bay in 1840 and owned by Daniel Marks, Toronto, and measuring 80 tons. The discrepancies in tonnage and other details, incline one to doubt the accuracy of these unofficial registers as to the place of building, and it is probable that the Highland Chief first kissed the waves in the mouth of the Credit.

She was certainly not the first ship built there, but, as stated above, she is the first one so recorded on the Dominion Register, which was not compiled until 1873. It may be that she was the largest vessel built in Port Credit up to the time of her launching.

Another early vessel, and possibly a sister of the Highland Chief, was the Credit Chief, a brigantine. The date of her building is not known, but the historic Globe Register of 1856 is positive that she was built in Port Credit, and measured 80 tons. Port Whitby harbor records show that she carried 4,930 bushels of wheat from Port Whitby to Kingston in 1853, when Alpha Soper was her master; and brought in 89 tons of railroad iron to Port Whitby in 1854 for the construction of the early railways of the province. Her owner in 1856 was John Robinson.

Another Port Credit vessel of greater dignity was the schooner Caledonia, of 152 tons register, built at Port Credit in 1842 by Jacob Randall, a builder who established himself at Oakville about this time. She was commanded by Capt. L. Clark in 1853. She, too, brought in the rails for the original Grand Trunk Railway to Port Whitby, arriving with 131 tons in 1855. At this time she was owned by Robert Moody, Jr., of Toronto. Ten years later she was owned by B. Shaver of Toronto and was wrecked east of Oshawa. Mr. Gordon Conant recovered her anchors, cables and keelson only last year, and they decorate the lawn of his Oshawa residence.

Another Caledonia, built on the lakes, made two voyages overseas, but this was a Saugeen vessel and had nothing to do with the Port Credit craft.

The schooner Maggie Hunter was built either in Port Credit or Oakville, and was owned in Port Credit for a time and manned by a Port Credit crew. She was a vessel of 160 tons, and was bought by Fergusson & Co., of Kingston and rebuilt, and renamed the Helen. Thomas' Marine Register gives a Helen as built at Amherst Island by D. Tait in 1858. This may refer to the rebuilding of the Maggie Hunter. The rebuilt vessel was lost coming up Lake Ontario from Oswego with a cargo of coal in 1875, with all her crew, including George Sharpe of Port Credit, who was her mate at that time.

Patrick Slater speaks of the brigantine Mayflower trading into Port Credit in the "Yellow Briar." The largest sailing vessel built in Port Credit was the brigantine British Queen, launched there in 1847. She was built at the old shipyard on the east bank of the river, below the site of the old blockhouse.

Local tradition loves to state that the vessel was built in the year Queen Victoria ascended the throne, and therefore received the name she bore. But marine registers all agree that the British Queen was launched in 1847, ten years after the Queen's ascension. According to the Thomas register, H. Chisholm was the builder, but local tradition insists that James "Boss" Harris did the work. He was perhaps the yard foreman. The blacksmith work was done by James R. Shaw of Port Credit.

The building of the British Queen was a great achievement for the port, and baulks of timber left over from her construction remained on the river bank for many years and were pointed out as monuments. She was a vessel about 130 feet long and could carry 14,000 bushels of barley or 277 tons of railroad iron. She was another member of the fleet unloading iron rails at Port Whitby in 1855. She sank in Port Credit in 1868, through the newly-formed ice chewing the oakum out of her seams. She was then owned by H. Wade of Port Credit. A man named Wardle bought the sunken hull and refloated her, and she was taken to St Catharines.

The last vessel built in Port Credit of size and pretentions above the many stone hookers for which the harbor became famous was the schooner-scow Minnie Blakeley. She was built in 1873 and was owned by a Port Credit hotelkeeper and called after one of his daughters. She was sold to Thomas W. Goldthrop, who appears as her registered owner in 1874. Capt. Daniel Sharpe, later harbor master in Port Credit, sailed her. She measured 92 ft. length. 20.5 feet beam, and 6.9 ft. depth of hold, and could carry about 200 tons. She ran aground on a rock in the Bay of Quinte, near Ox Point, when coming up with a load of ashes, and the wetting of her cargo ruined her with the burning of the lye so formed. For years her hulk hung on this rock, pointing now up the bay and now down, according to the direction of the wind. The scene of her demise is still marked Minnie Blakeley shoal on the Bay of Quinte charts.

Credit Light, after the pier which connected it with the land washed away.

Credit Light, after the pier which connected it with the land washed away - Inset, Capt. John Miller, its veteran keeper.

Port Credit Harbor in Stonehooker times