Now and Then: Schooner Days CCL (250)

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IT did the heart good to see topmasts and a topgallant yard in Toronto again, when the three-masted topsail schooner Alembic paid us a return visit this week with seal oil from St. John’s.

Latest and perhaps last sailer to visit this port, the steel square-rigger was a bagful of contrasts with the wooden fleets of two and three masters which once lined the waterfront from Bathurst street to the Don. In 1896 eight schooners rode at anchor waiting to unload at the Rogers and Conger's coal docks at the foot of Church street, while others crowded the slips, and between 30 and 40 schooners would winter here. Older timers tell of still more sailing vessels in Toronto.

In those days, if a schooner was in the Alembic's berth away down in the cast end of the bay beyond Cherry street, she would strike her fly for a tug, which meant she would lower the long canvas cone which flicked from her topmast head as a windfinder. Frank Jackman would spot the signal from his holding ground at the foot of Church street, and the green and white tug would snort her way down the bay and come alongside the schooner while the crew were singling up their shore lines. She would be riding high as a haystack, if unloaded, for our schooners carried no ballast and had no Plimsol marks. They loaded to the sheer plank and rode high when empty.

There might be some dickering over the unpaid bill for the tow before last, but the good-natured Francis would extend the thin-worn credit if necessary and agree to a jerk outside the pierheads for $12 or less, according to the tonnage of the vessel. The start would be made with the tug alongside, but probably not before all the spare sailors from other vessels and all the dockwallopers available had been rounded up and pressed into the herculean task of helping the schooner's meagre crew—four men at most, plus captain, mate and cook—to hoist the big lower sails.

How those vessels ever set canvas when outside help was not available was one of the mysteries of the ’90’s. They were frequently so short-handed that they had to have the tug go ahead on the throat and peak halliards of each all, in order to get the heaviest one up when they started. If they had to lower away outside and make canvas again it used to take hours to hoist one sail heaving it up by all hands walking the capstan round. Yet the schooners we are talking about would carry, double the load of Alembic. The Alembic’s last cargo was 325 tons of coal.

Lower canvas being got on her by hand or towline, the Albacore or Van Straubenzee or Emerald would ooze along into the bay, with the tug puffing and grunting and sliding, on ahead from her first position alongside, to take the towline proper. One recalls with horror fifty years old and still fresh, the fate of the son of Capt Dan Rooney, when the Jessie Drummond was being towed out. As the tug went ahead a coil of the towline encircled him, drew him to the paulpost and crushed off one leg. The poor young fellow bled to death before the Drummond could be brought back to the wharf and a doctor summoned.

By the time the vessel began to feel the lift of the lake roll, at least an hour, possibly two, would have elapsed since she struck her fly. Frank Jackman would give a warning toot, the towline would be cast off, the fly would go to the topmast head again, the gafftopsails would be sheeted home, and she would slowly, melt into the soft blur where sky and water met; one of a hundred dusky-winged carriers then enlivening the lake.

The setting sail of the Alembic last Tuesday was vastly different; principally in this, that there was no sail set.

When the last gallon of seal oil was out of her steel tanks, valves were turned and the lower tanks were filled with water ballast, so that she soon floated again in good sailing trim, 10 feet deep aft, 8 feet forward, and her white-circle plimsol mark, which showed salt-water loading depth, only a few feet above the surface. The yellow painted funnel used to give air pressure in her tanks was unshipped, and the Old Man, Capt. Coward, pulled the lever of one of his diesels. There was a little cough of black smoke under the stern, a liquid purring note from the engine, a bubbling of the water around the port propeller, and the Alembic commenced to back down the channel, one man of her crew of ten walking along the concrete with the bight of a bowline in his hand, to check her if necessary.

She backed through the bascule bridge as easily a ferry leaving a slip—it would be a two-line job for a schooner in the old days - and backed on down the channel with short kicks from the port diesel. Near the end a bight of the line was thrown over a niggerhead on the pier, and the mate stood by with a coil fender while the Old Man gave her the starboard diesel to kick her stern out. The shore man hopped aboard, the line was cast off, and the Alembic passed away from the wharf with both engines purring. Her twin screws twisted her around like a rowboat handed by a smart oarsman. Her old Red Duster, the flag of the British mercantile marine, climbed to the mizzen truck, and off she went for St. John's again, steering due west.

Yes. west.

A year ago Capt. Coward had an unfortunate experience with our Eastern Gap. He touched on Sandbar at the mouth of nearest way out, and had an unhappy time kicking clear. The sandbar has since gone. But that is why he steered west when he waited to go east, and set no sail at all while within sight of the perilous port. His thirteen pieces of canvas each lay tight strapped in its stout rope gaskets, although he had a nice southeast wind to take him out of the harbor and down the lake and nice little gasoline driven winches to set them.

He “steamed” up the length of the bay, out through the Western Gap and up to the fairway buoy off the Exhibition.

Three miles out of his way, three miles dead to leeward of his course, and still no move to “make" that easily hoisted canvas.

Then he swung south in a wide quarter circle, and headed up for the bellbuoy on the island shore, and vanished beyond Gibraltar Point. No sign of a sail when last seen.

Probably he ran his engines all night and next day, for there was no wind after the sun got low. He would be in Kingston, under power, in twenty-four hours. That is more than any of our old time schooners could have done in the conditions, although with a strong breeze they have sailed the distance in half that time.

The auxiliary engine is a grand thing; it saves tug bills, makes nothing of going three miles off the course, and keeps the vessel moving when the old wind-wagon would be drifting helplessly all night and perhaps all next day in the doldrums.

The Alembic is properly described as an auxiliary topsail schooner. She is also, correctly, called a square-rigger, because she has four square sails on her foremast.

Square-riggers, or vessels using square sails, spread their pinions on pivoted spars called yards, which cross the masts at right angles. Herein they differ from fore-and-afters, whose sails are extended by gaffs and booms, spars hinged abaft or behind the masts. Almost all the schooners we can remember on the lakes—and within the lifetime of most grown-ups there were scores or hundreds, although there are none now—almost all these schooners were of fore-and-aft rig. Some schooners have square topsails, or other square sails, usually on the foremast. These are technically known as ‘‘topsail schooners.” Fore-and-afters used to have topsails, too, triangular sails traveling on hoops on their topmasts; these sails were called gafftopsail, because their clews, or outer corners, sheeted home to the peaks or outer ends of the gaffs extending the lower sails.

The Alembic is a square-rigger in modern parlance, although the old-timers jealously confined that term to vessels which had at least two masts square-rigged from truck to deck. Nothing is more conservative than sailor language or sailors’ ideas; no one could be more intolerant of ignorance or innovation than the old-time tar. He reverenced the square rig because that was the rig his first seagoing ancestor used when he spread his bearskin to help the wind blow his sharp-ended log across the river.

The square rig is undoubtedly very ancient, the fore-and-aft rig an upstart of only a few centuries’ growth. As long as they lived—and they are only now dying off from the face of the waters—square-riggers looked on fore-and-afters with undisguised and unwarranted contempt. Each rig has its own uses, and excels the other in its proper place. The square rig is at its best in rough water and where the wind blows continuously in the same direction. The fore-and-aft rig is good for narrow waters where the course has to be changed frequently, and where there is much beating to windward.

That is why it was so extensively adopted on the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast. The combination of square and fore-and-aft, as shown in the topsail schooner, would seem to be ideal. In many ways it is; but it is much more expensive than the straight fore-and-aft rig. It requires more men, more spars, more sails, more blocks (pulleys to you, ma’am) and more gear. Therefore, many lake schooners abandoned it.

This Alembic is not, of course, a lake schooner by birth or adoption. Neither is she a Newfoundlander by origin. She was built at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and is typical of the English ‘‘foreign-going coasters” of forty years ago when wood was going out and steel was coming in to all shipbuilding. She was launched in 1894. At that time there were hundreds of such topsail schooners, fore-and-aft schooners, barquentines and brigantines coasting around and from the British Isles, trading to the Continent of Europe, the Mediterranean and the West Indies. Now there are only three, so I was told last summer when sailing as fourth hand in a red-sailed seagoing spritsail barge. These barges have taken all that is left of the sailing coastal trade in the Old Country, and some of them make their way to South America. The Alembic came to this side of the Atlantic some time ago, and her steel cargo and ballast tanks, twin screws, and diesel engines, are a very modern addition which enable her, in spite of her forty-two years, to compete with steam and motor freighters even on long-haul jobs like carrying seal oil from St. John’s to Toronto.

THE ALEMBIC of ST. JOHN’S clearing from Toronto, July 21st, 1936.

THE SIR C. T. VAN STRAUBENZIE of ST. CATHARINES clearing from Toronto, August, 1895.