Big Loads in Barley Times: Schooner Days CCLXXXVII (287)

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TALKING of old Port Oshawa recently it was mentioned that from the old pier, the picture of which was reproduced, Capt, John Williams once loaded 27,000 bushels of barley in the schooner Sir C. T. Van Straubenzee. It was said that this was a remarkable load for a vessel of the "Old Canal" type, which in general carried 20,000 or 22,000 bushels before the canal was enlarged, This is the case, as the old arrival reports at the Collingwood elevator in the great days of the grain trade from Chicago to Collingwood attest. Cargoes of 18,000 to 22,000 bushels are again and again credited to the 140 ft schooners of the type evolved by the "Old" or second Welland Canal, the present cargo which can float a cargo of 600,000 bushels in one bottom, being the fourth.

Twenty-seven thousand bushels of barley was indeed a good cargo for a schooner of the Straubenzee's dimensions, and it is probably the largest cargo ever shipped from Port Oshawa in the old days of grain export. But it was not the biggest the Straubenzee walked away with, in the years Capt. Williams was sailing her. He was a smart man with a vessel, steam or sail. He himself attributes his long successful career to home prayers and a bit of luck, but all who know him will add to those invaluable ingredients the following, which he possesses and practiced to the fullest extent: wideawakeness, courage, good humor, skill, experience, and the willingness to take a chance. All, including prayers, are needed in navigating the lakes in a little wooden grain-bin loaded-deck-to, with nothing but the winds of heaven for motive power and no such aids as radio for weather guidance.

When the Straubenzee began to load at Oshawa, she was supposed to pick up 14,000 bushels or so for Oswego. The Wm. Jamieson was loading at Whitby or Newcastle or Darlington, or perhaps all three ports, for McLelland and Galbraith, who were shipping grain from thence, and she was in and out in one day and on her way down the lake. She was a smart little vessel, less than half the tonnage of the Stranbenzee, and it was prophesied that she would be down to Oswego with her barley and back to Toronto with a cargo of coal before the Straubenzee would get clear of Oshawa.

The Straubenzee lay at Oshawa a week, getting her grain in, and by the time she had loaded she had 27,000 bushels under hatches and her destination had been changed from Oswego to Kingston. She a finally got away, made a good run down, unloaded at the Richardson elevator in Kingston and slipped across light to the south shore to load coal for Toronto. Here she learned that the Jamieson had carried away her jibboom while going into Fairhaven, for a return cargo, and what with weather delays and the delays of refitting, the Straubenzee, with her whopping big load, was back in Toronto ahead of her after all. "Luck," says Capt Williams, modestly. Another case of the hare and the tortoise.

But Capt. Williams is not much impressed by the recollections of the 27,000 bushels as a big load for the Straubenzee. After all, he points out, barley is a light cargo, 48 pounds to the bushel; the dead weight of that cargo would be 648 tons. Some barley will, however, run as heavy as 60 lbs to the bushel. The Straubenzee and the "Old Canallers" were calculated to carry 740 or 750 tons of coal, so even with this big load of barley she had a margin of about 100 tons.

The real big load Capt. Williams can point to that the Straubenzee carried, came when he got the chance to carry wheat from Buffalo to Kingston. The wheat was in two consignments in the elevator, and the two consignments had to be kept , separate, One was 24,000 bushels and the other was 25,250. The Richardsons were willing for him to charter a small schooner, or a barge or a tug, to get any surplus which the Straubenzee could not carry down to Kingston, once she had got it as far as the Welland Canal, which is only twelve miles from Buffalo. Capt. Williams said he would see what he could do, and nosed the Straubenzee in past the Buffalo breakwater and loaded the first 24,000 bushels.

This in itself does not sound remarkable when compared with the Oshawa cargo of barley, but it must be remembered that wheat runs 60 lbs, to the bushel and sometimes as much as 65, and 24,000 bushels of wheat weighs 720 tons as against 648 for the barley cargo. The dead-weight was close, also, to the Straubenzee's deadweight capacity for coal. But Capt. Williams got the whole 24,000 bushels under hatches and delivered dry at Kingston, to the great satisfaction of the elevator people.

Then came the big test. The Straubenzee went back to Buffalo. There Capt, Williams bought, for the Richardson account, a lot of grain bags. The wheat poured down the chutes and into the Straubenzee's hold, and was trimmed back into the wings and up over the brow in the stern where she loaded timber, and forward to the forecastle bulkhead. Finally it mounted to the edges of the hatch coamings. By this time she was floating so deep that her coveringboard, where her decks joined her sides was almost awash. Twenty-five thousand bushels were in her when the hatches went on and were covered with tarpaulins. Still some grain remained. Two hundred and fifty bushels were bagged and piled on the main hatch. Then the Straubenzee, wafted on a light breeze, floated the dozen miles to Port Colborne.

She was drawing thirteen feet of water and was the deepest laden "Old Canaller" that ever passed Port Colborne elevator. Her normal draught, full loaded, was eleven feet. But there was fourteen feet of water in the canal locks by this time, and the straight-sided bluff-bowed timber drogher swam serenely into the guard lock and down the long fourteen-mile level, behind a puffing tug, the ripples in the smooth canal rising almost to her hawsepipes.

At Port Dalhousie Lake Ontario was smooth as a millpond. It was fine dry summer weather, and the Straubenzee floated sedately down the lake, taking two days for the hundred and sixty miles. Late one night she blew into Kingston and moored at the Richardson elevator, just as a summer squall was breaking. It burst in rain and thunder. They spread the lowered mainsail over the heap of bags on the main hatch, and not a grain of wheat was wet. First thing next morning the elevator went to work on the second instalment of the 49,250 bushel consignment.

This last cargo, 25,250 bushels, had a dead weight of at least 757 tons, and that is probably the heaviest load the Straubenzee ever staggered under, whether it was grain, coal, squared timber or lumber. There was so little water to spare under her at the elevator that they had to begin unloading her without shifting her back and forth under the legs.

Capt. Williams once carried 22,000 cubic feet of squared pine timbers in the Straubenzee, and he once sailed her with 330,000 feet of lumber on board. His predecessor, Capt. Ben Tripp, had once piled 400,000 feet of lumber into her, but she was not under sail at that time, but towed. She broke away from her tug on this occasion, in a gale, but rode it out to both anchors, somewhere off the Devil's Nose, on the south side of Lake Ontario, and took no harm.

The earnings on these two big loads from Buffalo to Kingston were $400 a trip. Looking back thirty and forty years it seems a very small stake to play for; a freight of a few hundred dollars, involving the work of a captain, mate, cook, and four sailors for a week, or two weeks, or sometimes even a month, with groceries, tow bills and harbor dues to be paid out of it, besides wages and wear and tear. But the men who put such cargoes through contributed more to the building of national character in Canada than the sissies who made or lost fortunes in finance.

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THE SIR C. T. VAN STRAUBENZEE, typical "Old Canaller," in the Western Gap, Toronto forty years ago.