Fifteen Hours for Oswego: Schooner Days CCLXXXVIII (288)

_______

FIFTY years ago, almost, the first rays of the rising sun touched the white balls above the topmast trucks of the schooner St. Louis as she left Sylvester Brothers' slip at the foot of Church street, on the old Toronto waterfront, on the first trip of the season.

This was in the days before donkey engines, and the St. Louis then had three yards on her foremast, and square topsails. The goosewings of the lower topsail were the first canvas loosed, for the wind was fair from the northwest. Then the great squaresail, bulging and shadowed where the six brails girt it, grinding in the coal-dust, was hauled out from the mast to the yardarms. Three jibs creaked up their stays, and slowly, slowly, slowly the gaff foresail started up throat and peak. She was as far as the Eastern Gap before they finished setting it, and it filled on the wrong side and had to be jibed twice before she settled on her course for Oswego. When she passed the lighthouse, outward bound, the sun was making glorious patterns on her rising mainsail.

Then the upper topsail rose forward, like a swimmer's chest expanding, and above that a pair of gleaming new batwings or little single raffees. Next the great patched main gafftopsail was set. Then the brand new mizzen, bent for the first time this season, resolutely climbed towards its crosstrees, shining like an ivory carving against the dusty hues of the older canvas. Its gafftopsail followed, and then the maintopmast staysail. The St. Louis had all her muslin spread now, except the fore stay-sail, which would not draw under the squaresail. She was a long way below Victoria Park and the sun was high, as the watchers turned reluctantly from the last gleam of her shining mizzen and the little batwings like quarter moons. She faded into a blue blur upon the deep blue lake, then into a dot against the silver blue sky; then vanished.

A week later she was back, swimming so deep with seven hundred and fifty tons of coal that only the hoodends of a few of the blue-grey "leadcolor" planks of her underbody showed, close to the XI ft. draught mark on her stem. She was white above, with green rail and coveringboard and red beading, at this time, and leadcolor below. This was before her white shirtwaist and green skirt costume became familiar to those who haunted the docks. They grew from kneepants to overalls without any change, in the saint's scenery. But he - or she, even though christened St. Louis — wound up in a monk's or nun's black garb. So she was painted when she wearily sat down on the bottom for keeps at Kingston somewhere around 1910.

But when she got back, on this first voyage of the season, 1890 or thereabouts, they told us what a great run down she had made. Left Toronto six o'clock in the mornin', flyin' light, with everything drawing to a dandy nor'-wester that saved a tug bill out; into Oswego that night by dark, caryin' everything right in, an' nine-mile current of the river checkin' her up snug as a pair of tugs, so they had everything off-a her and the heavin' lines handy when it she came abreast of the trussle, fifteen hours outa Toronto! Ten mile an hour that was, wasn't it? Wasn't it a hundred and fifty miles to Oswego? Who said it was only a hundred and thirty-five? Scott's Coast Pilot? The narrator didn't believe it. He'd believe Scott, but not them figgers. Betcha they was in nautical miles, like them yatches used. Any ways, if it wasn't ten miles a hour nower it was pretty darn close. Didn't know what time they passed the light-house, but the cabin clock was right on the figger X when the lines was out. Who said that made sixteen hours? Betcha—

And so the talk dribbled away in Andy Tymon's bar at Church and Esplanade. Anyway, the St. Louis had made one good run in her far from fast life.

Paralleling it, listen to the experience of one of her watchers of "fifty years ago, almost." We left home one day last month, just as the March sun was touching the treetops of High Park. It was a priceless spring morning, the air clear as crystal, the ground white as marble with hoarfrost on the top of the last of the snow, the pavements clean as picked bones after yesterday's sun. Two hours later, with the morning shadows still dark blue in the Niagara gorge, we were out of Canada and into New York State at Lewiston, 81 miles on the signboard, and a few more on the speedometer. Two hours more on the Ridge Road, and we skirted Rochester. Another hour and we halted at Red Creek to eat a few sandwiches and empty a flask; thermos, if you must know. Five hours and forty minutes after closing the Parkside drive front door behind us we rolled into Oswego, 135 nautical miles across the lake, 150 statute miles as the seaplane flies, 230 miles by the road signs and 246 on the speedometer.

We were sailing a Ford, not a coal schooner. We spent a necessary number of hours Oswego very pleasantly, and left with the afternoon sun making the lake glorious before the scourging of just such a nor'wester as gave the St. Louis the run of her life. The long rows of crisp whitecaps matched the snowbanks piled car-roof high on the sides of the road as we angled back to Highway 104 from Oswego Beach. Bight into the eye of the sun we steered, after wasting an hour or more in Rochester, and so on, on, on, until the sun went down behind Brock's Monument. We were into Canada again by dark, taking advantage of the lengthening March daylight, and then settled down to an easy jog, for night is no time to make records on the highway. Even so, we were home and moored at the Schooner Days typewriter, on the desk of the thousand ships (twenty-three by actual count of the pieces in it) by half-past nine. That was just fifteen hours and a bit after kicking the morning paper off the doormat. Not that we had anything against the poor thing, but we had read it all the night before. That's one of the advantages of going to wrestling matches.

In the fifteen hours we had made a round trip which took the St. Louis a week to complete over shorter route, and we had brought back as full a cargo as she did. Thirty or forty pictures for Schooner Days, some good for reproduction, others not; all good for fancy's framing, all part of the pattern of those vanished days which we ourselves love so well and which you, or some of you, find interesting when served up in the Saturday paper.

We had been to the right spot, for Oswego was a sailing vessel port for a century and a half, from the time the British built sloops and brigs and schooners there for the Seven Years War. In the War of 1812 was the scene of onr of our British naval triumphs. In the schooner days of the nineteenth century, and on into the twentieth, it had the greatest sailing trade of any port on Lake Ontario; perhaps on any of the Great Lakes, but I am dubious of comparing it with Chicago and Milwaukee in their palmy days. Capt. Jas. McCannell recently gave me a list of thirty-six barquentines and twenty-six brigs enrolled in Milwaukee between 1853 and 1885, and he had not had time to copy out the schooners, which were more numerous than the barques and brigs put together.

Not only did we load thirty or forty photographs for Schooner Days, but we loaded thirty or forty yarns, some spun complete, others just a thread here and there, fitting into and completing bits which had gone before.

It took the St. Louis several days to unpack her dusky diamonds at Conger's dock at the foot of Church street, and it will take longer than that to get the hold swept clean the treasures accumulated in our daylight run to Oswego and home. Too much of it would pall on your palate; but if you like we shall try the first installment next Saturday.

_______

THE St. LOUIS, FIFTY YEARS AGO