Flora Emma Finds a Trousseau: Schooner Days CCCVI (306)

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WHEN we were boys, which was not in this century, there used to come to the old elevator in the Northern docks west of Brock street, a white schooner with a strawberry colored bottom, half-clipper bow, and flattish tumblehome quarters, and across her stern the legend, "FLORA EMMA of PICTON."

We didn't know it, of course, being then slowly acquiring the lake lore we now retail at such length, but she was then in her early twenties, having been built at Picton by the famous John Tait, in 1872, for J. Hicks of South Marysburg. She was a good burdensome schooner for her dimensions, registering 154 tons, and carrying over 300. She measured 97 feet 7 inches on deck and was of 23 feet beam and 8 feet deep in the hold; a typical Bay of Quinte barley carrier, glad to get lumber, coal or freight of any kind after the McKinley Bill knocked our barley trade on the head. Indeed it was the collapse of the barley trade which brought her to the head of the lake and into our boyish ken.

Nothing ever happened to us in connection with the Flora Emma, but a gentleman whose acquaintance we made long years afterwards, Mr. E. J. Guy, of 161 Havelock Street, had a boyish adventure in her which we would have envied.

Eddie Guy was eleven-going-on-twelve when he made a trip with Capt. Sam Philp in the Flora Emma. She was trading then to Oshawa, where J. O. Guy, the harbormaster, owned a third of her. Oshawa was the Guy homestead, and Eddie, who was the harbormaster's son, went in her to Oswego. Mike O'Malley and Jimmy Ham were in her forecastle, and an old sailor remembered as 'Lias, Billy Martin, was mate. He was afterwards lost with his partner, Capt. Brokenshire, in their schooner Ocean Wave.

Coming out of Oswego coal laden on the return voyage the mate remarked of the sunset that they were "sure to catch it," and that night they did. It blew a hard breeze of wind down the lake. But the Flora Emma was new and good, and Capt. Philp carried on, and next morning they were standing in for the land near Cobourg, with a big sea rolling and a strong breeze from the northwest. The vessel was under the four lowers, more sail than she should have had, perhaps, but the captain was cracking it to her to get her in under the lee of the land and pick up smooth water before it blew any harder.

The weather jibboom-guy or backrope, a stout piece of wire which took the lateral strain of the flying jib, stranded under the pressure. They turned up the broken end and rove a tackle to replace it. They had barely bowsed it taut when a squall struck the schooner. The turned-up wire drew at the bight, and the jibboom snapped at the bowsprit cap. This let the flying-jib and jibtopsail and jumper stays go, and the foremast, now supported only by the forestay to the bowsprit end, cracked off at the crosstrees.

All but the man at the wheel had been working forward at the jury jibboom guy when the masthead went, and Capt. Philp ran Eddie Guy aft from the midship hatch as the foretopmast hurtled down with the topsail and its gear. As he did so the crowd forward yelled to come back, and next moment the mainmast head, no longer held by the triatic or spring-stay, snapped off, and the maintopmast came down on the spot on the deck where they had run from the hatch.

Then they were in a mess. The vessel was unmanageable in the trough of the sea, with her spars and rigging over the side, for the gaffs and sails had fallen with no mastheads to hold them up and the booms had come down unsupported by their topping lifts. Only one bit of running gear remained aloft, a part of a halliard which had become entangled on the splintered head of the mainmast. On this, with much difficulty, they sent up a flag of distress, and then kept the pumps going, so that she would not swamp, for the seas were spilling in over each rail.

The Flora Emma was eight miles out in the lake and had every prospect of drifting before the northwester and piling up on the sands of Mexico Bay or the rocks at Oswego if she escaped the nearer fangs of Wicked Point, or the long flat shelves of Point Peter in Prince Edward. Unless, as looked still more likely, she filled with the seas bursting board and sunk in mid-lake.

But a woman in a farm house on the Northumberland County shone had been watching from the window. She saw the sails disappear, and then the red gleam of the ensign, union down, on the bare mainmast, or what was left of it. She sent word to Port Hope, and the tug Albert Wright came bounding out through the rising seas.

They were a long time getting a line on the Flora Emma and getting her sails and spars on board again from the lake, but before dark she was towed into Port Hope and berthed. Her spars, sails and rigging were stripped from her and stored ashore, while new lower-masts were cut in the bush on the ridge above Port Granby. Then the old stumps were lifted out and the new ones stepped. The new mastheads were bored for two feet down with an inch auger, and the holes filled with coal oil, which would penetrate thoroughly and prevent them from rotting, as the former ones had apparently done. The Flora Emma had only been launched six years, and a mast should last a lifetime if it doesn't rot at the trestle-trees aloft or the wedges below.

Just when they were ready to bend the patched sails and reeve off all the running rigging a fire destroyed the shed where they were stored; so it ended in the Flora Emma getting a new outfit, from the keel upward, at the insurance companies' expense. With her new masts, new rigging and shining new sails she looked the complete yacht. Capt. Philp gave her a coat of white paint above and green below, with green coveringboard and red beading, and she was smarter in appearance than the Countess of Dufferin, which had tried for the America's Cup two years before.

Capt. Tom Fox of Port Hope got the Flora Emma later and lost her at Oswego, as you shall hear next week.

CALIFORNIA CALLING

Sir,—I wonder if the gifted writer of these absorbing articles "Schooner Days" could inform me if the plans of this smart little ship the "Undine of Hamilton" are still on record and available around Hamilton. Undine must have been a very smart little ship and a good carrier.

These articles as run in The Telegram are highly interesting and all the pictures are very wonderful, very informative on Great Lakes ships and shipping, but all too brief sometimes.

I enclose a self-addressed envelope in the hopes that this writer has sufficient leisure to answer this inquiry.

—J. H. STANTON, Oakland, Cal.

The compiler of "Schooner Days" takes the bow, but. doubts very much if the lines of the Undine are in existence. She was built by Capt. D. P. LaVallee in 1868. He was born at Berthier, Que., 1825, and died in Hamilton in 1886, Can anyone oblige Mr. Stanton?

CAPTAIN JOHN AND HIS ISLAND

Our friend the Colborne Enterprise puts us right on the original name of Foresters' Island off Desoronto, which used to be called Capt. John's Island. We have been told that this name commemorated Capt. John Van Alstine, but as the first of the Van Alstine's was a major that impairs the probability, although; many of his descendants have been known as captain in schooner days and some still qualify for that title in steam.

"The way we have it," says the Enterprise, "the island received its name from Capt. John Deserontyou, who brought the Mohawks into the Bay of Quinte, and after whom Deseronto was named. And come to think of it this latter explanation is more logical, as the island was given to this chief and he is said to have lived on it.

"It was Major VanAlstine, not Capt. VanAlstine, who brought the United Empire Loyalists into the Bay of Quinte but they landed at what is known as Adolphustown, spreading, of course, to Hay Bay where they built the mission, and possibly going up the Lennox and Addington shore towards Napanee as there is a U.E.L. burying place in the woods, back of the old Quinte wreck, on the east side of Long Reach.

"Incidentally there are several families by the name of John on the Tyendinaga Reserve to this day. They probably dropped the surname Deserontyou because of its length and simply call themselves John Billy John, or to be less familiar, William J. John, won the plowing championship at Brockville some years ago. These families can trace their ancestry back to the chief who brought the Mohawks to these parts."

OLD NORTHERN ELEVATOR, TORONTO WATERFRONT, 1855, where, thirty-six years later, we first saw the Flora Emma.

CAPT. SAM PHILP (standing, left) and the Flora Emma's owner, Harbormaster Guy of Oshawa (seated) with the harbormaster's brother, Mr. Frank Guy.