Lake Wreck of 35 Years Ago Told Vividly by Camera: Schooner Days CCCXIX (319)

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THE weather bureau doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, the bear seeing his shadow, or equinoctial gales, “when the sun crosses the line.” But sailors do, and so do the good folk of Kincardine.

Kincardine used to be a sailor town. It was not hard for Kincardine folk to keep their faith in equinoctial gales, for one was blowing at the time of the September equinox in 1902, and they hurried down to the pierheads to see what the lake was like.

It was not hard for Capt. James Charles Sutherland to keep his faith in equinoctial gales either, for he was out m this one. But it was harder for him to keep his faith in Providence. Every cent he had wrung out of a lifetime of toil on the lakes he had invested in the schooner Singapore; and here she was, his whole fortune, going down under his feet, waterlogged, with eleven souls, his wife, her two nephews, her two nieces, and the crew of five men besides himself.

He had sailed the Sligo and the Marion L. Breck for John M. Gibbon, of Sarnia, and given good service. He had at last struck out for himself with the Singapore—and this was the result.

They had gone to Blind River, in the Georgian Bay, to load pine plank for Sarnia. His good wife Margaret sailed with him as cook. She was a sister of Norman McLeod.

Capt. Sutherland was a kindly man, and he had taken along his wife’s brother’s children, Bobby and Norman and Vera and Madie McLeod, for a holiday trip before starting back to school. They all lived in Goderich together. He planned to land them in Goderich on the way down Lake Huron with this big cargo, the best load of lumber the Singapore had ever freighted.

Then the equinoctial gale came along. The Singapore met it sturdily. She was almost knocked out in the first round, for the opening squall threw her on to one ear while they were trying to clew top the main gafftopsail that morning, and a sea carried away her yawlboat from the davits, and a big section of the deckload of pine lumber shifted to leeward and washed overboard. They settled the mainsail and squatted the foresail down past the third reefband, and she came back with a bounce. The remainder of the deckload being mostly on the port side, which was to windward, she straightened almost bolt upright and answered her helm properly.

Under the squatted foresail, the forestaysail and the standing-jib, he headed her for Kincardine, nearest port under his lee. The strong nor’-wester, biting in with all the teeth of December, whipped the great greybeards of shallow Lake Huron after the fleeing schooner like staghounds on their quarry.

Far out in the lake the watchers on Kincardine piers saw her coming. She seemed to be making good weather of it, under storm canvas.

As she neared two dots darkened the fore-rigging. Human figures. What were they doing there? No canvas aloft had to be taken in or set. The fore gafftopsail was strapped tight in its gaskets.

Then they noticed she was very low in the water, a fact which such of the deckload as remained above the height of the buwarks had disguised.

Why, she was almost awash! The seas must be sweeping clean across the deck, except where the lumber load stopped them.

Yes, you could see them break on her and come out in seething cataracts of white, from her hawsepipes, and where the quarter-bulwarks had been knocked out.

And what was that dark huddle on the cabin top, matching the little lump of humanity hanging in the fore rigging?

Her crew had been driven from the deck! Those forward had taken to the rigging. Those aft had scrambled on to the house. She must be sinking. And her yawlboat was gone from the davits!

No, she was lumber laden, and the lumber in her hold would float her, even if the deckload washed away.

Her Old Man hadn’t given up hope, for her fly still streamed bravely from the topmast truck. Or was that a half-masted distress signal at the main crosstrees or the rags of a split main gafftopsail, wrapped around the shrouds?

Well, she was steering, anyway, weaving back and forth in the seas like a drunken driver, but always pointing pierwards. She might be waterlogged, almost out of control, but with the wind and sea as they were she would make it — if she didn’t roll over, through her buoyant cargo below decks floating up and throwing her on her beams ends.

What had happened was that after getting straightened away in the first squall the Singapore had suddenly commenced to leak. Perhaps it was the wrench of the deckload going. Perhaps the sea hurled her against a corner of the loosened mass and started some lower butts.

The first thing they knew on board the water was up to the bunks in the forecastle, and the children in the cabin were screaming with fright as Lake Huron washed over the cabin floor. Poor tots, they had been in bed when the storm burst and Mrs. Sutherland had kept them in the cabin for safety. Now, with water swashing up at them from the flooded hold and down at them from the cabin windows, as seas spilled almost level with the rail, desperate men dragged them out in their nighties from the filling cabin.

Capt. Sutherland seized his four- year-old niece Madie as his wife thrust her up the companionway. He had to relax his grip on the wheelspokes momentarily to take the child. In that moment the Singapore squirmed round and shipped a tremendous sea over the port quarter. Mrs. Sutherland, the two boys, and six-year-old Vera, were washed up onto the cabin top and clung to the gaff of the lowered mainsail. Capt. Sutherland and Madie were hurled against the spinning wheelspokes. The captain took the brunt of the shock on his own strong arms; but poor little Madie was hurt; hurt so badly that she died of the blow, months later.

Capt. Sutherland wrapped her in his coat and vest and passed her up to the group above him. The mate and two sailors had joined the woman and children on the cabin roof. Two men forward, unable to make a run for the roof, had jumped into the fore rigging. The sailors, aft, chilled to the bone with the piercing wind and cold lake water, stripped off even their flannel shirts to wrap around the poor woman and the youngsters. As in the wreck of the Hesperus, they lashed them securely to the rigging, so that another bursting sea might not sweep them away.

Meantime, in the narrow well of the deck abaft the cabin, Capt. Sutherland tried to steer, often up to his neck in water. The pierheads were close. He could see the faces of the anxious watchers as they waved encouragement. Another hundred yards, another hundred feet, and the Singapore would enter the channel — and safety.

Suddenly she stopped, with a jolt that almost jerked the masts out of her. Those on the cabintop would have gone overboard had they not been bound by the lash-wings.

She drew ten feet of water normally when fully loaded. Loggy so that the lake was full of tossing to windward, as she was she drew twelve or thirteen feet. In the trough of the sea she dipped until she touched the bottom just outside the piers. She hesitated for a moment, lifted on the next sea, and, like a mad woman bent on self-destruction, lurched away from the channel, crossed the south pier-end so close that her jibboom brushed the caps of the men shouting there, and swept sidewise into the breakers bursting on the sandy beach south of the harbor entrance.

Brave Tom McGaw, captain of the Kincardine lifeboat, had gathered up his volunteer crew and got his high-ended surfboat with the scuppered sides into the water as soon as the schooner had shown signs of distress. While she seemed to have a good chance of making port he had waited; but when she made that fatal sheer he started out for her, steering with a long oar over the stern, six men pulling, each on his own oar. He was alongside by the time she struck, beam on to the beach.

Then there was horrible destruction, for her foremast with the sails on it went one way and her main-mast went the other, and she broke her back and rolled over lakewards on her starboard side, spewing the remains of her cargo to the windward, so that the lake was full of tossing planks and whipping gear, with loose blocks flailing about, and swinging spars and tearing sails, and the crying of a woman and of children, and shouts of men.

Tom McCaw’s brothers, June and Fry, were with him in the lifeboat, and Charlie Macpherson, who has a fine grocery at Port Elgin now, and Jack Brown of Inverhuron; and two other heroes, whose names I would be glad to record.

Heroes they all were, for the Singapore’s was a most dangerous wreck to approach, with thousands of planks shooting like battering rams at the boat. But they never left her while one of her 11 was aboard. Little Norman McLeod, the younger boy, was so rigid with cold-cramp that they could not relax his hands from the seizing which held him on the cabin top. They had to cut the lashing and bring it and him away together.

But every soul on board was saved.

Capt. Sutherland lost all he had, his ship, his home, even his clothes. He had no insurance.

He was a brave man. He came to this big city and started life over again at 54. He worked for Heintzman and Co. for 16 years. He was a successful salesman, and prospered. He died here 13 years ago last June, in his 76th year.

Mrs. Sutherland is still alive, but she is an invalid. Her sufferings in the wreck were too great. She lives with her daughter at 93 Tyndall avenue in Parkdale.

BRAVE TOM McGAW AND HIS VOLUNTEERS

. . . “Then there was horrible destruction.” - Photographs secured by A. K. McLeod, Kincardine.

Pulling out to the rescue of eleven in peril.