Rest of the Restless: Schooner Days CCCXXXII (332)

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HER names were the Dream, and the Restless, and if she had been christened "Restless Dream" her troubled life would have borne out the baptism. Launched as a yacht, she became a coffin, then a smuggler, then an honest trader, then a trull, kicked out of a lumberyard as too rowdy to soil the spiles with her frayed mooring lines; and she ended as firewood for some honest housewife. But always, even when the chopping axe was in her midriff, she was the dashing highflyer. The man who cut her up fifty years ago said last week "She was lean—and sailed like a witch."

It is amazing how much legend builds up around a few facts, until the facts themselves, interesting enough, are all obscured and buried in a mass of contradictions. This has been the wail of recorders since the days of Adam's aunt. The story of the little schooner we are talking about is only another instance.

Capt. Frank Jackman of Toronto, who died a few years ago, was a smart sailorman, quite incurious about the romance of his life's occupation. He was the first to mention the name of the Restless to the compiler of these articles. It was then an unknown one, for the Restless had ceased from troubling before the one who is now attempting to chronicle her history had seen Lake Ontario.

Frank might have been expected to know all about her, for he had been one of her owners. He and Capt. James Andrew of Oakville, he said, traded the steam barge General Wolseley for her and the small tug Dolphin and some cash money one way or the other, in 1886. They had to take the Wolseley to Owen Sound. She commemorated Sir Garnet Wolseley, hero of the Red River rebellion and the Nile expedition for the relief of Gordon. The Wolseley was burned soon afterwards at Cape Croker. They brought the Dolphin and the Restless down to Lake Ontario, used the Dolphin in Toronto harbor, and sold the Restless either to someone in Toronto for a stonehooker, or to someone in the Bay of Quinte. Capt. Henry Smith of Bellville, he said, on second thought, it was who got her.

The Restless was sharp as a yacht, and a clinker to sail, but she had a schooner's wide stern, not a yacht's feather-edge counter. And though she was little, not much more than 70 feet long, she had a square topsail forward. That was all he knew of her, "except" and this was a great effort on Frank's part, for he was no hand at yarn spinning—"they said she was a United States Government vessel to begin with, perhaps a revenue cutter, and once she capsized and drowned a lot of soldiers."

Backtracking to Owen Sound, where the Restless belonged before coming to Lake Ontario, old Dominion registers showed that she had been owned there from 1874 onwards—and perhaps earlier—having been registered in Montreal in the name of Lewis Smith. Montreal was a general port of registry for Canadian lake vessels before Confederation and for some time afterwards, particularly foreign bottoms brought into Canada. Owen Sound owners of the Restless, according to the town paper, had been in turn Thos. Maitland, Lewis Smith and McDougal and Richardson, and she had been sailed successfully by Captains Hill, Stewart and Nardadt.

One paragraph in an Owen Sound paper, either the Sun-Times or its predecessor, seemed to hint at what Frank Jackman had heard. "Built in Cleveland as the result of a dream, she was so named. Her owner, with his family of six, sailed away in her on a cruise, and nothing was ever learned of what happened to them. The schooner yacht was found floating bottom up at the eastern end of Lake Erie."

Following the wake of the long lost one to Cleveland it was learned that the yacht Dream had indeed been built there in the year 1859—almost eighty years ago. Her builder's name was Stevens, possibly a partner of Ira Lafrinier. The firm of Lafrinier and Stevens built many lake schooners. The Dream, or the Restless as she was known later, was Canadian registered as 73 feet on deck, 20 feet beam, 8 feet 5 inches depth of hold, and 72 tons measurement.

Then, with the assistance of friend John E. Poole, of Dearborn, Mich., who has tremendous stores of information on these subjects, this was pried out of the files of the Detroit Free Press:

"Schooner yacht Dream, 85 tons burden, Capt. G. Woolton, of Elyria, Ohio (near Cleveland) went from Marquette to Sauks Head on Thursday, Sept. 8th, 1859. She left there on her return journey in the evening ... Was hit by a squall and capsized ... The hull was recovered Sunday, Sept. 11th, and was pumped out. . . . The yacht was capsized in a gale on Saturday, Sept. 10th, fifteen miles above Marquette on Lake Superior. Seven persons were on board at the time and two were lost."

This would seem to reduce Frank Jackman's hearsay of drowning a lot of soldiers" to almost the same status as the Owen Sound legend of disappearing with her owner and family of six and being found empty at the east end of Lake Erie; unless both stories refer to further and undiscovered tragedies.

The established fact is that the Dream capsized in Lake Michigan and drowned two of those on board. One would like to know what was the vision Capt. Woolton had, which prompted her name. It could not have been the nightmare which her September cruise proved to be, that first year of her life.

Next swirl in her wake is also a Detroit Free Press item, seven years later, in 1866: "Schooner Restless, ex Dream, was seized off Prussian Island, Lake Superior, by the revenue cutter John A. Dix. She had no papers, but did have a cargo of liquor. She is owned by Beatty and Fitzsimmons of Detroit."

This was on Aug. 7. In next day's issue the Detroit paper took it back, as far as the local townsmen were concerned. "Schooner Restless is owned by New York parties, not by Beatty and Fitzsimmons." My guess i is that "Prussian Island" should have read Ile Parisienne, or Parisian Island.

Almost as much liquor smuggling went on at the close of the American Civil War as during the prohibition era, but the profits were not so great. What the outcome of this case was is not known. The Restless may have been put into U.S. Government service, and may have drowned a lot of soldiers in the process, but her next verified appearance is on the Dominion register, showing that she had been sold to Canada. She is reported at Collingwood with 3,000 bushels of wheat May 28th, 1879, and many other times. The old Globe of April 30th, 1880, mentions here as "Ashore at Leith, Georgian Bay. Got off," which was the episode mentioned by our correspondent, Mr. Alan H. Ross, of Owen Sound, recently, I when the tug Mary Ann put a hawser around her and pulled her off bodily.

It should be said that the tonnage discrepancies which may be noted need not worry anyone. Even in the same register, tonnage measurements for the same vessel often differ. The "85 tons" American measurement at Cleveland in 1859 could be the "72 tons" Canadian measurement at Montreal in 1874, and both would accommodate "3,000 bushels of wheat," which is 90 tons dead weight, at Collingwood in 1879, and the "110 to 115 tons of coal," which was the load of the Restless when she was trading between Oswego and the Bay of Quinte in 1886. Tonnage is a subject too deep for landsmen and over the hip-boot tops of many sailors. It should be approached with prayer and fasting, a sense of humor, and the knowledge that a ton is not a ton, but a unit, about as definite as a "heap," a "lot," "some," "any" or "plenty," an arbitrary divisor of the product of certain measurement loosely related to the length, depth and width of a vessel's hull.

Now, don't ask any more questions!

When the Restless came to Lake Ontario she was expected to be the queen of the bay tenders. Perhaps she was, while Charlie Dodds of Belleville, or Capt. Henry Smith had her. There was a good trade in bunchwood and headings from Deseronto to Oswego, and coal back, shared with the Echo of Toronto, then also owned by Smith in Belleville. There was, too, a lot of pick-up grain carrying from the farms, and the little wharves along the Bay of Quinte shore, to the Kingston elevators or the Oswego breweries, until the export barley trade was shot by the McKinley tariff.

The Restless, however, fell on evil days. Under other masters and, owners she lost her square topsail and she lost her looks, and she lost her sheer and she lost her speed. As says our friend William Harrigan, who sailed the Echo in company with her in the bunchwood trade, "she got so that her stern sagged like the old Garibaldi's, and the after half of her didn't look as though it belonged to the forward half of her. Her spars weren't scraped, and her sails were only fit for the junkman.

"Last I saw of her she was lying to the eastward of the dock at Deseronto, almost in the mouth of the Napanee River. Alex. McGarry, foreman for E. W. Rathbun, didn't pose as any saint, but the Rathbuns were fine decent people in the lumber business, and the shenanigans aboard the Restless while she was at the dock were too much for Alex's stomach. There was a regular waterfront wildman's brawl. Alex kicked the Restless out. He threw off her lines and told whoever it was who was then sailing her never to bring her near the Rathbun property again. So she drifted off, and hung around the bay near Belleville for a while doing nothing, and after that I suppose she sank or was broken up in the winter. That would be forty-eight or forty-nine years ago."

Another Schooner Days friend, Frank Keegan of Belleville, confirms Mr. Harrigan's diagnosis:

"She was beached at the foot of Church Street in Belleville, her and the Red Bird. The Red Bird went away down the Bay with the ice, and sank. The Restless was pulled out on the shore and cut up for firewood, sometime about 1888 or 1889. I got this from Spirrie Fertle. He said he cut her up. They all say down here she was lean and could sail like a witch."

THE DREAM -or a schooner yacht very like her, the WAVE CREST, with the square topsail carried by the RESTLESS.