Strange Story of Enchanted Sand. 1: Schooner Days CCCXXXIII (333)

_______

IT is easy to imagine something more romantic than a sand pile on the grimy docks of Cleveland, Ohio, but there was one there in the fall of 1909 which had the wiseacres of the Toronto waterfront shaking their hoary locks like wizards of old.

One pre-prohibition bard in the City Arms, opposite old St. Lawrence Market, propounded the interesting theory that a "dool" had been fought on that there sand when Perry's fleet wintered in Misery Bay in 1814, and that the loser had coughed out his life with the prayer that the lieutenant who had killed him should know no peace till all the waters of Lake Erie had washed his blood from the beach. Others said the bard was drunk, which was true, and a liar, which was probable. It sounded still more so when he insisted that the ghost of the victor had been wandering the beach of Misery Bay for ninety years, wringing its hands when the willow trees swung their arms on wintry nights, and calling on the waters of the lake to rise and do their ablutionary task and let him go to the comfort of that hell he had made for himself.

Higher critics blew this theory to thinner smoke than came from their own corncob pipes with the question how did anybody know that there sand came from Misery Bay, anyway? But even the highest and smokiest agreed that there was "something queer" about that there sand, and they expected to hear more of it.

That there sand, to stick to the waterfront specification, was five hundred tons of moulding material which the schooner Emily B. Maxwell had been chartered to bring from Cleveland for the Ideal works at Port Hope. The Ideal Co., now known as the Port Hope Sanitary Manufacturing Co., had just begun that great manufactory of enamel-ware bathtubs, sinks and plumbing equipment which has become Port Hope's principal industry.

Port Hope had been mastless, save for the weathered spars of the sunken Garibaldi, until Capt. Jas. Peacock brought down the Emily B. Maxwell from "up above." Manitowoc was where she had been built in 1881, and she was a fine big schooner, the biggest ever owned in Port Hope, going 148 feet on deck, 30 feet 6 inches beam, and 10 foot 7 in the hold. She registered 361 tons and could carry about 800 tons dead weight.

Before the Ideal Company could cast sinks and bathtubs they had to have moulding sand, and moulding sand does not grow on every beach. Only one cargo of it is remembered coming into Toronto in schooner times, three or four hundred tons that the Flora Carveth unloaded at the old Exhibition Wharf, at the foot of Dufferin street. Usually it came by rail, but the Ideal people located some in Cleveland and a steam barge was chartered to bring it down. The barge took fire and burned to the water's edge before the sand was loaded, so Capt. Peacock got the charter for his new schooner and went after the cargo.

He took with him a mate who was acquainted with Cleveland harbor, where sailing vessels by this time hated to go. Harbor improvements were always being made, Cleveland's waterworks cribs were miles out in the lake, and the harbor tugs would let you blow your lungs out rather than come out and get you, though they were keen enough to pick you up and earn an easy fee docking you when you got inside.

The Maxwell got up off Cleveland, blew her donkey engine whistle till the steam gauge dropped to zero, and made a despairing effort to sail in under her own canvas through the bewildering maze of harbor lights and unlighted cribwork. It was the only thing she could try to do but she crashed on the piling in the dark and was completely wrecked. So the sand pile lay undisturbed and the hoodoo legends grew.

Then "Young Dolph" Corson got the charter. Adolphus was bewhiskered and far from young by this time, for he was born in Grimsby in 1843, and this was sixty-six years later, but this father before him was "Old Dolph," king of the cordwood trade from the Bay of Quinte, and his son remained "Young Dolph" all his days.

Corson had the Shickluna-built schooner Sir C. T. Van Straubenzee — "Benzy" on the waterfront — after Johnny Williams got out of her. Capt. Corson stayed in her when she passed from Canadian registry and was owned in Buffalo. He continued to trade on Lake Ontario, and was delighted to get the sand charter.

Freights had been scarce, and he had paid off most of his crew. He had old Jimmy McCallum as mate, who used to be engineer at the Grand Central Hotel, Wellington and Simcoe streets, in the long winters, and he got Tom Hollis as a sailor, and went after Tommy Garner, who then lived at 308 Ontario street.

"Don't you go, Tommy," said Mrs. Garner, "it's the fall of the year and you know you're not as well able to stand bad weather as younger men."

"I know," said Tommy, "but Dolph is shorthanded and I can't see him stuck." So he brought his bag aboard. Perhaps the Straubenzee got two more men and perhaps she didn't.

The Straubenzee's cook was Mrs. Madeleine Conolly, a Quebec-born widow, living in Toronto, where her son John was employed in the old Toronto Electric Light Co. She had been in the vessel all summer, banking her savings regularly when the vessel's arrival here permitted. Before she sailed this time she drew her money out of the bank and left it with her son.

"You never can tell what may happen," said she.

You never can.

The Straubenzee got away with a nice breeze from here at 6 o'clock, Saturday evening, Sept. 25th, 1909. She made Port Dalhousie in a few hours. The Welland Canal was not open on Sundays then, but they worked the locks for her, seeing that she had begun her passage before Saturday midnight. By Sunday night she was clear of all twenty-six of them and was sliding up Lake Erie from Port Colborne with a light north wind and started sheets. Dolph Corson was in great luck. In another twenty-four hours the Straubenzee would be in Cleveland and the sand would be pouring down her hatches.

The night was quiet on lake and land, but at least two persons slept badly. Capt. Corson's home was in Hamilton, at 242 Wellington street north. Twenty or thirty years before, when in command of the schooner W. J. Suffel, he had been wrecked on Burlington Beach. 'Twas thus he made the acquaintance of a Hamilton lady, who, like Desdemona, loved him for the dangers he had passed. They were married, and Hamilton was his home port ever afterwards.

Mrs. Corson, at home in Hamilton, had distressful dreams all this night. So troublesome were they, though all vague, that ere morning she was violently nauseated, and sleep was out of the question.

In Toronto another sleeper tossed restlessly. This was young Mrs. John Conolly, daughter-in-law of the Straubenzee's cook. She woke with a start as the clock struck three, with the words ringing in her ears, "There lies the boat that was wrecked." Dazedly she pieced together what had gone before these words. She had seen two vessels coming together. They were vague in shape, but one had three masts. That she was very clear about. Then the vessels were gone and she was alone on the water with pieces of planks floating around her, and a man or a spirit had cried to her, "There lies the boat that was wrecked."

I'll have to break the sandman story off here and tell you next week what happened.

THE EMILY B. MAXWELL, second victim of the enchanted sand.