Enter, the "Nellle Sherwood": Schooner Days CCCXXXVII (337)

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ALTHOUGH the Nellie Sherwood went to Davy Jones' locker before the compiler of Schooner Days got into short pants she has long lived in the lore of the lakes. Her name is recalled by the stories recently recounted of the loss of the Sir C. T. Van Straubenzee, Capt. Dolph Corson's last command, with her master, mate and cook.

Mr. S. C. German writes from Scarboro Junction about Capt. Dolph Corson, lost with the Straubenzee:

"Dear Schooner Days, which I enjoy—

"I would like you to go back to 1882, when Dolph Corson sailed the schooner Nellie Sherwood of Port Hope. He loaded barley at Trenton that year, and I went with them to Oswego. We went into Macdonald's Cove on account of weather, and there another schooner hit us and knocked the horn off, so we went to Kingston and got a new jibboom.

"When we got over to Oswego the harbor was full of vessels, waiting to unload and load, and so it was three weeks before we got back to Trenton. At this time Capt. Corson had a wife and daughter living in Brighton, and he had one sailor from that village, named Jack Stoneberg. The very next trip Capt. Corson had to beach the Nellie Sherwood on the Prince Edward County shore, on the lake side, to save the lives of his crew. Jack Stoneberg never sailed again. He stayed ashore after that, working on the old Grand Trunk between Toronto and Brockville.

"I was just eleven years old at the time of which I wrote you, but this clipper is the style of boat the Nellie Sherwood was, and painted white with three jibs and would carry perhaps 300 tons of coal. We had a woman cook from Oswego and she had two daughters that I saw. So I think I cannot help any more."

"If Mr. German is right in his year, 1882, she must have been salvaged after Capt. Corson drove her ashore to save the lives of his crew, for that same year the curtain rang down upon her in Georgian Bay.

How this came about we shall tell next week.

The earliest of the Dominion registers (1873) gives the Nellie Sherwood as built at Algonac, Mich., on the St. Clair River, length 77 feet six inches, beam 22 feet two inches; depth of hold, seven feet six inches; registered tonnage, 95. It gives her building date as 1868, but this was very probably the date of her Canadian rebuilding at Kingston or Presqu'isle, for she was an American vessel, named the Market Drayton originally, and once owned in Buffalo.

Her registered owner in 1873 was "W. A. Courson, Brighton," probably the father of Capt. Dolph Corson, who later sailed her. She had been owned by Capt. George Sherwood, who kept the light on Presqu'isle Point, or by his brother, Capt. W. H. Sherwood, also of Brighton, and the Nellie for whom she was renamed was the daughter of one or the other. Capt. Ed. George was another Brighton man who once owned the Nellie Sherwood. He sold her and bought the F. E. Tranchemontagne, a tamarack vessel built in Quebec, and the Mary Taylor, described at the time as an old-fashioned black brig, or topsail schooner. Capt. George Sherwood owned the Mary Taylor in 1874. She was rebuilt at Kingston, becoming the Loretta Rooney, a white hulled fore-and-aft schooner. She was burned there in 1897.

Capt. John Williams, our old reliable, knew the Nellie Sherwood well. Indeed, he and his brother, Capt. Joseph Williams, were going to buy her one winter when she lay at the Queen's Wharf, but gave up the idea. He had been much impressed by Capt. Dolph Corson's smartness in working her through the Western Gap against a fresh easterly breeze and rounding her up into what became her winter quarters with one whirl of the wheel when she weathered the east end of the north pier.

Friend T. C. Stanton, of Brighton, one of the crew of the T. R. Merritt, which Capt. Corson lost before he went down in the Straubenzee, gives this breezy and first-hand account of how the first-named ship went out on the 12th of September, 1900, in the backlash of the Galveston hurricane:

"Sir,—I was reading in Schooner Days Capt. Williams' account of how the schooner T. R. Merritt went. I should like to correct some of the details.

"The T. R. Merritt went ashore between Fairhaven and Oswego, on the south shore of Lake Ontario, in the morning, about 9 o'clock. She did not roll over. Her bottom was too flat for that, and she did not have any canvas up, only the staysail. We did let go both anchors and all the chain, about three miles out. She dragged those anchors and chain as if they weren't there, and when she finished she was high and dry on the beach, and all the crew dropped over the side on the gravel shore.

"Myself and Mike Maley, who was mate, stayed and stripped her from top to bottom. It took us about three weeks to do the job. This is true and correct."

Thanks, old-timer.

OSWEGO HARBOR WAS FULL OF VESSELS"—Scene from above the bridge, one of Mr. John S. Parson's photographs. The small vessel in the right hand corner was just like the NELLIE SHERWOOD.