Lake 'Barque' in Zulu Land -Studies in Black and White: Schooner Days CCCLX (360)

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THEY were deep in reminiscences of 60 years ago, Capt. H. M. Boyce of Milwaukee and Capt. Jas. McCannel of Port McNicoll, retired masters in steam, both, and each with more than a bowing acquaintance with sail—and they got on to the "Old Canallers," those three-masters built to the size and shape of the locks of the second Welland Canal.

The confabulation came about through the publication in Schooner Days this year of an old photograph Capt. McCannel had found of a black barquentine loading lumber in Parry Sound sixty years ago. No one in Parry Sound knew the vessel, and now one elsewhere could identify her, until John E. Willis, of 294 Gerrard street east, a reader of Schooner Days, came forward with the information that she was the M. L. Higgie, a Chicago vessel in which he had sailed as a boy.

"There's no doubt in my mind that Telegram picture of the old barquentine loading lumber in Parry Sound is the Mary L. Higgie of Milwaukee," said Capt. Boyce. "I saw a vessel rigged just like that in the '80's, and the mate of the schooner I was on wondered what the ---- kind of rig that was" (The Higgie had her mizzen topmast down and was using it as jury jibboom, having lost her horn in a collision). "I showed the picture to another captain in Milwaukee, and he said it was the Higgie. Frank Higgie sailed her awhile. She later was made into a towbarge.

"And did you know that this same Mary L. Higgie was a South African veteran?" contributed Capt. McCannel.

"She was. She was built by Hanson and Co. at Manitowoc in 1873 for Capt. J. L. Higgie, and named after his daughter. The Higgies had several vessels, and another of their fleet was the large three-masted topsail schooner Jones and Higgie, which had five jibs—a rarity, and a continual source of forecastle argument as to their proper names. "Redfern" Macdonald of Goderich was before the mast in her often.

"The Jones and Higgie could carry 35,000 bushels, and was going up to about the time of the Great War, but she had been renamed the George Sturges. Your American vessels are great on renaming. Some of the steamers have as many as seven different names, and all sounding as though they had been picked at random out of the telephone book. As the George Sturges the Jones and Higgie was sent to the Atlantic coast, and there or in the Gulf of St. Lawrence she perished with all hands.

"This Mary L. Higgie was a much smaller vessel by comparison, but she was Old Canal size, and about 20,000 bushels capacity. When new she made more than one voyage overseas. She loaded deals in Green Bay, Wis., for Liverpool, got across all right, and came back to Quebec with Welsh coal. Then she loaded deals again at Quebec, and cleared for Cape Town, following the track of the Oakville brigantine Sea Gull, which had gone there from Toronto in 1864 and which came back with gold and sugar and ivory and South African rum, in proper proportions.

"There was a war on when the Higgie arrived in South Africa, not the South African War of our times, but either one of the Kaffir wars or the Zulu War with King Cetewayo which was so disastrous for Lord Chelmsford's forces in the beginning. The Higgie may have been there in 1880 or 1881 at the close of it, for apparently her seagoing took place after Mr. Willis' sailing in her in 1879. As a boy he would have been sure to have been told about her having been to South Africa if she had made the voyage before he joined her in Chicago.

"At any rate, after she unloaded her second cargo of deals in Cape Town she was sent to Port Natal to act as a transport, and she came back to Cape Town loaded with prisoners—either Kaffirs or Zulus or some of the Boers who had been fighting on the black side against Britain. I never think of those Zulu wars without recalling the old Third Reader lesson about 'that day on wild Zlobane," when the brave son of Col. Weatherley died beside his father under the Zulu assegais, rather than ride off on the only remaining horse. Father and son together.

" 'Shoulder to shoulder, faced the foe,

And met their doom like men.'

"Perhaps the Mary L. Higgie brought some of the Weatherleys' slayers back to Cape Town.

"When she came home to the lakes she was renamed the Hattie A. Estelle, after the wife or daughter of her new owner. In 1891 she left Chicago, grain laden, for Buffalo, but got ashore at Manistee on Lake Michigan, and was wrecked. One of her crew, James Sterns, reached shore by swimming, and lifesavers rescued three others, but Capt. Estelle and two more of her crew were drowned.

"Most all those canallers were painted white," said Capt. Boyce. "The Woodruff was white, also the Fellowcraft and a lot of others. But the Sligo, General Burnside — she used to he the Canadian schooner Gipsy Queen — Andrew Stevens, Muir and Ark of Port Dalhousie were painted black. So was the M. L. Higgie, which was quite appropriate for her Zulu adventure."

"Yes, there is poetic license for that in the very same set of verses," said Capt. McCannel

"'The white shield of the husband

Who hath twice need of life,

The black shield of the young chief

Who hath not yet a wife."

"But the Sligo was white when she carried the first cargo of grain out of Fort William in 1883—seventeen thousand bushels of No. 1 hard wheat, loaded in wheelbarrows. She had been black before that, when she was the barquentine Prince of Wales. She had a single topsail yard forward, where the Higgie in the picture has two.

"There were not many double topsail yards among the canallers," contributed Capt. Boyce. "The Stevens and Muir and Burnside were all single topsail yards. Saxibroox set the model when he put double topsails on the British 'barque' Augusta."

That filled them away on a new tack with a spanking breeze, for both knew Saxibroox.

What they remembered about him we told a while ago, in the story of "Saxibroox the Wolf Slayer."

THE MARY L. HIGGIE—a reprint of the unidentified photograph from Parry Sound which has provided much interesting explanation.