Hailing Jumbo Lynch: Schooner Days CCCLXI (361)

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598 Clinton Street.

Toronto, July 17, '38.

Sir:—I, wish to state I have been a constant reader of The Telegram for the last 25 years. I just finished reading Chapter CCCLIV of Schooner Days, in regards to Con. Shay. My reason for writing this letter: During 1920-21 season I sailed on the old C.S.L. Belleville and the Imperial Oil Tanker Tacoma, which was converted in Vickers in 1921 and sent to west coast of South America, Peru, where she still is, I believe. While serving time on these ships I used to hear a lot of talk regarding one Joe or John Lynch and his terrible capacity for food. I also sailed eight years on the U.S.S.B., travelling all over the world, and upon some ship this Lynch was a familiar topic for discussion of his eating capacity. It has been stated at times this Lynch fellow would ship aboard a tanker and when the crew knew of it they went over the side in quick order. I often wonder whether this Lynch fellow was just a myth or did he really exist. Could you tell me what happened to the old Belleville? I believe that when King Edward VII was Prince of Wales and was touring Canada he made the trip from Montreal aboard the same Belleville. She was a side-wheeler type.

I would be very "glad if you would publish something regarding Lynch and the old Belleville, as I certainly am enjoying getting back into the fo'castle mentally.

Yours truly,

—WM. H. WOODWARD.

Brother Roy herewith obliges regarding the redoubtable Lynch. We shall see what we can do about the Belleville later.

—Compiler Schooner Days.

IT was a cold and blustery winter night. Great Lakes seamen were gathered in droves at the Chicago Lifeboat Mission, taking on the gratuitous heat. Seaman Jumbo Lynch had reformed for the winter and was leading the singing of hymns. In boiler shop bass he bellowed.

"Oh-h the devil gets you sure,

"If your soul's not white and pure,

"Are you ready for the awful judgment day?

"Get your baggage on the deck,

"And be sure to have a check,

"For you can't steal aboard and hide away.

"Hide a-w-a-y! Hide a-wa-a-y. Oh you can't—"

"Hey! Jumbo," Seaman Mickey Ford interrupted raucously, "Put a gasket around that, will you. Sing Throw Out the Lifeline.' It's more mournful."

Regardez vous. Jumbo Lynch, the lakesman who ate. He was wont to explain that he resembled his mother, his father and the family dog. Mama ate a lot, papa ate fast, the dog took big bites.

Jumbo's food stowing capacity is probably the best known legend of the Great Lakes. His appetite for any kind of grub was insatiable.

At Escanaba, an hour after a hearty supper, Jumbo was invited to a snack of fried fish and bread and butter. Two tars on shore leave had taken a busman's holiday and gone fishing and caught forty-two fine bass. They had them all fried and thought they could stop Jumbo. The bass were big, and the two tars themselves were full to the hatches and the third fish. Jumbo ate thirty-nine fish, the smallest of which was ten inches long, two loaves of buttered bread and drank an unmeasured quantity of coffee.

At Two Harbors he was chased off the Maritana because he polished off the midnight lunch that a generous cook had set out for four deck hands and three firemen. At Ashatabula he ate twelve hard-boiled eggs as a practice measure before going into an egg-eating contest with an oiler who boasted a capacity of two dozen and a half. Jumbo won the prelim and the finals.

Great Lakes cooks feared and shunned Jumbo as the devil is reputed to eschew holy water. Free lunch saloons are said to have begged the police to raid and close them up when Jumbo hove in sight.

He was not a bit fussy about what he ate. Whatever happened to be left in a galley pot, whatever might remain on a mess room table after a meal, free lunch, handouts, jungle stews, the fragments that dock wallopers left in their dinner pails, anything edible, in fact, was grist for Jumbo's gastronomic mill.

He professed a preference for bologna sausage as compared with liverwurst because it was put up in bigger chunks. He preferred buns to crackers for the same reason.

Big Harry Massey, Yorky Tommy, Westphalia Dutch and Cockney Hinckley were in the jungles at Loraine, Ohio. They had the makings of a combination stew and a scoured-out five-gallon kerosene can to cook it in. It was a big combination, five pounds of shank beef stripped off the bone, half a peck of spuds, three pounds of onions and a dozen fair-sized carrots and a can of tomatoes to flavor it.

They had decided to Sunday over in the jungles and figured that they had plenty of chuck for all day. The meat was simmering in the big can and the boys were getting the vegetables ready when Jumbo happened along. He lugged five pounds of bacon ends, two heads of cabbage and two loaves of bread.

"Chumbo, vat's the matter mit you I throwing in mit us?" Dutch proposed after jungle amenities had been attended to. "Those pakin endts unt gabbages vill be svell mit our stew."

"Jake with me," said Jumbo. It was jake with the other three, so the bacon ends were washed and put into the pot and Jumbo got busy with the cabbage.

When that stew was cooked it measured about three and one-half gallons. They were all hungry and went at it with a will. When a gallon and a half of the concoction had disappeared, the four original junglers were stuffed to their respective muzzles. Big Harry stretched out and went to sleep. The other, three followed suit.

When they roused, an hour later, Jumbo was finishing up a tomato can of stew. The big can was little more than quarter full, all the bread was gone and so was the last drop of black coffee.

"I'm full as a tick," Jumbo announced happily. "That was certainly a swell stew."

"It was," the others agreed. "Yes, it certainly was a swell stew."

Jumbo wasn't much of a sailor as lake sailormen go. He was a fair to middling deck-hand and could steer a passable trick in a tow barge, but he never got any further than that. Hippopotami are not particularly spry animals.

THE BELLEVILLE, ex-SPARTAN—An iron steamer 200 feet long and of 1,233 tons gross, built at Montreal, 1865, by Gilbert, and rebuilt at Kingston, 1905, when she was renamed "Belleville." She plied between Toronto and Montreal in the service of the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Co., calling at Bay or Quinte ports in addition to the harbors on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and was in commission up to twenty ago. Eventually she became a barge. As the Spartan was not built until 1865, she could not have been used by the Prince of Wales, who was in this country in 1860.