What Became of the Green Hulled DANFORTH: Schooner Days #CCCLXX (370)

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WELL do we remember the F. L. Danforth, that big green barge the famous "Cap" Sullivan and his brother Pat, who succeded him, used to tow behind the equally green Erin. Steam or sail, John Sullivan was a king afloat, whatever his politics.

Someone was asking the other day about the Danforth, whether we remembered her and what became of her. The answer to the first part of part of the question was easy, and our old friend, Capt. William E. Stitt, coincides with a reply to part two. Says he:

"The Erin took fire one night in the St. Clair River and was beached and became a total loss. With the Erin no longer to tow her, the Danforth became inactive and lay around a lot and was finally put up for sale in St. Catharines. In June, 1907, the Quebec Transportation and Forwarding Co. got her, to team up with, their other three towbarges in the coal and pulpwood trade between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes.

"I towed her with the big tug Florence all that season and found the vessel a good handler and easy to tow for a big barge. She never gave us any trouble in the river and canals. We only had her a little over five months, when she was destroyed by a tidal wave in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but luckily no one was lost with her.

"Late in November we towed her down from Quebec to the Pentecost River and loaded pulpwood for Oswego, N.Y. We had the Tapotic along too and had dropped her off at Bersimis, one hundred and twenty miles to the westward of the Pentecost River, to be picked up on our return with the Danforth, and the two would then be towed to Oswego. This was our last trip for the season and was a little late for the gulf trade for this class of vessel.

"The Danforth had completed loading at the dock, just inside the mouth of the river, and was waiting for high tide to come out over the bar that forms across the mouth of all those rivers in the Gulf, when a northeast gale sprang up and, without the slightest warning, a great tidal wave swept in, covering the dock and carrying away the moorings, and took the Danforth up stream with it for some distance. Then, as quickly as it came in it went out again, and away went the barge with it out in the raging seas in the Gulf, and was finally crashed on the beach and destroyed in short order. Her deckload of pulpwood was scattered all along the shore, and in no time the hull began breaking up from the tremendous pounding of the heavy seas smashing over her.

"The crew made a quick getaway with what clothes they had on before the moorings parted, so no lives were lost, but all their belongings and everything on board went down to Davy Jones' locker.

"While the Danforth was in her death grapple, we on the Florence were resting quietly and secure in a secluded harbor a few miles to the westward, ignorant of the battle that was going on at the mouth of the Pentecost River.

"The Gulf of St. Lawrence is a tough spot to be caught in the late fall months and we had some trying times while towing these big barges in that trade, but in the seven seasons we were at it the Danforth was the only one to come to grief.

"All our other big tow barges, the 'Aberdeen,' afterwards renamed the Gladys H., the Frank D. Ewen and Zapotec, ended their days by the tooth of time. The tug Florence went down in Lake Ontario off the False Ducks Light late in the fall of 1933, when she sprung a seam during a northwest blow, and had to be abandoned by the crew. During all the time I towed this fleet not a man was lost from barge or tug."

THE F. L. DANFORTH was originally a fine three-masted topsail schooner, an "upper laker," too big to pass the Welland Canal until it was enlarged. Under Capt. Cummerford, who was born near Belleville, she brought the first cargo of coal for the Canadian west to Port Arthur, or Prince Arthur's Landing as it was then called. She was later commanded by Capt. Jack Isbister, of Chicago. He was nicknamed "Cro'jick," which is the salt water name for the mizzen-course, the lowest square sail on the mizzen mast. But this appears to have been a mere coincidence. In times of stress Capt. Isbister was cross-eyed, and got his name accordingly. When he was in command of the City of Chicago, and had her rebuilt in Collingwood, he cut a great figure in that town, for he was tall, handsome, and had a dashing air. He wooed and won a Collingwood belle, a Miss McLeod, and took her home with him as his bride.

A few years afterwards, when "Cro'jick" had been sailing the Danforth for some seasons, he left his Chicago home early one morning to take the vessel out, expecting to be away for a few weeks. That same evening he rang his own doorbell and was confronted by his astonished wife.

"Mercy me!" exclaimed the former Miss McLeod, "where is your hat?"

"Oh, that?" said Capt. Isbister. "Somewhere in Lake Michigan."

"And where's the vessel?"

"On the beach."

He had sailed, been shipwrecked, and got home again all within twelve hours.

When they got the Danforth off the beach they re-rigged her as a barge, giving her three spike masts with gaff sails and leaving her a fore staysail and a standing jib on what remained of her original bowsprit. This was an efficient rig for sailing if there was a good breeze, but she was intended to tow behind a steamer. She was bought by the Conlons, of Thorold, for whom the Sullivan boys worked. There is an impression that Captain John or "Cap" Sullivan had the Erin first, with his brother Captain Pat in the Danforth, and that Patrick succeeded to the Erin when John moved up to the higher command of the Haney and Miller, floating contractors' plant.

"Cap" Sullivan was what politicians ashore called him, but he was always "Jack" to the two-fisted men of the Welland Canal, whether they were on steamers' bridges or dragging lines along the muddy tow path.

In the bold bad election days of 1903, when the Grit Government was slipping out of the saddle it had been polishing all too well for thirty-two years, "Cap" Sullivan was the bogey-man of politics up around the Soo. He was well known there from forty years of pioneer work in sail and steam, and he was also well known as a Liberal partisan. He was never ashamed of his politics.

But the blame he got for the crookedness of the Soo elections appears to have been unmerited. There was a red-hot fight in Algoma. A small steamer named the Minnie M. was loaded with a gang of pluggers from the American Soo, and went up the Algoma shore. Thirty-six dead men or absentees were personated at different polling booths. The Tories heard of the trick planned, and chartered a tug to follow the Minnie M. with a load of scrutineers to prevent false voting. Someone deftly reminded the harbor master of the fact that the tug had no passenger license, so she was refused a clearance. She could not leave port, and the Minnie M. proceeded on her devastating way — supposedly with "Cap" Sullivan at the wheel.

But he wasn't. Col. Jack Currie and others blamed him in error. He said so himself.

"I offer a thousand dollars," said the Cap, "to anybody who can prove that I had anything whatever to do with the Minnie M."

His offer was never taken.

I have two pictures of "Cap" Sullivan, taken sixty years apart. One of a boy of sixteen, standing on the topgallant yard of the new barquentine Valetta in St. Catharines, a hundred feet above the deck, the day they finished rigging her in 1865. Lean, loose-limbed, keen as a whip. Four years later John Sullivan was master of his own vessel, the fore-and-after St. Andrew; not yet twenty-one, but carrying grain from Chicago to Kingston with the rest and the best of them. He was born on St. Andrew's Day, and his first command was thus appropriately named. But if John had had anything to, do with the choice of the name or the day it would have been St. Patrick. The Sullivans were ardent Irish of he old Welland Canal type; the men who rough-hewed this new country from the wilderness. Green paint was characteristic of every Sullivan vessel as the name Erin was of their nationality.

The other picture of "Cap" Sullivan I like best. Keen eyes, crinkled at the corners, under a thick thatch of shaggy brows; nose coming down like a dolphin striker over the bristly moustache; chin jutting out like the forefoot of an old-canaller, meant to mitre right up to the lock gates; and over all a snappy fedora, worn with the jaunty grace only an Irishman and a sailor can command when he is well on in the seventies.

The late Magistrate J. J. O'Connor, of Port Arthur, had a version of the fate of the Erin differing from Capt. Stitt's. He said she was cut down by the steamer Cowle while at anchor in the St. Clair river in a fog off Marine City. Perhaps she took fire after the collision.

Sir William Hearst, who suffered many things politically at the hands of "Cap" Sullivan, has often said he would forgive him all, after "Cap's" rescue of the Erin in Lake Superior in 1904; which will, weather permitting, be told next week.

The DANFORTH (left) at the old Collingwood elevator in the 1890's. The ERIN, astern of her, is almost invisible. The steamer in the foreground is the ROSEDALE, pride of Toronto and largest freighter then owned in this port.