Schooner Man In Steam (He Puts a Rivet Back): Schooner Days DIV (504)

by C. H. J. Snider

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AFTER the necessary year as mate in steam, Capt. John Williams qualified for a master's ticket, wrote for his certificate, got it, and what was much more remarkable, got a master's berth at once.

Many certified masters toil on for years as mates until there is an opening for them ahead. The Chicago and St. Lawrence Steam Navigation Co. had an eye upon this schooner man who had been willing to go as mate in their steamer W. D. Matthews, and as soon as he had the necessary papers they asked him to take over their smaller steamer Algonquin, a pioneer of the steel fleet out of Toronto.

One of the sights of Toronto's waterfront in the early 1890's was the new steel steamers Rosedale and Algonquin. They used to lay up for the winter at the foot of Yonge street, where Messrs. Hagarty and Crangle could keep an eye on them from their snug offices in the old Board of Trade, seven stories, and the highest building in Toronto. Though they would be considered small now their steel sides, their varnished bridges and pilot-houses, and their tapering masts—the Rosedale had three and the Algonquin two, and they were more than mere flagpoles—gave the old harbor a suggestion of being an Atlantic seaport, in contrast with the homely wooden propellers, barges, schooners and side-wheel passenger steamers which crowded the other wharves.

Johnny Williams expected to find new problems in steel and steam, and when they came he was not daunted by the fact that all his experience hitherto had been with wood and wind. Before he had been long in the Algonquin, of which he was master in 1906 and 1907, he found she was leaking badly. She had the then modern ballast tanks and watertight compartments. His mate reported they could not get the forward tank pumped out, or that the forepeak was flooded. They were bound down Lake Superior with grain for Kingston at the foot of Lake Ontario, and he suggested turning back while there was time to get on to the drydock at Port Arthur.

Capt. Williams didn't like that. It would mean a disastrous voyage financially.

"Won't your forward bulkhead keep the water from the cargo?" he asked. "We'll push on to the Soo and see what its like in the quiet water of the river."

When they got to the canal they managed to get the water down far enough with the steam pumps to keep her from grounding on the sills, so the Algonquin groped on through and down almost to Detour. In the smooth water the pumps and syphons slowly gained on the leak, and before tackling the roughness of Lake Huron he poked her into a quiet bay and let go his anchor. With the reduced pressure against the leaking bow, owing to the ship being motionless, the pumps emptied the tank. Capt. Williams climbed down into the dank and dripping forepeak with a lantern. The water was low in it also, but a young geyser was spurting up from the very bottom. Swinging the lantern to and fro did not help much, but in its shadows he saw the clear green light of the bubbling lake, as one would when looking down the well of a schooner's centreboard slot. One rivet had been scissored in two and dropped clean through.

"Keep all your pumps going and dry her out," said Capt. Williams to the mate. He himself began shaving a broom handle to a long fine point. When he had it to his liking he crawled into the forepeak again, got immediately above the spouting geyser, and pushed with all his might. For all his might, the pressure of the inrushing water flicked the point of the stick aside again and again. At last he got the stick between his knees, braced himself so that his knees could not be moved, and slowly pushed the point down till the bottle-green spot of daylight disappeared. The point had entered. A few taps with a maul drove the wooden plug home, and the pump sucked out the last of the sloshing water.

This enabled them to brace the plug so that it could not be twisted sideways or bounce back.

"By gravy, Cap," said the mate admiringly, "that'll hold till we get the grain out of her and then we can put her on the drydock at Kingston.

Capt. Williams had other ideas, but the Algonquin shouldered her way down Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and unloaded her grain, every bushel dry. On the way he had asked the engineer to make him two curious long iron bolts. One was headed at one end and tapered at the other, and threaded almost up to the head. The tapered end had a hole through it. The other, smaller, was headless, but also had a hole in one end.

"Going on' the dock right away, Cap?" asked the mate when the last of the grain had been elevated.

"I don't think so," said Capt. Williams. "We'll have a look at that wooden plug first."

"We can't take her back up the lake with a broomstick in the place of a rivet, Cap, even if it has held tight. The insurance wouldn't let us."

"No, of course not. That's why I want to have a look at it. Get your pumps ready and come with me. Put on your boots."

They crawled down in the much less damp forepeak again, each in his seaboots, Capt, Williams armed with his two bolts and a long coil of flexible wire. It had been threaded through the smooth bolt. Gingerly they removed the wooden plug. The upspurt of water was mild compared to what it had been originally, for the empty Algonquin was riding fifteen feet higher and the leak was only a little below the surface. Still it was hard to shove the smooth bolt out through it and to feed out the wire afterwards, although the weight of the metal carried it out till the bolt rested on the deep bottom of the harbor.

"Now keep your pump going, mister," said the captain, "and we'll sweep the vessel from aft forward and bring that bolt up over the bow."

Sweeping aboard ship has various meanings. In this case it meant dropping a line over the stern, so as to form a loop under the bottom. One end was on each side of the ship. Both ends were pulled forward, the bight or middle of the line scraping along the keel. When it came near the bow it caught the wire with the smooth bolt on it. Both ends were hauled up, bringing bolt and wire up to the deck. The other end of the wire was still in the forepeak, running through the opened hole.

"Now," said Capt. Williams, "we change bolts."

He took the smooth bolt off its wire and threaded the wire through the hole in the bolt with the head on it. As soon as this was done he daubed the head well with red lead and putty and dropped the bolt overboard. Then he descended to the forepeak, carrying a spanner, a nut and washer and a can of cement and red lead.

The pump had kept the water down pretty well, and it was not difficult to haul on the inboard end of the wire, coming up through the hole. Without a hitch the threaded end of the bolt appeared, rose within, fitted snugly, and the inflow ceased completely. Soon there was nothing but a weeping of red lead showing. Capt. Williams unshipped the wire from the threaded end, fitted the washer and the nut on, twisted some oakum around the bolt where it came through the steel plating, and anointed it with red lead. Then he turned the nut down with the spanner, until the last drop of moisture was squeezed out between the washer and the steel plating. A daub of cement for good luck, and the Algonquin was as tight as she had been on the day her last rivet was driven.

"We won't be going on the drydock. I'm clearing for Toronto for orders," Capt. Williams told his mate.

"How in thunder could you replace a rivet in her bottom without drydocking her?" demanded old Capt. Crangle, one of the heads of the Chicago and St. Lawrence Steam Navigation Co., when his ex-schoonerman reported at the office next morning. Capt. Crangle had been a schoonerman himself.

"Did you never have to sweep for a broken centreboard pennant, sir?"

"John," said Capt. Crangle, "I'd never thought of that. I'm getting old."

STEAMER W. D. MATTHEWS, in which Capt. Williams served as mate, and which he later commanded.