Brass Kettles or £37,000 in Gold at Rainbow's End?: Schooner Days DLI (551)

by C. H. J. Snider

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"SCARBORO, 1796-1896," a centennial local history, by the late David Boyle, gives some local tradition which may account for the Port Union treasure itself, or the myths which have encrusted it. We quote:

"Thomas Adams was a carpenter and captain of an American sailing vessel during the war of 1812. He was driven for refuge into Highland Creek. There, fearing his cargo of guns, brass kettles and ammunition might be seized, he threw everything overboard, and, tradition adds, the drowned cargo is still supposed to be lying at the bottom of the creek."

Either this Thomas Adams, or another man of the same name, was the "Uncle Tommy Adams," an "American Dutchman" who came to Canada from Vermont in 1808. The "Dutch" reference suggests the fisherman first mentioned, but this man was not "Uncle Tommy." Thomas Adams built a log house overlooking the lake near Highland Creek, and later a brick one, which was struck by lightning in 1832, killing his son William.

About 1834 Thomas Adams, in partnership with John Allen, built a sloop or schooner at the mouth of the Highland Creek. It is surprising if he had not already completely retrieved the cargo of "guns, brass kettles and ammunition," practically on or under his own doorstep. The "treasure" may dwindle down to odd articles which had fallen out of the original containers — or the cargo may have been more interesting than the cautious Boyle tradition indicates. There was a deal of "free trading" or smuggling all along the Highlands early in the nineteenth century.

WELL KNOWN PIONEERS

Thomas Adams was thoroughly established in the Port Union vicinity, and built the first schoolhouse in the section in 1836, a plank cottage on the Kingston road, which was standing sixty years later. He also built many of the early frame houses. His six sons developed the settlement, and the name is preserved in honor in Scarboro to this day. His son James owned the schooner Highland Chief, earlier mentioned, in partnership with Daniel Knowles.

Daniel was the sailor son of William Knowles, a New Jersey blacksmith, who brought his wife and seven children to a roofless shanty on the lake shore in 1803. In 1832, before the Highland Chief was built, he had built a substantial stone house on the site, and it is still standing.

MISSING MARY ANN

The vessel Thomas Adams, built at the mouth of Highland Creek, was named the Mary Ann, probably after one of his two daughters or a daughter of his partner, John Allen. The name is as common on shipping registers as it is on parish registers. And why not? Mary Ann has always been a good name for any little girl. But very curiously, in this case "Mary Ann" again hooks up with the teasing tale of treasure un-trove.

There was a sloop Mary Ann in Toronto in the War of 1812, and she was purchased by the commissary department in the war for £200 Halifax currency, or $800. She has been associated with the tradition of the missing British pay ship, whose bones are supposed to lie in every harbor-marsh on both sides of the lake. The only "documentary evidence" Schooner Days has been able to discover is in two entries.

£37,000 IN GOLD

Headquarters, York,

19th, April, 1813.

Captain Loring to Secretary Freer:

". . . Sir Roger Sheaffe desires me to say that he is exceedingly anxious for a supply of money, according to his requisition lately transmitted, the balance of the £37,000 lately received not being sufficient to pay the militia.

"I am further ordered to inform you that Sir Roger has thought it advisable to purchase a small sloop at this place, called the MARY ANN, for 200 Hal. Currency, as she can be employed with much benefit to the service as a Transport."

ESCAPED BURNING OF YORK

The Mary Ann was not in York eight days later, when the town was captured and the Parliament Buildings burned on April 27th, 1313. Commodore Chauncey, who made the most of his "prizes," mentioned only the Duke of Gloucester, undergoing repairs, and the ship on the stocks, which was burned. Probably the Mary Ann had sailed in company with the Prince Regent, the new schooner which left Toronto for Kingston the day before the American fleet was sighted. This Prince was the last man-of-war built in Toronto until we started to turn out steelplate war craft.

WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?

Did the Mary Ann go to Kingston to bring up the refill for the military paychest? And what became of the money? There was a small amount in York when the place was captured, and that was successfully concealed and returned to Dr. Strachan later. Rochester, N.Y., people believe that a "British pay ship" is sunk in Irondequoit Bay, a large landlocked sheet of water northeast of their city. It was not always landlocked, and more than one hulk lies among its bulrushes. But the Mary Ann was in British hands up to October 6th, 1813, when she was one of a fleet of transports captured off the Ducks, thirty miles from Kingston. She had about thirty soldiers of De Watteville's regiment aboard. She was taken by her American captors, probably a prize crew from the U.S.S. Sylph into Sackett's Harbor. There is no mention in the official report of Commodore Chauncey of a paychest being part of her freighting. If she got locked in Irondequoit Bay along with some of the American vessels which had to rot there when the bay barred up it was because she had been condemned as a prize and sold for the American coasting trade after the war.

STILL TRY FOR TREASURE

The "treasury" has teased the curiosity of Scarboro residents for generations, though the various miners of that marsh had nothing to do with it beyond being lucky enough to find traces of it in the first place and industrious enough to dig and keep on digging where the first articles were recovered.

Within the last six years two Port Unionists were busy on what they hoped would be the mother lode of this marsh mine, following the theory that the treasure was in the hold of a vessel sunk long ago in the mouth of Highland Creek, and later buried — as the Nancy was at Nottawasaga — under an accumulation of silt, water lilies, bulrushes, and finally trees, which had taken root in the shoal or island she had formed.

They approached the problem from a scientific standpoint with a magnetized instrument like a water finder's divining rod, and got so far that they installed a pump and worked it. But no golden ingots or pieces-of-eight have been in circulation in Port Union since. All the pump struck was water, which is what pumps and divining rods are supposed to strike.

FISHERMAN'S COT OF LONG AGO.—This sketch, believed to be of the original Portwine Cottage at Port Union, was made by C. W. Jefferys, LL.D., and well known historical artist, fifty-one years ago — almost upon the birthday which Mr. Jefferys celebrates next week, when he will be 73. The Portwines, sturdy settlers of Dutch extraction, principally noted for minding their own business while being very helpful to their neighbors, were supposed to have the secret of the Highland Creek treasure, and are said to have recovered some articles of silver from the marsh. Characteristic of their reticent independence is the anecdote related by Capt. John Williams, now eighty-five, who knew old Mr. and Mrs. Portwine well. He did not know of their Port Union cottage, but as a boy he had been in their log cabin below the Dutch Churches (part of the Highlands of Scarboro) at the head of what was then called Portwine's Gully. His brother Joseph, when in command of the little schooner Brothers, found the old grandfather and grandmother Portwine toiling at the oars in a brisk offshore wind below the Highlands, able to hold their own in their heavy boat, but unable to make progress. Ranging alongside he offered to take them on board and tow their boat, or to tow the boat with them in it, but the old man declined with cheerful thanks. Young Joe was afraid they would be blown off shore, where the waves were running high, and stood off and on to leeward of them until dark, when they at last succeeded in beaching her at the bottom of their gully, some miles west of Port Union.