Riding It Out with the Queen of the Lakes: Schooner Days DLV (555)

by C. H. J. Snider

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CAPT. WM. A. HEAD, master of the Ocean Wave of Picton so many years ago that few living men recall that vessel, grinned affably when asked if he had ever been wrecked in the fifty years he followed the water. He was eighty-seven on the 26th of last month.

"No," said he. "That has been the lot of better men than me in plenty. I guess I was lucky. But I've been near-wrecked, if that interests you.

"I gave up vessel sailing after twenty years of it and went fishing out of Point Traverse for another thirty years. But in May, 1907, I think it would be, my brother-in-law, Capt. Peter Ostrander, needed help for long voyages, and I went back to sailing, going with him. as mate in the three-masted schooner, Queen of the Lakes, of Kingston.

FAMILY CREW

"The Richardsons, the grain people, owned her, and they wanted Peter to take her up to the west end of Lake Erie to load corn for Kingston from the west side of Pelee Island, Our crew was made up of Prince Edward county men—Peter Ostrander, master; Wm. Head, myself, mate; Elmer Ostrander, my nephew, who was later drowned; Cab Walker of Milford, Johnny Bowerman of South, Bay, and Andy Foster. My sister Amanda was married to Capt. Ostrander, and she came along as cook. We made two voyages to Pelee Island.

"The second trip in this month of May we got loaded and started back and got as far down Lake Erie as the O (Rondeau harbor) when it came on dirty from the northeast, and we had to run back behind the long sandspit of Point Pelee for shelter."

POINT AND ISLAND

There are two Pelee's on Lake Erie, this parsnip-shaped point, jutting out like a dagger from the north shore for twenty miles, and the island, large, sandy, fertile in fish, grapes and corn, lying some miles southwest of the point. The great quarter-circle enclosed by the point and the Essex county shore is known as Pigeon Bay, from the vast quantities of wild pigeons that used to feed on its shores.

"We rounded Point Pelee and ran up the back side of the point, and hove to our anchor in smooth water, but well offshore. To the north of us, and nearer Kingsville in the corner of Pigeon Bay we could see the riding light of another schooner, sheltering like we were.

At midnight the northeast wind dropped. We had hopes of getting away in the morning at daylight, but before we had turned in the wind was howling again, and this time from the southwest.

This put us on a lee shore instead of in shelter, for the wind had the thirty-mile sweep of Pigeon Bay. We might have slipped our cable and so got out with the loss of chain and anchor, but it was a question if we could clear the tip of Point Pelee, and we could not have weathered Southeast Shoal. The passage between is shallow and changing and the sea came running in with the new wind like a series of rooftops adrift.

The only thing to do was to trust to the Lord and our ground tackle. We had two good anchors and we gave her the second one, and all the chain cable we had. Then we backed up our paulpost and windlass, on which the strain came, with our big new river line, leading the parts aft to the capstan amidships and leaving them taut.

I never saw a worse sea, nor one that made so quickly—-Lake Erie's shallow water always does.

The Queen of the Lakes was a good old vessel, worthy of the name she had been wearing for fifty years, and a good seaboat. She rode true to her anchors and faced wind and sea like a prize fighter. When the biggest ones swept upon her she would drop her head down and bpre through them until the jibtopsail on her jibboom end, twenty-five feet up in the air normally, was plunged under water. Then she would lift gallantly over the roller, tossing her jibboom fifty feet high in the air and keeping her decks pretty free.

DROWNED HER LIFEBOAT

In one of these springs she settled back on her haunches till the yawlboat, strapped across her taffrail on stout oak davits, was plunged under the seas. The strain snapped one of the davits. The boat, full of water, broke adrift and vanished into the darkness. Our last chance of leaving the Queen of the Lakes alive—and that a slim one—vanished with the boat.

But our anchors held.

Daylight showed the other schooner four miles above us, in as bad a plight as we were or worse. For a mile out the beach to leeward of us was a boiling belt of white surf, yellowed by the sand stirred up by the trampling seas, bursting retreating, reforming. To windward far as eye could see, battalions of breakers, tearing toward us in an endless cavalry charge, all the horses white and riderless.

The schooner above us was a white fore-'n'-after an American, perhaps a little bigger than the Queen of the Lakes. We learned later she was named the Grace L. Gribbie, She was jumping like a bucking broncho, and her Stars and Stripes were streaming upside down from her main truck. She was in vehement distress of some sort, we could not tell what, and wanted help. Our boat was gone, beaten into barrel staves on the beach, but we could not have helped her if we had tried.

EVEN OAK HAD TO GO

Her paulpost, the big oak timber 18 inches square against which the windlass backs, had broken at the deck under the terrific strain and the windlass barrel, with no paul to check it, was turning around like a rolling pin, letting her anchor chains surge through the hawsepipes in the eyes of her. Before they could knot or shackle the bitter-ends of the two chains together under the deck both lengths had roared out through the openings, and she was adrift!

Her captain was game. It was blowing so hard few sails could stand the pressure - 72 miles an hour by official records — but he had a new foresail, and with great labor he got a part of this hoisted and so got her under some control. But she could only sail before the wind, or with it on the quarter; and the beach was ahead of her.

We feared for a while she would drift down on us and so sink us both. But she answered her helm enough to drive clear.We could see the two men grinding at the wheel, hear the captain's "Port!" and "Starboard!" "Hard over!" and "Hard down!" as she blew past.

Could she weather the point? Not a chance, with that wind and sea, and that canvas, though it was brand new. The foresail split and blew out in small pieces like gull's wings. She smashed in on the beach two miles below us, and in twenty minutes what had been a stout old laker had completely disappeared. Masts, spars, and all, she was just a long-stretched string of broken wood. Only two of her crew of seven reached shore alive.

MAN THE PUMPS

We watched our pump wells carefully, although the Way we were standing on end it was impossible to tell much from the sounding rods. Our bottom and sides and decks were tight, but she began to leak. We found some water coming in through the quick-work of the stern and transom, which was light and not used to being submerged. But we also found the water was coming in from far forwards. She was being cut down at her anchors.

The terrific strain of the chain cables was tearing out the iron hawespipes—each a hundred-pound casting or heavier, the big round eye-like tubes through which the cables lead—and sawing down through the heavy oak chocks and timbers, which the hawespipes passed through. There have been cases of vessels having their planking cut through to the water's edge by the surge of chain cables. Given time enough, iron will always wear through wood. The Ocean Wave once tore out her hawespipes until they slid down her chains till the anchors stopped them.

We had loaded some cordwood for the galley fire for the return voyage, and we got this wedged under the chains in the forecastle head, so that when they sawed as she jumped and dived they bit on the cordwood instead of the chocks and hawsepipes. That saved her from being further cut down, and we kept the leak under control by the pumps.

After that three enormous seas swept us in succession, filling our decks as high—at times—as the bulwarks, and threatening to swamp us. And our anchors started to come home. Foot by foot we backed up until we began to feel the effects of the tremendous undertow and backwash from the beach. After that the anchors held again. But the motion, if possible, was worse.

All day long it blew, with never a let up. At midnight, just when it had begun twenty-four hours before the gale let go. Next morning the lifeboat from Leamington or somewhere came alongside to see if there was anything they could do, and we learned the details of the Grace L. Gribbie. We got our hawsepipes into better shape, hove up and sailed on our voyage again. At Port Colborne we got a punt to serve as a yawlboat till we got to Kingston.

QUEEN'S BAD YEAR

I went back to fishing after that. Poor Capt. Ostrander had hard luck. On another trip to Toledo to load for Kingston, when they were hoisting the foresail the throat halliard block on the gaff capsized, and the whole weight of the gaff and sail came on the ropeyarn mousing of the hook of the block. This parted and the heavy pine gaff with its jaws of 6-inch oak fell on poor Peter. He was up on the saddle, trying to clear the foul. His back was hurt, three ribs were wrenched loose, and one of his legs had a compound fracture. He was brought home and lingered two years in hospital.

Elmer Ostrander was drowned that summer at the coal trestle in Charlotte.

Capt. Chauncey Daryaw, of Kingston, went in the Queen of the Lakes after Capt. Ostrander. The vessel herself was lost late in November, 1907, eight miles below Charlotte, on Lake Ontario, a few days after the compiler of Schooner Days made a sketch of her on her last voyage.

TORONTO KNEW HER WELL

The Queen of the Lakes was long a favorite on the Toronto waterfront when she was owned by the late P. D. Conger and Sylvester Bros., and on many another waterfront. Amherst Island "knew her by heart," for year after year she wintered there in Preston's Cove, which seemed just built for her protection against the ice, and she often loaded barley at Stella and Emerald in the island, though she ranged all over the Great Lakes.

Originally a two-master, launched at Hatter's Bay (Portsmouth, near Kingston) in 1857 when wheat was making the fortunes of farmers and ship-owners in Canada West, she was first owned by G. H. Ault, of Kingston. Either Ault or Beaupre was her builder. She was 129 feet on deck, 23 feet beam, 10 feet depth of hold and registered 283 tons. She was then painted white and looked and acted the queen she was.

She had her share of the great grain trade, between Chicago and Collingwood, which developed in the 1850's. Thirty years later when laden with coal for Toronto she was almost wrecked at Weller's Bay. Her crew, which had left her to help or to take refuge in the Ida Walker, which had struck the beach, rendered more assistance than they thought, for their combined weight held the Walker's cabin top down until the Wellington lifeboat got all hands safely aboard. The moment the last man jumped, the cabin top burst off and washed away, and the vessel became a complete wreck. The Queen herself dragged ashore, but so well built was she that she survived the mauling. This happened Nov. 19th, 1886. She was towed off and taken to Deseronto for repairs.

In keeping with Queen Victoria's widow's weeds she reappeared in black paint, with a yellow beading and lead colored under body, neat not gaudy. She had swung a very heavy mainsail, which made her fast, but required a big crew, six men and two mates. While they were at it they cut her long mainboom in two, and stuck in a little mizzen mast. It made her easier for four men and a mate to work—but she never sailed so well again. Later, around the turn of the century, a donkey engine for hoisting sails and heaving in lines was added, making the work of the reduced crew simpler; but the widowed Queen always yearned for her big mainsail and full forecastle.

Making Sail One Quiet Morning Not Long Before She Was Lost (Sketch made by C. H. J. Snider in 1907)