Nearing Ninetyport: Schooner Days DLIX (559)

by C. H. J. Snider

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Loaded coveringboard-to with birthday congratulations of Cat Hollow, the Royal Canadian Navy, Capt. Will Head of Picton, Capt. R. J. Edmunds of Port Hope, Capt. Dan Rooney of Cobourg, Capt. Johnny Williams of Toronto, and all other members of the Evergreen Club, for

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PORT HOPE'S GRAND OLD MASTER MARINER AND HIS FIRST MATE OF SIXTY-EIGHT SEASONS

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SAILED into Port Hope Labor Day-—not an easy thing to do now in all winds, for the entrance is still narrow and the harbor split in two, as it always was, only more so, and the big factories and industrial plants give back-drafts if the wind is north of east or west.

The old-timers used to make it somehow, though the little tug Wright did a land-office business, helping them, and the Enterprise split on the tongue between the two harbors, and the Nellie Teresa missed the west pier altogether and split in two outside. Her masts went one to port and the other to starboard, while Capt. Bob Henning of the Maria Annette took the whole crew off in an improvised lifeboat.

But we got our hook down in twenty-four feet of solid mud beneath two fathoms of water in the basin forming the inner west harbor, and went ashore and up Brown street, which commemorates the Ann Jane Brown of the great Marsh fleet of good sailing vessels. Knocked at the door of a spick and span frame house on the east side, was recognized by a lady whose chief characteristic was graciousness, and next minute had a fist in the hand of a lively young gentleman whose face said sixty but whose birthday next week will make him eighty-nine.

ON DECK SINCE 'FIFTY-THREE

This was Capt. James Peacock, born Oct. 22nd, 1853—and he had piloted H.M.C.S. Port Hope into her name-port just a month before this visit, in celebration of the sixty-eighth anniversary of his wedding to the gracious lady aforesaid!

His weather-wise eyes, wrinkled with the brush of the wind on all the Great Lakes, still danced with the excitement of two memorable voyages—bringing the 1942 man-of-war down from Toronto, and the life-trip he began with Margaret Matthews, his village sweetheart, in 1874, when he had become master of the schooner Octavia of Cat Hollow.

It was forty-six years since we had been under the same gafftopsail, one of us the captain then of the smart three-and-after Oliver Mowat, this other a schoolboy berthed in the forecastle for the run from Oswego to Toronto.

"Do you still remember Mrs. Tom Padginton's spiced applesauce?" demanded Capt. Peacock with a twinkle. That conserve made every tea on the Mowat a delight. Dinner, hot, was at noon, tea at six, at the end of the first dog watch, cold meat, bread and butter, and spiced applesauce often matched by fragrant sponge cake, hot from the oven. Mrs. Tom, young and pretty, sailed with her husband, who was the best man in the good forecastle. We had Johnny Bowerman of South Bay and Tommy Slight, who had captain's papers but was very hard of hearing, and there was a young fellow from Port Hope High School.

"Young Bill" Peacock, the captain's son, was then mate. He soon graduated to the Maria Annette, a captain in his own right. He was last in sail in the Julia B. Merrill, holocausted for the Sunnyside hot-dogs in 1933. Young Bill is still going young and strong in the coal business he and his father established long ago in Port Hope.

"Mrs. Padginton was a good cook," said Capt. Peacock, winking slyly at his sweetheart of seventy years. "The owner wanted to know what I gave her $5 extra for at the end of the season. The books showed it. 'Keep on looking at the book, I told them, 'and see what your provisions cost you. Twenty-five cents a man a day, for three meals and a midnight lunch."

Son of a fisherman and orphaned at eight, he went to sea, the inland sea of the Great Lakes, when he was thirteen. A cook's job. He was not as I good a cook as Mrs. Padginton, he admits. Stuck two years on to his age to get into the forecastle and get a man's pay. In eight years he had become a master.

FACING THE WORLD FROM CAT HOLLOW

Cat Hollow, where he was born, was the general name for the settlement on both sides of a creek flowing into Lake Ontario and forming the boundary between Haldimand and Cramahe townships. On the Haldimand side was the Port of Colborne, or Colborne Harbor. Opposite was what the registers called the "Port of Cramaha," although the township's name is pronounced Crammy. When Colborne, a village three miles inland, the Keeler family seat, became a post office, the name of Lakeport was given to the settlements at the creek mouth. There is a fine old wharf there yet, in ruins. There were once several piers. Archibald Campbell had an elevator. There was a shipyard and one of the piers was known as Cole's Dock.

His first vessel was the Advance, a small centreboarder built by J. G Riggs at Dexter, near Sacket's Harbor, in 1856. She carried 3,000 bushels. Smith of Colborne owned her and Capt. Doherty sailed her when our hero shipped in her as cook in 1866. That was the year the Fenians tried to capture Canada, and the Octavia was launched for Joseph Keeler, the Colborne magnate. She was 84 feet long and carried 5,000 bushels, a pretty little white schooner with a clipper bow. She was eight years old when young Captain James H. Peacock first walked her cabin-top, and he sailed her for five years.

One of the vessels he had been in before reaching the Octavia was the lake "barque" Sarah Ann Marsh, another of the great Marsh fleet, and his only square-rigger.

"THAT WIDOW WOMAN IN THE BIBLE"

In 1879 he had the blunt-nosed scow Mary Everett, a burdensome two-master, ugly as sin but a mighty lumber carrier, and good for 12,000 bushels of grain. Port Hope was the greatest lumber shipping port of the north shore, shipping millions of feet of Ontario pine for the great box factory in Oswego.

In the harbor master's office at Port Hope he heard the harbor board had offered a hat for the schooner captain who could make three round trips a week with lumber for Oswego. The board got 15 cents a thousand on all the lumber shipped out and loved to see it going away.

"I'd like to try for that prize," said the young Cat Hollow captain but you've got to let Sunday count."

"Go to it," said the harbor master.

He loaded the Mary Everett on Monday, got over to Oswego and unloaded on Tuesday, back on Wednesday for another load, back again on Friday for another, unloaded by Saturday night and back again Sunday. The Oswego Palladium had a piece in about the blunt-nosed Cat Hollow scow beating the time of Port Hope clippers.

"Where's the hat?" asked Capt. Jim Monday morning.

"Well, the board says ye done well but the prize is for Port Hope vessels," said the harbor master.

"Thanks," said Capt. Jim.

He didn't shake the sawdust of Port Hope off his deck. He kept on sailing out of the place and minding his own business. He was actually a Port Hoper already, for he brought the little Octavia with her maple bottom, to Port Hope for rebuilding.

The harbor board would have done better to have given him the hat and kept their export tolls down to 15 cents a thousand, but they felt they had a good thing and raised them to 25 cents. Whitby came out with the old rate and captured the north shore lumber trade.

Capt. Peacock went after freight wherever it was to be had, whether it was lumber out of Port Hope, grain from Whitby, or coal for Toronto at 25 cents a ton, considered a poor freight in the 1880's, though in the 1890's it fell as low as 20 cents.

In 1882 his command wad the Sarepta, "called after that widow woman in the Bible," which was the Mary Everett rebuilt, renamed, remasted and transformed with schooner ends. But all this did not save her from having to go back to her original name later on for she had not been taken off the register when the change was made.

The new Sarepta, rebuilt from the Mary Everett at Oakville in 1882 by Paul Doran, a Frenchman, was blown ashore at Fairhaven that fall in an equinoctial gale. Going into port the foresheet post carried away in the jibe, and the foresail took charge, making the vessel unmanageable. To save her from crashing on the pierheads Capt. Peacock let her drive in on the sand to leeward of the east pier. He got her off when the gale subsided and took her to Oswego for repairs, and brought her home with a load of coal.

STEPPING UP

In 1883 he became master of the Flora Carveth, for Messrs. McLennan, Galbraith and Guy, north shore harbormasters and grain merchants who owned several schooners, warehouses and elevators in various small lake ports. He was with them for twenty-two years in all, as master and part owner in their vessels. In 1888 he took over the Oliver Mowat, sailing her seventeen years and eventually owning her outright.

While in the Flora Carveth in 1886 he lay alongside Capt. Sutherland McKay of Toronto in Prinyer's Cove, waiting for a slant. They got it, and left together, the Ariadne, for Oswego with barley, the Carveth for Toronto with coal. The Carveth, a very smart vessel, made port before the wind struck down heavy from the westward, but the Ariadne was lost in Mexico Bay within a few miles of her destination. Capt McKay and his son and two of her crew were frozen to death when she iced up.

His best schooner was the Oliver Mowat, in which he traded seventeen successive seasons. Then the Emily B. Maxwell, his only loss in all his sailing. She struck an unlighted crib going into Cleveland. After her he got the Arthur, sold profitably in the Great War and sent profitably to South Africa, and the Julia B. Merrill, which kept Port Hope warm for years and lighted Sunnyside all one night. She was bought at a bargain in Toledo, gave twenty years of good service on Lake Ontario, and sold for about her cost.

Capt. Peacock took 235,000 bushels of barley off the north shore of Lake Ontario in one season, from Whitby, Bowmanville, Newcastle, Grafton and wherever he could pick up a few thousand bushels. He would like at the single stubby pier which was the Port of Oshawa when the sea was running so strong over the wharf that only hip-boots would get a man ashore dry.

The Oliver Mowat got ashore two miles east of Oshawa in 1905, but that was after Capt. Peacock had sold her and bought the bigger Emily B. Maxwell.

He had run away from Oshawa once for shelter and the owners criticized him for losing a day. Next time he was there, unloading coal, it blew up from the southeast and he got a telegram urging him to get but at all costs, whether unloaded or not. He went over the rail in his seaboots, with a second pair under his arm, and sloshed to the office at the shore end of the wharf and invited Mr. J. O. Guy to come aboard and have dinner. Mr. Guy had just sent note to him the message to cut and run, which he had received from the other owners who lived elsewhere. He demurred at venturing on the wharf with the waves running over it, but Capt. Peacock produced the second pair of boots and persuaded him on board and gave him such a dinner that he sent a telegram to his anxious partners:

"Have just had dinner aboard vessel lying here in comfort finish unloading tomorrow."

She was unloaded by evening, despite the hard lying, and the wind went around and off she sailed to load barley on schedule.

He carried coal at $1.50 a ton freight during the coal famine of 1903 earning almost $1,000 a trip.

"Don't you think it's worth it?" he asked a dealer when he brought the Mowat into Bowmanville iced to the sheerpoles the first week in December. "I know very well what you pay for this stuff and what you get for it at these famine prices."

The dealer agreed. A rival dealer who had demurred when asked $1 a ton freight had to give him $2 a tom bonus for part of the supply, and then made a profit.

It was by thrift that Capt. Peacock built up a competence. He was never niggardly. As one who I sailed with him in the hard times of the mid-nineties the writer can vouch for that. First he had small schooners to sail. Saved and bought a share in a larger one. Bought the larger one outright. Sold her and bought another. Bought a little coal on his own account. Went into steam and did well. Retired 1918. Established a fuel business with his son in Port Hope, with their own vessels to bring it in. And lived happily all the time.

Long may he look out on the lake.

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Capt. James H. Peacock and Mrs. Peacock

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His EMILY B. MAXWELL was totally wrecked because new harbor work was left unlighted.

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His ARTHUR carried coal to Toronto, bones to Liverpool, and lumber to Capetown.

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He sailed the OLIVER MOWAT seventeen seasons

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Capt. Peacock puts the parallels on the course for Capt. Turner, R.C.N., in the chart room of H.M.C.S. PORT HOPE, Aug. 5th, 1942.