Timber Drogher Doing Twelve: Schooner Days DLX (560)

by C. H. J. Snider

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Something stirred up by the "WINDLASS out of the WEST"

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MENTION in Schooner Days recently of the shooting of President Garfield in 1881 has brought a letter from a valued friend who was sailing in the schooner Canadian, of Oakville, when Garfield was still struggling out of the log cabin on the Cuyahoga. This is Mr. W. R. Phillimore, of 23 Millbank avenue.

In the letter he adds something of the lore of timber droghing, which was on the way out when the compiler of Schooner Days was coming in.

It could have been a timber capstan, after all, that souvenir of Southeast Bend in Lake St. Clair which the U.S. engineers sent to the Fort Malden Museum at Amherstburg. Mr. Phillimore says.

"The W. K. West was unknown to me," says he, "but anything might happen in Southeast Bend. The relic sent from her to Amherstburg could be a timber capstan, distinct from the iron general purpose capstan amidships. Timber capstans were sometimes twelve feet high, stepped into the keelson in the hold, with four or five feet showing above deck, that part in the hold for hauling-in lines, above-deck part for quill lines. The size of line shown wound around capstan in your illustration would be for below-deck use, the quill lines being smaller.

HE SAILED IN DROGHERS

"Timber vessels of the size of the Albacore, on which I sailed with Captain Dick Reed, carried, besides a captain, a first and second mate, six men and the 'horse-boy.' A bar ran through the head of the timber capstan, one horse hitched to each end.

"The division of labor when loading was as follows: First mate and two men on the starboard side, second mate and two on port side, two at hauling-in lines at capstan, one on the raft at the stern, hooking on, while the horse-boy, with a little practice, could take care of both quill lines above deck.

"There was usually hot rivalry in the hold to get the heavy square timber breasted first to the side of the vessel. Whichever side got their sticks breasted over first gave the vessel a list or slant which made their succeeding work easier for they were moving their sticks slightly down hill.

OLD STORMALONG

"Of the Muir fleet, Antelope, Albatross, Albacore and A. Muir, I think the Antelope was reckoned best on the wind. At any rate she got away from us working up Lake Erie. But, as you said, the Albacore could do her 12 miles an hour running free all-right when pressed.

"Leaving Kingston at five one morning, wind nor-east, which freshened off the Ducks to something of a gale, we carried everything, later taking in only the main-gafftopsail, while the end of the main boom, swung far outboard, was often swishing through the crest of a wave with a lee roll. We arrived in Port Dalhousie about eight that evening, fifteen hours for what was generally reckoned 180 miles but was actually about a hundred and sixty in a beeline."

What a picture the old-timer paints of the black two-master storming into port in the twilight after an all-day run from the far end of the lake! What a job they must have had, getting sail off her and checking her down as she raced up through the narrow wooden piers to old Lock 1—pushed in by the growling nor'easter and the long ranks of white horses it had flogged all the way from Kingston! If the canal tug picked her up far enough out, well and good. Otherwise the snubs would be smoking on the timberheads and the spiles would be coming out by the roots and the anchors would be roaring out with sparks flying from the hawsepipes.

Great days on the old canal!

The comparison between the Antelope and, the Albacore is in line with Schooner Days' experience, having sailed in both vessels after they went out of the timber trade. In 1899 it would be, in the Antelope we towed out of Charlotte with the Albacore on the same towline, she bound for Hamilton, we for Toronto. It was a race right from the pierhead, the wind coming in from the northwest, so fresh we could just hang on to the gafftopsails when we got them set. By keeping two men in the fore crosstrees the Albacore was able to shift her fore gafftopsail quicker than we did in working offshore in short hitches, for we needed two men at the wheel. But when we settled down to a long starboard tack we waded past her in the dark, and at dawn she was on the horizon astern. But the wind hauling around through north to east next day she came up on us, and when we caught the Eastern Gap at sunset she was abreast of Gibraltar Point, and so two miles ahead of us, although three miles farther out in the lake, as she was on a different course.

WHERE THE WHITE OAK DIED

"Is it a misprint?" Mr. Phillimore goes on to ask. "The White Oak, as she slowly fell apart in Collins Inlet, six hundred miles by water from Oakville, her birthplace.' Collins Bay, a rafting place second only to Garden Island in Lake Ontario is west of Kingston! There might be a Collins Inlet which I did not know down the St. Lawrence, but vessels seldom carried timber below Garden Island. Muir Bros., however, built a barge, the Ark, full lower canal size, for that purpose, which was towed by the Albion, the former steamer Bristol, burned at Hamilton, bought and converted to a steam barge with timber ports in the bow. The Lincoln, of St. Catharines, towed two barges and may have gone down to Sillery Cove or New Liverpool, near Quebec."

Not a typographical error this time, friend, Schooner Days replies. The Collins Inlet where the White Oak fell to pieces, is on the north shore of Georgian Bay, north of Philip Edward Island and west of the Point Grondine Indian Reserve. It is about midway between Killarney and French River. We were in Collins Bay this summer. Not as a guest of the government, but with Kingarvie. As you say, Collins Bay, near Kingston, was a well known timber pool fifty years ago.

GARFIELD THE GREAT

Of Garfield, Mr. Phillimore continues: "Just now glancing over Saturday's issue, which carries the Bigler story with mention of the assassination of President Garfield, though young at the time I was in the United States and saw something of his election campaign. The Civil War was not far enough removed to prevent speakers who, as officers or men, had taken part, stalking across the platform telling what they of the North had done. I have seen many Irish orators as well in the same manner telling of what England hadn't done; it was good politics then. Later there was written of Garfield, quoting from memory:

Divinely gifted man

Whose life in low estate began,

And on a simple village green.

Who breaks his birth's invidious bars,

And grasps the skirts of happy chance,

Who breaks the chains of circumstance

And grapples with his evil star.

Who makes by force his merits known,

And lives to clutch the golden keys,

To mould a mighty state's decrees,

And breathe the whisper of a throne.

And reaching on from high to higher,

Until on fortune's crowning slope,

The pillar of a people's hope,

The centre of a world's desire.

—W. R. P.

THE ANTELOPE TOWING OUT—reputed fastest by-the-wind of the "A" fleet of Muir Bros.

MORE OF THE MUIR FLEET in the pond at Port Dalhousie; in the foreground the A. MUIR, and across from her the ARK.