1ST H.M.C.S. TORONTO 1st Centreboarder?: Schooner Days DCXL (640)

by C. H. J. Snider

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WITH H.M.C.S. TORONTO, frigate, 1944, having passed her acceptance trials triumphantly, as recorded this week by those great artists on the typewriter and the camera, Jim Loveys and Nelson Quarrington, we now have time to consider the case for H.M.C.S. Toronto, yacht, 1799, and the identification of her supposed remains on the shore of Toronto Island.

AS the farmer said of the war, "to-day's a good day for it," because to-day the commissioning ceremony is in progress with Arthur Lascelles, City Treasurer and Finance Commissioner and Keeper of the Civic Seal doing the civic honors, as deputed by Mayor Conboy. The campaign for comforts for H.M.C.S. Toronto's officers and crew has met with a splendid response.

Among the extras installed in the wardroom is a picture of the original H.M.C.S. Toronto, a schooner known officially as the Toronto Yacht, framed in timber taken from her and from her successor, the schooner Prince Regent, first man-of-war built in the new town of York.

Undoubtedly the crew of H.M.C.S. Toronto will have somewhat better accommodation than the crew of he Toronto Yacht. They require it and they deserve it. They are being hurled through the ocean at he speed of a fast freight train—and much more violently—they live in a complete case of steel, conducting zero temperatures and continuous humidity. They handle fighting gear nd devices of a thousand times the power and accuracy—depth charges, anti-aircraft guns, big guns, little guns, pompoms, torpedoes, radar, asdic, gyros, things whose very names and uses were unguessed when the first Toronto was launched. And may we never forget that more men were lost with the Athabaskan the other day than the whole casualty list of the Battle of Lake Champlain or the Battle of Lake Erie, in the war of 1812.

AN English gentleman who came to Toronto in 1834 and established a business here used to "ride on the peninsula" for recreation.

The peninsula was the long sandbar accessible from Scarboro beach and extending in an L or J shape westwards so as to enclose the harbor. The harbor entrance was then at the west end only, opposite the mouth of Garrison Creek. The Eastern Gap was not broken through until twenty-five years after the equestrian's arrival. Like Mrs. Simcoe and others before him he found the hard sand beach of the peninsula an excellent ride in all weathers. He used to ride as far as the new lighthouse, where the sandbar ended in a short hook. Here he would have to turn back unless he wished to transport himself and his steed by the horse-boat Sir John of the Peninsula or the Peninsula Packet, which waddled from the city to Privat's hotel on the sandbar, propelled by paddles turned by horses on a treadmill.

His turning back point was the skeleton of an old wooden sailing ship lying on the shore. She had been wrecked and dismantled and largely broken up, but enough of her remained to make her a recognizable landmark. His neighbor, Dr. Henry Scadding, who lived in Trinity i Square, told him—and being a literary man, put it in a book afterwards —that this was the wreck of an Admiralty yacht of the old Provincial Marine of Upper Canada.

King Charles II. and his brother, King James II., were the first English yachtsmen, but for a century after their time few subjects maintained such luxury, and this type of vessel was used exclusively by the navy and coastguard and customs service, for patrol purposes, despatch carrying, or the conveying of official personages. After Col. Simcoe became Governor of Upper, Canada he authorized the building of such a yacht for Lake Ontario "to be under the exclusive control of the civil government." She was armed with light guns, possibly half a dozen 6-pounders, for she had to deal with Indians, and the rebelling colonists who had established the independence of the United States of America were very much alive. In Pontiac's Indian war one of the British armed vessels was captured by the redskins.

The so-called yacht or messenger ship was built at the mouth of the Humber River by Joseph Dennis, a founder of Mount Dennis, farther up the stream. Simcoe, who left Canada in 1796, never saw her, for she was not afloat until September, 1799. Christened "Toronto," she probably appeared in the old Provincial Marine list as the "Toronto, yacht" just as her lineal successor may appear in the new Royal Canadian Navy list as the "Toronto, frigate." This fashion of designating a vessel by her classification after her name is of long standing and accounts for the despatch vessel appearing as Toronto Yacht in the old Upper Canada Gazette so often that pioneer people accepted that as her full name.

Dr. Scadding recorded that she had been wrecked on the point of the peninsula before the War of 1812 and her bones remained a landmark for many years.

The man-of-war schooner Prince Regent was built that spring from the ironwork of the Toronto and took to the lake in July, after war had been declared, armed with six guns, either from the defunct Toronto or the brig Duke of Gloucester, which had been brought to York for rebuilding. Once the "Toronto Shipyards" of 1812 got going they went into business in what was, for the infant colony, a big way. Their next effort was the frigate Sir Isaac Brock.

The English stranger who found this interesting turning point for his ride, told his son about it, and in 1932, when low water again uncovered it on the island shore, his son, who saw the old bones often, told The Telegram of his father's identification of the wreck.

Schooner Days was at that time disposed to question the identification, for a dozen vessels have been wrecked on Gibraltar Point. This particular wreckage, which has been uncovered by low water and hidden by high half a dozen times in this century, was not more than 50 feet in length, but looked to be half of a longer vessel than the Toronto Yacht was assumed to be.

Traces of a centreboard, a supposed "modern" improvement, and the dimensions of the wreck, seemed to indicate a larger and less ancient craft than the Toronto Yacht. But one discovered reference to centreboards in Lake Ontario goes back to 1813, and the centreboard had been tried by the Admiralty in the cutter Trial in 1790, in England, and by Capt. Schanks, R.N., at Boston, in 1774. Americans have long claimed the invention of this useful appliance for preventing leeway, but their earliest date for over a hundred patents filed for "slip keels," sliding keels" or centreboards is Swain brothers, 1811. Salem Wines, buried in Greenwood Cemetery in 1861, is hailed in his epitaph as boatbuilder and inventor of the centreboard. It is often considered a development of the Dutch lee boards, but Pizarro in the sixteenth century found Peruvians using a sliding board between logs to keep their rafts from drifting.

The centreboard may have been a new improvement in the Toronto Yacht in 1799, and the wreck may not have been much longer originally than the portion remaining and measured. At any rate it has completely disappeared. A part of the bow was seen on the Island shore last fall half a mile east of where the wreck lay so many years, but this also had moved on. A few planks were seen at the west end of the lakefront sidewalk in a gale this spring. They have since been sanded over.