Goneport Chronicles The Tonypandy's Continued: Schooner Days DCXLV (645)

by C. H. J. Snider

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TIM TONYPANDY'S house was in Grafton village, but he was also a burgess of the smaller community by the lakeside known as Grafton Harbor, by reason of using the port for his crank wallsided fishing boat, with her mackinaw rig, and, later, for his little schooner, the Susan Seibel, which he picked up in Brighton.

Who the original Susan was is as unknown to the writer as it probably was to Tim, for few purchasers of the Hatties and Sallys and Rose Maries of the world of waters know or care much about the pretty sponsors the property commemorates.

From the name one might expect the Susan Seibel to have been a little American like the Eugenie or Mary and Alice, which drifted into Canadian ownership around Brighton and Presqu'isle after being built on the American side around Sackets Harbor, or down the river around Clayton.

The Susan Seibel, 29 tons register, was registered as built at "Rochester"—which may have meant Summerville, Charlotte, Braddock's Bay, Irondequoit Bay or even Pultneyville, for Rochester is nine miles inland — by J. Cromer in 1861 for Cromer and Lux, and in her palmy days she had an insurable value of $1,000. She was built when Canada and the United States enjoyed a reciprocity treaty, for the duty-free exchange of products, natural and artificial. Tim Tonypandy got hold of her after the treaty had expired and Britain had shown sympathy for the South in the war the North won, and North and South had defaulted on British loans and Fenians had invaded Canada, and times were bad and good neighbors were sore at one another and clamored for police, tariffs and other forms of "protection," while farmers grumbled that they could not sell their produce and consumers found that everything was scarce and dear.

Rightly or wrongly the Susan Seibel was suspected of smuggling propensities at some time in her career, and rightly or wrongly—I think rightly—Tim Tonypandy did little to wipe out this blot from her escutcheon.

Tim was not a smuggler. The worst that could be said of him was that he was a practicing free trader, and if we have Free Methodists and Free Presbyterians and Free French there should also be room in the world for Free Traders. Especially when, like Tim Tonypandy and big shots in the liquor business, they do not transgress any of the laws of their own country.

Tim was one of those public benefactors who reduce the high cost of living by supplying the consumer with what he wants at what the goods cost the vendor plus a fair profit. So when the whitefish and lake trout were taking a holiday he loaded his wallsided fishboat with Northumberland County turkeys and a particularly fine hog on the hoof, and, taking his partner, Billy Bedam, with him, and his six-year-old son, Tim, Jr., for ballast, steered forth from Grafton Harbor for Oak Orchard, a port on the south shore of Lake Ontario, in the United States of America, which has vanished as completely from the south shore as Grafton Harbor has from the north.

It was forty-five or fifty miles across and a long day's run for the fishboat. Tim did not mind that, for it suited his business better to arrive in the dark, when the customs, peace time price board, selective servants, transient traders' license board, food controllers, price fixers and all the other bottleneckers were sound asleep in their warm jobs.

But Providence disobliged with too much wind and he made the south shore before dark and had to hover anxiously outside, with the sea making up all the time, little Tim crying at one end of the boat because he was seasick and the pig squealing at the other because he had missed both dinner and supper.

When it got safely dark they showed a light three times and doused it, got an answering signal from a farmhouse window and squared away to run in for the creek mouth where they would be welcomed.

It was blowing very hard, and, when running in, the wallsided boat tripped in a breaking sea and rolled over.

"Where's little Tim?" demanded the Top Tonypandy as he came up, spouting water like a whale.

"Safe on my back," shouted Billy Bedam, "but that darned pig's adrift somewheres and he'll cut his throat swimmin'."

"Never mind, we'll sell him for more butchered than he'd fetch on the hoof," said Tim. "That is, if he washes in."

The fishermen were good swimmers, for a wonder, and a few more breaking seas washed them and little Tim up on the beach, and their boat after them. They found some of the turkeys in the undertow but most of them were still packed under the foredeck, wet but unspoiled. So, carrying little Tim, who now howled with hunger, they stumbled up to the farmyard where they had their rendezvous. Before they gave the recognition whistle they made for the barnyard strawstack, to roll themselves dry. They were greeted by a familiar series of squeals and grunts. Their faithful porker had beaten them to shelter and was already safely moored in the straw with his throat intact.

IT may have been before or after this that Jack bought the Susan Seibel. In her he had the reputation of remaining true to his wife and his Free Trade principles, to the intense annoyance of foreign customs officials.

Once in the Port of Rochester— which at this time would be the Genesee River by the village of Charlotte—the Susan Seibel was lying at the pier while her lord and master was up in the city discussing Free Trade with eminent and profitable customers. His wife, Tansy, who accompanied him on many of his enterprises, kept ship. A little bird whispered to her that "they" were going to get Tim this time. That "they" were going to visit the Susan Seibel, conceal themselves in her cabin, and when Tim returned aboard seize him and the vessel in the name of Uncle Sam and the People of the United States.

Tansy was not flustered. She knew where Tim was and that he would be safe there. She sent him a message and asked the dock loafers to help her hoist the sails. The wind was fair, and, she explained, Tim was always so impatient to get out when he had a fair wind she wanted to pleasure him by not keeping him waiting.

She kept a sharp eye up the wharf for Tim but when, instead of the Free Trader, some stout men in blue uniforms came strolling along talking about the weather, Tansy simply cast off her bowline and the Susan Seibel gently sidled backward till she cleared the pier head and then neatly fell off, pointing her nose for Canada and showing the customs men as pretty a transom and as clean a pair of heels as they had ever witnessed on a free pass in vaudeville.

In the grey of the next morning the fair Tansy, bright eyed though sleepy, downhauled the Susan Sei-bel's jibs, rounded to off Grafton Harbor pier and anchored, the lake being quiet, what wind there was offshore, and the weather settled. That afternoon husband Timothy stepped off the gangplank of the steamer Rochester when she came in for bunker cordwood. He tossed a bag of American eagles to his wife.

"I got your letter," said he. "You was a good girl."

CUSTOMS HOUSE, GRAFTON HARBOR, a hundred years old, now a summer residence. A million dollar commerce passed through its books, beginning in 1843.