Scupper Mystery: Schooner Days DCXLVIII (648)

by C. H. J. Snider

THE OTHER DAY we came across a crayon picture of the schooner E. A. Fulton, waterstained as the hull of the original, and infinitely more grimy, for the Fulton, as we knew her was always neat. This old drawing by the tug fireman, C. I. Gibbons (who was also a marine portrait artist of ability), had been through the wars. It was cracked and dog-eared and dirty with thirty years of city soot. But it brought back old memories—and The Telegram engravers have made a good job of reproducing it. You may see it next week.

Before telling more about the old schooner let us recount, for the encouragement of mariners confronted with the leak problem, the experience of Capt. Frank Jackman, who was the owner of the E. A. Fulton, and also the husband of her namesake, for the schooner had been rechristened by this name in honor of Mrs. Jackman, who was Miss Fulton before she was married.

Capt. Frank Jackman was the son of another Capt. Frank Jackman, who owned the brigantine Sea Gull of Toronto, and took her to South Africa and brought her back to Toronto a year later, in 1866. Frank Jr., aged 8, had stowed away in her, but his father found him and sent him back by train from Kingston before the Sea Gull left Lake Ontario. Frankie lived to become a scheoner captain himself, and a vessel owner. He was best known as master of the harbor tug Frank Jackman, which he named after his father. She towed a million tons of schooner-borne coal into Toronto. Capt Frank, Jr., was a good sailorman, a good business man, and a good dresser.

To meet him uptown was to learn the latest in hats, haircuts, haberdashery and shaving lotions. To meet him on the waterfront was to get an education in vessel handling. He was a credit to his native city, and it is a pity he is gone. He died in 1932, on February 23rd.

After he bought the Fulton in the 1890's he had the usual difficulty of finding steady work for her, and had to let her lie idle at the foot of Church street, where he berthed the busy tug. He paid off the crew, and looked after her himself. There was nothing to do, as ship keeper, but air her sails, and keep her pumped out.

After a heavy rain like last week's Capt. Jackman found 12 inches of water—which would mean hundreds of gallons—in her. He didn't like this, for she was not long off the dry dock. It took a long time to get the pump to suck. And the water was stale and black, as though it had been in her a long time.

Next day there was 12 inches of water in her again, though there had been no rain between times. Capt. Jackman liked this still less, and still less did he like the length of time it took to pump the 12 inches down. Either the pump or his back was wearing out, he concluded. Perhaps he thought, she's got a lot of water in her which takes a long time to run to the pump well. Maybe her limbers are clogged.

While he rested he leaned over the rail and noted that she was floating at about her normal light-water line. The faint tinge of green where the slub began to grow at the waterline showed that she was just about the usual height out of the water when unloaded. He got out on the wharf and walked along the length of her to confirm this. Yes, she was about at her usual light draught marks, four feet forward, a couple inches more aft.

It occurred to him that she wasn't down to four feet at either end when he had bought her. She must have settled since. She was 30 years old then and thoroughly water-soaked. She couldn't get deeper without taking more weight aboard—and the only weight he knew of was the water inside her.

He climbed back to the deck and sounded the pumpwell again. To his disgust there was still almost twelve inches in her.

The pump worked thus: The water was raised by working a doublebraked Brokenshire pump, from which it spouted into a big bucket, from which it overflowed onto the deck, which was rounded or crowned so that the water flowed to either side. At the coveringboard, or edge where the deck met the side of the schooner, were the scuppers, large waste pipes, two inches in diameter, which ran under the coveringboard and came out through the side of the vessel, about a foot below her deck level. The purpose of this was, of course, to drain the water off quickly, instead of allowing it to dribble over generally or lie in corners and rot the wood. There was one pump in the fore hatch and another at the foot of the mainmast. This was the one Capt. Jackman had been using.

The vessel had a slight list to port, and most of the water he pumped ran to the port scupper, which was the one next the wharf at the time.

Itv suddenly flashed on him that he had not noticed any water spurting from this scupper when he was out on the dock, although a little of what he had pumped was still lying in a long, narrow pool on deck when he climbed back aboard. Manifestly, the scupper was choked. He got a broom handle and poked it in far, but when he looked over the side there was no water spurting, and no broom handle showing either!

Capt. Jackman was no believer in magic. He pulled out the broom handle and thrust in his finger — and solved the mystery immediately. He found a hole in the under side of the scupper so big that there was hardly any underside of the pipe left. The water he pumped was merely pouring back into the vessel down the "room" or space between two ribs, covered by her outside planking and inner skin or ceiling. If he pumped hard enough, long enough, he could get all there was in the pump well out of it, and the pump would suck; but in a short time most of the water raised to the deck would run back to the well through the bottomless scupper pipe. Some might escape through the other scuppers, or under the bulwarks, and the return of the rest would be delayed by the narrowness of the room between the ribs and the smallness of the limbers leading to the pump well. But it would all, or nearly all, find its way back. And this had been going on for months. That is why the bilgewater was so stale. Of course, when the vessel was under sail and inclined, and both pumps were used, the water would find its way out through the other scuppers.

Among other accomplishments, Capt. Jackman was a good plumber. Half an hour's manipulation of two feet of lead pipe, and the Fulton pumped till she was dry in a short time and stayed that way for a long one.

CAP. FRANK JACKMAN and his well known tug, the FRANK JACKMAN