The Peachstone: Old Port Darlington - Newcastle: Schooner Days DCLV (655)

by C. H. J. Snider

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KNEW there would be controversy over the picture offered last week of old Port Darlington, or Bowmanville harbor. Roland Kirk, of the schooner-yacht Night Hawk said from the beginning the place was Newcastle. He had it from his brother. Forrest A. Dilling, forty years at Bowmanville Beach, also said the picture was of Newcastle harbor, four miles away, and kindly offered pictures of both places to prove it. He also said the remains of the piers still visible at Bowmanville show that they were of equal length.

A lady whose uncle was a well-known lake captain—Mrs. R. G. Wright—was equally positive it was Newcastle. She wrote very pleasantly the day after the picture was published:

"I read, with great interest, your 'Schooner Days.' As to the picture in yesterday's paper, are you positive it is Port Darlington? I cannot see how it could be so identically like Newcastle and yet not be Newcastle.

"When I opened the paper and glanced at the picture, I said, 'Why here is a picture of old Newcastle harbor.' It recalled many happy memories. In the picture is the office of the weigh scales where my cousins and I were allowed to change clothes for swimming.

"My uncle (the late Alfred Lake) was harbor master of Newcastle — this was around 1912 or thereabouts. We kids thought it a real treat to be allowed to ride in and out with the tug which took out loads of sand from the government dredge. It had to come about every two years to clear out the harbor. It was from Newcastle that Capt. Johnny Goldring used to bring loads of stone all by himself to Toronto, on his big schooner 'Helen.' Years before my time an old uncle of mine (Capt. Frank Gibson) made many exciting voyages from this port.

"Hope I haven't bored you, but I would be interested in knowing if that picture is really Darlington."

Ever open to conviction (like the gentleman who made burglary his recreation) we welcome more opinions, especially if expressed so charmingly as Mrs. Wright's. Having been in Newcastle while it still was a harbor, we agree both with correspondents, Polonius and Hamlet, that it is "very like," and leave the history of old Port Darlington for the time to go on with that of its near neighbor, Newcastle, of which we wish we knew more.

Our ancient friend The Pocket Compass of 1871 quavered:

"Six miles E. by north of Darlington is the port of Newcastle. It has two piers, and at present a vessel could not take Newcastle, as the inner end of the west pier is not quite finished, but will be completed this season (1871) and when all is included Newcastle will be a splendid harbor to enter, the piers being built a good distance apart. The lighthouse is 25 feet high and erected on the east pier.

"Four miles east of Newcastle is the Peach Stone boulder, which extends nearly three-quarters of a mile into the lake and requires a good berth."

The Peach Stone is there yet, and its vicinity was a good raking ground for hardheads in stonehooker times. Capt. John Goldring, the single-hander who sailed the hundred-ton Helen, all by himself and her raffee when he couldn't get a crew, may have got some of his loads there. The hard round granite boulders were plentiful, but the water was deep and it was an heroic task for one old man to lift seven or eight toise of stone, (weighing 80 tons) from the lake bed with an 18 ft. rake, first on to his deck scow, then on to his schooner deck, and then into the hold. But Capt. John was one of the iron men who sailed the wooden ships of the stone trade.

It was on the Peach Stone that the schooner Bermuda struck, in the beginning of that dreadful gale of Nov. 6th, 1880. They loaded her with barley in haste at Oshawa, to get her away before the storm broke. When the first squall struck she was below Newcastle, and in running her off Capt. John Allen cut the Peach Stone too fine and she dropped down in the hollow of two seas and jolted her rudder out of the gudgeons. Capt. Allen's son, Alf, was mate. He made out the loom of the elevators at Port Granby, in the black of the November morning, and tried to run the rudderless Bermuda under her squatted foresail into the lee of the pier there for shelter. She missed the pier and struck the beach below. In twenty-four hours there was nothing left of her but a carpenter's plane and the cook's call bell. But the crew had been saved by the exertions of Mr. Edward Brown, Port Granby's postmaster for fifty years afterwards. Capt. Allen was drowned a few years later from his schooner, the Ida Walker, and his brave son Alf was drowned trying to save him.

Belden's Atlas of 1878 credited Newcastle (or Bond Head Harbor as it was sometimes known) with one pier, but that must have been a temporary condition for it had two good piers up to 1917 and perhaps later. Its light went out with a bang when the schooner Katie Eccles speared the wooden lighthouse with her jibboom and carried it off on the end of her horn. The Garden City was one of the last steamers running to Newcastle well on into this century. The Erindale was burned there. The old Argyle, shown in the picture, was the still older Empress of India, so named in Disraeli's time, rebuilt in 1899 and renamed still later.

NEWCASTLE HARBOR—An old photograph by the kindness of Mr. Forrest A. Dilling of Bowmanville Beach.

THE OLIVER MOWATT—Downhauling her flying jib as she entered Bowmanville Harbor (Old Port Darlington) with 500 tons of coal under hatches, thirty years ago.

IT WAS A GOOD LIFE

Seventy-six and actively engaged in a paint job when photographed MR. H. H. DILLING of Bowmanville well remembers the schooner life of Old Port Darlington. He was seven years in vessels in those times and retired to land work with the rank of second mate.