Happy Birthday to the MAPLE LEAF" Man: Schooner Days DCLVI (656)

by C. H. J. Snider

_______

CONGRATULATIONS to Capt. Richard Goldring of Port Whitby, who on Aug. 31st celebrated a birthday, and is now sailing Wing-and-Wing with a pleasant breeze in his 86th year.

He has been made an honorary life member of Vimy Ridge L.O.L., an honor befitting the master of the schooner Maple Leaf for thirty-five years and the holder of the Royal Canadian Humane Association medal for saving life.

Captain Goldring, for sixty years a schooner man, spent two days of the last week of his 85th year digging, bagging and storing the potato crop he put in last spring. He has a cosy garden, one might say a farm, around his fine brick house at Port Whitby, with the anchors in the front walk and maple trees and rose bushes at the front door. He was master and owner of the Maple Leaf for thirty-five years. Last week he went to work at half past seven in the morning and did not quit till dark, and as a result he has a fine crop of potatoes airing in the electric lighted tool shed garage and barn at the back of the garden. Any other farm commando of this age and weight?

A great part of Capt. Goldring's life was spent in the stone trade. He has lifted by hand ten thousand tons of limestone and granite from the lake bed. But he did not confine himself to stonehooking. When the since vanished harbor at Wilson, N.Y., was being rebuilt in the late 1880s, he carried load after load of lumber, timber, shingles and other material from Cobourg in his Maple Leaf, in company with another schooner of the same size named the McDonald. Three or four bore that name on Lake Ontario, the J. A. Macdonald, the Lady Macdonald, the Jessie McDonald and the Robert McDonald. The Maple Leaf's running mate was the Robert or the Jessie, perhaps both. It seems that the British Queen of South Bay also carried timbers for the crib work at Wilson.

However, one of the McDonalds and the Maple Leaf left Wilson at the same time for a fresh load of harbor material. The wind was northeasterly and light. It freshened and the McDonald went down the south shore of the lake, while the Maple Leaf struck across for the north. Morning light showed St. James Cathedral looming up to leeward; the Maple Leaf had been forced well up the lake by the wind-breaking to the north. Capt. Goldring put her about as she, got smoother water under the land and went boiling down the lake and was into Cobourg by noon. A phenomenal run. A young fellow came down to take his lines, and asked for a job. He was told to turn to at 1 o'clock and there would be plenty of work shoving lumber. There was, and by evening the Maple Leaf was loaded with shingles and lumber in the hold and short timbers piled high on deck. It was a dead calm.

"Now we hadn't much sleep last night in the lake, and we've worked hard all day," said Capt. Goldring, "so we'll all turn in and I'll keep a watch on the weather and call you when I think it's suitable."

Before daylight next morning, the fly began to curl towards Wilson and he called "all hands," which were three pairs including his own.

The Maple Leaf floated out of Cobourg, caught the off-shore breeze, and came boiling into Wilson at noon. She must have made ten miles an hour, for it is sixty miles or more across from Cobourg. They bumped on the silted harbor bottom, although only drawing five feet, but threw their deckload into the water where it had to go anyway, and soon floated in to where the rest of the cargo had to go.

"You back again?" demanded the harbormaster.

"So I am," said Capt. Goldring. "Where's the McDonald?"

"In Charlotte, and sixty miles to go to Cobourg, and the insurance people are getting anxious at the delay. He had to put in there with the northerly wind and can't get out."

The outcome was the offer of the captaincy of an American three-masted schooner, "where you won't have to work at lumber-shoving with your crew." But Richard Goldring chose to remain his own boss. Hard work never had any terrors for him.

It must have been about this time that he got a chance at the coal trade. Eventually he became a coal merchant himself, and had a yard at Port Whitby, but that was after he retired from sailing. The "big vessels," schooners of 300 tons carrying capacity and upwards, monopolized coal carrying on Lake Ontario, principally because freights were so low — around 25 cents a ton — that only a large load would pay the expenses of a voyage sometimes requiring weeks to complete.

But "Little Dick" would take an honest chance on anything, and when asked to carry three hundred tons of coal from Charlotte for Bowmanville, or old Port Darlington, he tried. Perhaps the freight was better than 25 cents a ton, for the big vessels like the Flora Carveth or the Oliver Mowat got as much as 50 cents trading into the smaller ports, where they could not carry full loads.

Anyway, Richard sailed across to Charlotte, and three miles up the Genesee River, to where the coal was loaded, and took aboard 100 tons for Bowmanville, in the Maple Leaf. He got out the same night, and when well clear of Braddock's Point met a stiff head wind, a gagger. He hung on to his four lowers and passed the big Flora Carveth, with two reefs in her mainsail and one in the foresail, and she was a smart, able vessel, too. He picked up the north shore and the wind came around to the southward and let him pop into Darlington. It only took them half a day to unload him with the horse and bucket. Having a fair wind, he sailed out, crossed the lake by night, loaded again in the Genesee, and came back across the next night.

Soon he got his second hundred tons out and started down the lake again. This time he had to go farther east, down to Sodus, but his luck and the fair wind held, and he was loaded and back again in Darlington for the third time before the week was out. This time his cargo measured 101 tons - conclusive proof that the little 70-foot Maple Leaf could carry "over" 100 tons of coal.

"She was good, then," said Capt. Goldring with a fond thought for his old love. "I had rebuilt her in Bronte, after the Esplanade Fire, and every plank and timber in her was new and sound."

In the barn where the 1944 potato crop rests in splendor he showed, hanging on the wall, the ship's adze with the spike in the head of it which had dubbed every plank of the Maple Leaf and set up every spike and bolt in her strong frame.

CAPT RICHARD GOLDRING

AT THE WHEEL OF HIS "MAPLE LEAF" WHICH HE SAILED FOR THIRTY-FIVE YEARS