Seventy Years of Frenchman's Bay: Schooner Days DCLXIII (663)

by C. H. J. Snider

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THIS deponent first saw Frenchman's Bay in 1896, from the forecastle head of the schooner Oliver Mowat, in the summer twilight. Inshore a green lamp began to twinkle.

"What's that green light?" he asked of 'Young Bill' Peacock, mate of the Mowat and son of Capt. Jim Peacock, her master. Green lights were then a novelty on Lake Ontario,'except in starboard light boxes.

That'll be Frenchman's Bay, if it's green," said Young Bill, "but if you can see it you've better eyes than I have, for I can't, yet. Yes, that's it. They say the old Marysburg was lost at Highland Creek by taking a green railway semaphore for Frenchman's Bay light. I dunno — but it's dim enough to be the starboard bottle in a corner drugstore."

Young Bill is no longer young. He is a retired captain, living in Port Hope, where his father, also resides, one of the evergreens; Capt. Jim celebrates his 91st birthday on Sunday, and has the very best wishes of all who knew him in Schooner Days.

Frenchman's Bay in 1896 was past its prime and pride as a schooner port shipping grain and lumber and rafting out timber in large quantities.

But the stonehooker fleet used it for twenty years afterwards, and larger schooners were still occasional callers, up to the time of the Great War, at any rate. Perhaps the last "big vessel" to enter it was Capt. Dan Rooney's threemaster Charlie Marshall, which rode out a gale in the piers in 1913, the time the steamer Alexandria was lost. Or maybe George Atkinson's old Guido was the last three-'n'-after to enter Frenchman's Bay, although we are inclined to think she came to grief-near Grafton before 1913. The three-master Erie Belle was seen in Frenchman's Bay in 1917. She had once been a "barque" or barquentine, with four square yards on her foremast. But at this date she was a burned-out hulk, cut down to be a tool scow, and had no masts at all.

The only steamers we ever knew in Frenchman's Bay were Joe Goodwin's tug which towed Burns' empty ice barge down every day from Toronto and returned with the loaded one every night; and perhaps the Gordon Jerry and the Maybird, steam scows which alternated between stonehooking and carrying fertilizer. Probably propellers like the old Norseman and Shickluna picked up a few thousand bushels of grain there in the barley days. The 3-master Van Straubenzee took out 9,000 bushels once, and the Wave Crest, Flora Carveth, Wm. Jamieson, W. T. Greenwood, Speedwell and Annandale also carried grain from there to Oswego. These were 2-masters, and the Speedwell was probably the most profitable of them all in this trade when Capt. John Williams had her. He could load 16,000 bushels into her and get her out by heaving her through the channel when necessary. She was a blocky vessel and carried a big load for her 10 ft. draught. One of her cargoes filled two of the 8,000-bushel canal boats at Oswego for the Erie canal, so she was much in demand for that trade.

The best "steamer" in the stone trade was the little steam barge Chub, built by Capt. Lemuel Dorland, of Bronte. She usually worked "up the lake," but may have occasionally visited Frenchman's Bay. She was a fine little ship and was until recently in use as a double-decked ferry at Detroit, where she went forty years ago. She was the last of the large fleet the Dorland brothers built in Bronte, all sailers but the Chub. Mrs. Ella Wilson Dorland, of St. Catharines, author of Glen Echoes, kindly supplied the picture below.

Some of the larger stone hookers, like the Snow Bird or Newsboy, got $25 a load for sawdust for the ice sheds, early in the spring. It was a paying cargo, for they had to go down the lake anyway for their stone and gravel, and the sawdust would stop their leaks on the way if it didn't all blow overboard.

Hookers which were "regular customers" of Frenchman's Bay, and upon which Harbormaster Sparks waged an unprofitable war for harbor dues, in the gay '90s and gayer 1900's were the Madeline, Newsboy, Rapid City, Lillian, Viking, Snow Bird, Mary Ann, Northwest, Maple Leaf, H. M. Ballou, White Wings, Wood Duck, Coral, Olympia, Defiance, and a few more belonging "up the lake." Only the Madeline was then owned in Frenchman's, but in previous decades the Bay claimed several by right of birth.

The Highland Chief hailed from there, though she was built in Port Credit. The famous Alex. Cuthbert, designer of two lame challengers for the America's Cup, sailed her.

The Anna Bellchambers, 52 feet long, 31 tons measurement, lost under tragic circumstances off the Eastern Gap, Toronto, Nov. 25th, 1875, was built in the Bay in 1864, and named after the daughter of Wm. Bellchambers, hotelkeeper who owned her. The Belle of Dunbarton, 63 feet over all, 3,360 bushels wheat capacity, was a Bay boat, having been built in the mouth of Duffin's Creek, just east of the Bay, and being owned in Dunbarton, the little village supposed to be named after Robert Dunbar, the blacksmith at the head of the Bay.

And that, shipmates and shellbacks, is all we have to offer about Frenchman's. Bay at this time.

ONE FOR THE COMMODORE

Sir.—I read with interest your article on the Frenchman's Bay Yacht Club and the "Moth" class sailboat. These last couple of years I've tried my luck on the Bay fishing for pike. While doing so I couldn't help but notice all the small sailboats. They seemed to be having a lot of fun with them. From time to time I've seen the results of the races in your paper.

What I would like to know is if you can tell me where I could obtain the plans for making such a boat. Is there regulations as to size of hull and sail?

Hoping you can give me the information if it's not too much trouble, thanks. I read your column every week-end.—Yours truly, Edgar Jones, 121 Gladstone avenue.

See Commodore Eric Blenkarn, of the Frenchman's Bay Yacht Club, 26 Main street, Toronto.

ENTRANCE TO FRENCHMAN'S BAY, AS IS—The yacht club fleet going in last month, after the last race open question. All that is left of the two timber piers are the stones sticking up on either side. The old lighthouse with its green light stood where the small cross is, below the poplar tree.

THE CHUB - tiny steam barge from Bronte, an infrequent caller at Frenchman's Bay.

FRENCHMAN'S BAY IN 1878

JOSEPH McCLELLAN, son of James McClellan, one of the founders of Port Darlington, was listed as the proprietor of Port Darlington's western neighbor, Pickering Harbor, in Belden's Atlas of Ontario in 1878. From it this quaint picture of Pickering Harbor, even then long known as Frenchman's Bay, is taken. Up to the first decade of the twentieth century the old dark red grain elevator stood on the east side of the harbor at Frenchman's Bay, and the lighthouse on the pier shed a green gleam across the waves. It was then the only green light on Lake Ontario, in the picture it looks as high as the Bank of Commerce, but it was only 25 feet above the water. Frenchman's Bay, however, had a traffic like Port Darlington in schooners and square riggers and steamers in the days of lumber and barley export. The two timber piers providing the channel through the sandbar were reinforced by a modest line of cribs on the west beach of the bar.