Cocks Last Crow Against the Wind: Schooner Days DCLXXVIII (678)

by C. H. J. Snider

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The mate of the Augusta explained that his captain had left him in charge of the wreck while he was away trying to arrange for her salvage, so—

"You've brought her to an anchor in the lee of the stove," said Al in scorn, and filled the Grace Darling immediately from outside the hotel.

His only difficulty was in keeping her from being overloaded with volunteers. Nipper Quinn and Allan Kemp had to be taken, of course, and Albert Block and Steve Peer, who had been in the Augusta rescue, ahd Billy Hicks from the Humber. He had plenty to take the Grace Darling out under sail, and that was the way he was going to handle her, but a young market gardener from the Lake Shore road, Billy Trenwith — he still has a garage near Lorne Park — begged and pleaded to be allowed to come.

"Never been in a boat," he admitted, but I'm strong, and I can bail, and I won't be scared so long as I can see you."

"I might be too busy to look after you if we got into trouble," urged Al. It's too big a risk for you. Can't take you.'

But when the Grace Darling shoved off there was Billy Trenwith crouched under the lug foresail, hidden from Al Hare's sight. The Grace Darling had two stumpy masts and three storm sails, a jib, lug foresail, loose footed, and standing lug mainsail, with a little boom on the foot of it, to clear the coxswain's head. She steered with a rudder.

They got out to the Drummond in no time, having the wind astern, and Al Hare swung aboard. A wornout yachtsman, said: "There are five of us here, and we'd like you to take us ashore, our own boat there astern is full of water,"

"Have to ask your captain first," said Al comforting, "Captain Jim, what do you want me to do?"

"Well I want a tug, and I want to get my windlass castings fixed by a blacksmith. Can I get that done in the Credit?"

"Sure," said Al. "How about these men that want to get ashore?"

"Take 'em," said Capt. Quinn. "I'll take the castings to the blacksmith shop myself when you go. Possum Mercer here and the rest of my crowd 'll keep ship while I'm away."

"All aboard," said Al. "Ship the oars, for we'll need 'em going back."

So shorewards the Grace Darling sped, more slowly now, for she was full of men, and the wind was ahead instead of astern. The big seas were still roaring up the lake, unsmoothed by the offshore wind, and rolling in on the wreck of the Augusta, and on the beach at the river mouth, in long breakers from which the crests were blown back smoking like the tossing manes of wild horses.

"Keep her up to windward Al, keep her up!" everybody advised the coxswain.

Oars out on both sides and all three sails pulling the Grace Darling came rushing directly for the squat white lighthouse on the end of the east pier. The spray was going over the lantern. Three monster seas piled up in one mountain and burst at the critical moment.

"Aft, everybody!" shouted Al, "my rudder's out of water and she won't pay off for me!"

For one second it seemed as though she would shoot over the lighthouse. Then the explosion of the triple sea tossed her across the hundred-foot harbor mouth and she looked to be going to destruction on the opposite pier. Al kept his helm up, and she cleared that and the sails crashed over like a three-gun salute as she lurched her other side in and was almost filled with the bursting foam. Three oars were broken, those who had been pulling them were head over heels in the water between the thwarts, and she seemed to have a cargo of chaos.

"Beach her, Al, beach her to loo'ard of the pier!" yelled Jim Quinn.

"And have her roll over on top of us?" answered Al. "Not on your life! She's going out in the lake again."

"Your mainboom's snapped—she'll never make it!"

"Shift over them good oars to the lee side and she will," Al answered back.

And they did.

And she did.

Foot by foot, fathom by fathom, helped by the hard offshore wind and the three oars, pulled doublebanked on the lee side, the Grace Darling waded out through the breakers, settled down to steady going in the deeper water, gained an offing on the lighthouse, and swung around again for another try.

This time Al got a spare oar over the stern to steer in the rough water, held her back till the biggest fellows had broken, and then drove her hard for the entrance.

Once more it was touch and go. She lapped the lighthouse when the next breaker-burst came. On that she flew like a stone out of a sling. There was no directing her, with oar, or sail, or rudder. She was a chip on a torrent of water roaring through the funnel of the piers at train speed.

She just grazed one pier, at the inner end. But that graze stove in two planks like a cannon shot. Al gave a herculean sweep with his oar and ran her on the mud in Goose Bay the tiny cove inside the harbor, beyond the west pier. She was full of water, and of wet men. But safe.

Then Al for the first time saw Billy Trenwith. He was jammed in a corner of the bulkhead and the foremast-thwart so tight he could not get out. But even so, he was bailing manfully, as he had done throughout the trip. And he was still afraid Al would be cross because he had stowed away.

"Were you scared, Billy, at the pierhead?" asked Al.

"No," said Billy. "I could see you wasn't."

Capt. Quinn got his castings forged, and out to the Drummond again as the water smoothed. With Allan Kemp and Nipper and Possum Mercer and his whole crew helping he hove in on his cables and found he had parted the one for the little anchor, and lost that hook, and had been riding to the big one all the time. They hove that one up and made all sail, even to the fly-by-night and the bluedevil that went to the foretopmast head—except the main gafftopsail which had flogged itself to ribbons and stranded the main? topmast shrouds.

On the 27th of November, with the help of the late running Island ferry Ada Alice, Capt. Joe Goodwin, to dock her, the Jessie Drummond ploughed through the mud of the Princess street slip with 550 tons of hard coal for P. Burns & Co., the last schooner coal for this city in that century.

THE W. T. Greenwood - with a weathercock at the head of her fore topmast.

GUN CREW OF THE SONS OF ENGLAND NAVAL BRIGADE IN SOUTH AFRICAN WARTIME

Patriotic Sons of England had a Naval brigade known as tne Britannia Life Saving Service from 1895 till 1905, when their lifeboat was somehow sunk in Toronto Harbor. The lifeboat had a crew of sixteen men. Jack Nuttall was the coxswain. The society also had a cutlass corps, in charge of H. Evans, a bugle band, and a gun crew, with a 25-pounder gun, built by Mr. Thomas L. Southam (on the left in the picture) in his Church street bicycle shop. It had the honor of firing a 21-gun salute for the Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V) when he visited Toronto in 1901. The salute was fired at the foot of Cherry street. Mr. Harry Warry, 110 Hazelton avenue, is one of the few surviving members of the old naval brigade which did its best in voluntary service forty and fifty years ago.