Ho for the Spanish Main!: Schooner Days DCLXXXI (681)

by C. H. J. Snider

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Including The Florida Rangers, The "Old Barque," Public Hanging, An Election Race, And Some Spiflicated Pheasants

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THE "Barque Swallow of Port Credit," so christened and so registered, might have been Noah's preliminary study for the Ark. She was almost that old, for it is on record that, as a nameless scow, she hauled sand for the building of the "commodious jail" Dickens gibed Toronto about, the one built below Front street, on Berkeley, in 1840.

That was a grim old dungeon, with a brass cannon on the roof and the corpses of murderers dangling over the water from its walls two at a time. But the old Barque was as jolly as the Ark she suggested and she lived a gay and carefree life. Capt. Jack Sponton, salty as his name, rescued her from sand and quicklime and prison stone and rebuilt her a hundred years ago.

Among the primeval curiosities he removed were her original bilges, where sides and bottom met. Those had been hewn from sixty-foot trunks of white pine trees, the outer curve of the log taking off the sharp edge which would otherwise accompany the boxlike model. He also put topmasts in her, and on the fore he crossed a couple of yards, topsail and topgallant, rendering her a square-rigger, after his own heart.

She was thus a topsail schooner but he called her a barque, to emphasize her importance and his own. Barques are large vessels with three masts, two completely square rigged. He painted her like the Queen of Sheba or that professional lady of Babylon—gaffs, booms, yards, sides, ends, rails, cabin and deck. Her halliard blocks and sheet blocks, alow and aloft, were a bright coral pink. Across her stern, on a black band in white letters, he inscribed "Barque Swallow of Port Credit." For the first time she had a name and that was it. She carried it to her dying day. which was in 1910.

Succeeding generations of carpenters attempted to keep the Barque's ends up by adding wedge-shaped planks, until at last she had a profile like a dromedary, all humps and hollows. Her square tophamper wore out and blew away and was replaced by three-cornered gafftopsails, but unabashed she kept on, ogling the world of waters with a one-eyed, square-faced wink (she had only one hawsepipe for her anchor chain) and her countenance was as serene and broad as Father Noah's after he had celebrated with home brew.

Such was the gallant craft in which, long years after Jack Sponton's passing, Capt. A. E. Hare and a couple of choice spirits set forth to chase the Florida rangers.

THE FLORIDA RANGERS, in secret session assembled, had moved, seconded and carried that they should be known by that name collectively, instead of Tom, Dick, Harry and Butch, and furthermore that they would start ranging for Florida right away. This was in the days when the worst bad boys could do was to read dime novels and smoke sections of umbrella cane in secret. The newly constituted rangers had drained the delights of both of these crimes to the dregs, and looked for further depths of iniquity to fathom. Piracy seemed a promising profession, practiced in pleasant climates, so the quartette cut out a richly laden galleon under the guns of Al Hare's boat livery and hoisted sail for the Spanish Main via Florida.

The richly laden galleon was the punt Al Hare had rigged with a mast and sails, for pottering around in Port Credit harbor. Pallid parents shamefacedly confessed that they couldn't see how their boys could have done such a thing, but the punt wasn't there, and the boys weren't there, and would dear kind Capt. Hare see if he couldn't find them?— Al Hare's experience had taught him that boys will be boys and punts will be picked up sooner or later. He was a good neighbor and pitied parental distress, so he sauntered down to the portiest part of Port Credit and communed with his old chum, Capt. Steve Peer.

Stephen, still sprightly, though past eighty, had been his shipmate in many a perilous chance, such as taking off the crew of the Augusta and chasing the Lithophone, and Lord knows what. Al had then no ship of his own, having retired from stone-hooking for the bakery and boat livery, but Steve now had the old Barque Swallow, whose charms and early history have been outlined.

She looked like the Flying Dutchman after the third century of beating around the Cape, by this time. Steve Peer, hard-working, steady-going hookerman, was keeping her going, but not averse to a day off.

Al and Steve agreed that the young devils would be somewhere in the Niagara vicinity, with the wind the way it had been all night, and Steve generously devoted the Barque to the rescue service. They picked up George Hare and sailed out and down the lake, keeping' a sharp lookout. All that it revealed was that a fifth young scorpion had stowed himself away on board the Barque itself. They couldn't well throw him overboard. He professed innocence and ignorance of the plans of the Rangers.

On in the afternoon, drawing in with the south shore, they saw the Chicora of the Niagara River Line coming out from Niagara. Outside the bar she stopped and picked something up.

"That's them," said Al assuredly. "I can't see each boy, but there's four of them, and that's my punt. I can make out her spars, plain." His eyesight, at eighty-two, is still remarkably good.

There was no sense in going on, for they couldn't catch up with the Chicora and she would have the boys in Toronto in two hours. They would be home long before the Barque could poke her battered bowsprit between the Credit piers. So they put into Port Dalhousie for night.

Next day, the wind being ahead, they decided to go to Buffalo on an excursion. Al had been to Moore's Musee, on Yonge street, Toronto, a while before, and had rung the bell at 270, blowing up one of those chest expansion indicators. So when they went into the Silver Sidewalk's nickel arcade in Buffalo he bet Steve $2 he could beat him at this amusement device, and Steve bet him the drinks he couldn't, so he hove a mighty breath and went to it.

Up to 200, 300, 350, 375, 380 soared the indicator. Al, grasping the change in his pocket firmly to give himself courage, confidently approached the 400, when "Bang!" the electric contact was made and the shock threw him head over heels across the room, showering the Silver Sidewalk with nickels, dimes and quarters as his fist left his pocket as if it had been on fire.

They picked him and the change up and came back by trolley to Port Dalhousie. The youngster they had left to mind ship had vanished. Still a headwind, but they would have to be home on the morrow, blow high, blow low, for Dick Blain was running in Peel County and next day was election day. So in the morning they piled the rags on the Barque and she butted her way northwestward. But being no great shakes to windward at any time the best she could do was fetch about north, which just got her into Toronto that afternoon, twelve miles to leeward of the scene of action.

No train would get them to the Credit on time and the trolley service was still some years in the future. So they pooled their resources and sent a telegram to Conservative headquarters in the Port to turn out all available transport and meet them on the Lake Shore road, for they were going to walk home.

They got a street car ride to the old Sunnyside crossing gates and began to hoof the remaining ten miles. With barely an hour left before the polls closed, the Conservative transportation met them near Eastwood's farm with no fanfare of trumpets. The convoy consisted of a one horsepower single-seated farmer's gig. Al and George festooned themselves to port and starboard of the driver and Steve hung himself on the back of the gig, like a yawlboat on the davits. The disinterested horse power showed less interest and Steve found they made better progress by one of them getting out and pushing.

They had ploughed along for half a mile this way when a man came pumping along on a bicycle.

"Hey!" yelled Steve, "lend me that thing as far as the Credit!" The man dismounted, not knowing what he meant and Steve, who had never bestrode a bike in his life, swung a leg across the top bar and plunged down the Etobicoke hill, leaving the owner to argue with the horse and cart.

The horse must have been persuasive, for the bicycle man helped push the gig to Port Credit, where they found Steve, scratched, sweating and triumphant. "I got here in time to vote," he yelled, "and you can just make it yet if you hurry!"

Al and George ran to the polling place, pushed past' the scrutineers and got their ballots into the box as the clock struck.

Dick Blain was elected.

The Florida Rangers took their meals standing up for a week afterwards.

And Al went back to Toronto with Steve Peer and brought the Barque Swallow home with the punt on her deck, none the worse for having started for the Spanish Main.

The stowaway who had deserted in Port Dalhousie had come home by train, a day ahead of the electors of R. Blain, M.P. His next exploit was to spoil a day's pheasant shooting for the big shots invited from the city by feeding the farmers' tame pheasants stale bread soaked in whiskey so generously that the birds could not get off the ground to be shot at.

"THE OLD BARQUE" in her home port in 1906.

"THE OLD BARQUE" in her square-rigged days, anchored off the jail she helped build, where murderers corpses hung over the bank.