"Built at Bath": Schooner Days DCLXXXVII (687)

by C. H. J. Snider

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HAVING postponed Bath till Saturday night, the plunge is hereby taken. Would the waters of knowledge were deeper.

First acquaintance with this Bay of Quinte port was made in 1910, after the George Cup race , when we beat up from Kingston in the little Blue Peter in a hard sou'-wester that reduced us to storm sail and forced the three-master Keewatin to run back to shelter at Four Mile Point. Salmon Island, now bald as a coot, then had tall trees growing on it. Off this isle we nearly swamped our ship by heeling her down so far that the galley sink filled through the runoff and overflowed. With only one to steer and sail her while the other pumped her clear, we had a hard time thrashing past the Three Brothers, and the light was lit on the middle one soon after we weathered it. In the smoother water of the narrowing limestone-lined Reach we made better time, passing Collins Bay and Parrot Cove in the twilight, but we were bone-weary with the beating and eager to hole up for the night.

So we tried for Bath, which was somewhere near by though not a gleam of light indicated its existence. We stood in till a square of blackness loomed above the burnt paper fringe of the trees against the night sky. This would be the warehouse on the wharf. Its eaves were higher than our masthead when the wharf itself could be felt in the dark and we nuzzled alongside. Had to grope for piles or niggerheads to make fast on and then finger our way to the warehouse and follow the planking ashore. Not a buggy wheel turning, not a dog barking, not a footfall in the invisible town. But there was one light, dim and distant as a waning star. A narrow sidewalk led us to the hotel where the coal oil lamp burned low. Everybody had gone to bed long ago, for it was now ten o'clock, but the landlady responded to repeated knocking, eyed us suspiciously, and finally carried the guttering light to a small room for us with a double bed. Our flooded cabin was too damp for sleeping on board that night.

Bright sunlight next morning showed us a charming little town with distinctive character, clean streets and quietly happy inhabitants. There were one or two fine old homes. The main street was marked by wooden architecture which reminded us somewhat of the Rows in the walled town of Chester and of the stone arcades of the ancient city of Bath in England, where Roman grandees and Beau Nash had shared the waters at Aquae Sulis a thousand years and more apart. Building after building had neat galleries, covered and railed in wood, facing the Kingston road. Shipping there was none at this time but the wharf was in good shape, and many vessels had been built there.

GRANDDAUGHTER OF SHIPBUILDER OF 1837

"May I, a native of the Bay of Quinte and a granddaughter of a ship carpenter who built schooners on the bay back in the 1830's, say how much I enjoy Schooner Days?" writes Mrs. Mary F. Payton, of Norwood, Ont.

"I only remember one vessel my grandfather, Wm. Griggs, built. She was launched on the 6th of July, 1837, at Bath and named the Cinderella Davy, for Mrs Davy, wife of the owner, a Mr. Ben Davy. I saw in Schooner Days mention of a boat that was burned, called the Ben Davy, probably named for the same I man.

"Four of mother's brothers were sailors, John, Lewis, Alex, and Henry Griggs. John and Lewis sailed vessels out of Trenton. Both were masters before they were nineteen. Uncle Alex. sailed for several seasons a boat out of Cobourg for an English gentleman. His name was either Greenwood or Greenway, I cannot now say which. It seems to me it was more pleasure than commercial. I recollect hearing that the owner and family sailed the entire season each year, all over the lakes, with Uncle Alex. The fall of '63, when uncle was laying the boat up, he caught a severe cold and died very suddenly."

(Capt. W. T. Greenwood, of Cobourg, after whom the Schooner W. T. Greenwood was named, was a shipowner and may have been the "English gentleman." Another English gentleman in Cobourg was Mr. R. Standley, who owned the yacht Gorilla, frequently mentioned in Schooner Days. There were also the Countess of Dufferin, Major Gifford, and the Vision, Mr. Black, these last of later date than the Gorilla.)

"I have seen no mention of the Rosie Dench, of Trenton, launched in the summer of '66 at Trenton. Is there no record of her fate?

"That Bullfrog Club mentioned recently in connection with Major Mowat's novel 'Carrying Place' was amusing. I thought that when the Murray Canal went through, old Dead Creek Bridge and all that stretch of rushes and mud at the foot of Dug Hill (that happy home of our Canadian songsters) had faded away along with the Little Red Schoolhouse of childhood memories. Years before the Little Red Schoolhouse a woman kept a private school there. Her fee was a penny a week per pupil and her pupils were mostly boys. That club should be careful not to sing too loud. Her shade might be just around the corner and there might be some of those boy pupils with her, all displeased with time's changes. And boys of 'ye olden days' were rough with those same songsters."

"ALL BROKEN UP" ON CANADA'S GREAT OARSMAN

Only sailing vessel hailing from the port that had been heard of at this time was the Mary Fox of Bath, which had been rebuilt in 1880 at the height of Ned Hanlan's rowing triumphs, and had been renamed Edward Hanlan after him. In order to secure the new name it was necessary for Registrar Walter Ross of Picton to certify that the Mary Fox had been "broken up," which was literally true, in the rebuilding. Captain Byron Bongard sailed her before he got the Acacia, and made money with her. She was laid up above the old Belleville bridge and burned in 1894, after some slack seasons. She had not been built in Bath, but at Dog Lake, in Storrington Township, below Kingston, by Jacob Harris, who had a shipyard there with his brother Christopher. She was a chunky schooner, 81.4 feet long, 20 feet beam, 7.6 feet depth of hold and 102 tons register. About the same size and carrying capacity as the old schooner Snow Bird, which could float 200 tons deadweight or more.

Bath ran to steamers and steamers ran to Bath, from the earliest times to the days of the Gildersleeves and the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Co., when the Caspian, Passport, Magnet, Varuna, Alexandria, City of the Bay, Hero, North King, Corinthian and others called at the little wharf.

ONTARIO'S FIRST STEAMER BUILT IN BATH LIMITS

Indeed, Bath might claim the first steamer built on Lake Ontario, the Frontenac, launched in 1816, no mere ferryboat but a three-masted paddlewheeler, 170 feet long and costing £20,000. She was built within the village limits, not at the village wharf but at Finkle's Point, in Ernestown, where a cairn marks the site of the old shipyard. Ernestown, the township, was the earliest name of the Bath district.

Another steamer built at Bath was Calvin and Breck's big river tug City of Hamilton, 338 tons register, and insurable for $14,000 when she was twelve years old. David Tait, of Tante, the Amherst Island shipwright, fashioned her in the year of the California gold rush, 1849.

But Bath had its sailing vessels, too, built on the bay shore, the largest being the B. F. Davy, given in Thomas' Register of 1864 as of 459 tons register. She must have been a three-master and the largest schooner on Lake Ontario at the time if the tonnage is correct. She was built for Davy and Peterson by A. L. Hoselton and was insurable for $9,000 in her tenth season. Hoselton built her in 1855, at the end of the Crimean War, which spelled prosperity for Canada.

The following year at Bath he built the schooner Red Rover, 67 tons register, for D. S. Murray of Picton. She was wrecked in a gale in 1803 and required large repairs. Her name appears in a list of vessels that used to load grain at the old limestone storehouse in Oakville many years ago.

These vessels were carvel built schooners of regular model. Another built in Bath in 1853 was the schooner Bay Queen, of considerable tonnage—132 tons register, 300 carrying capacity—but of scow model. The Mary Fox of Bath may have been a scow at first, but the Edward Hanlan was a full schooner. The Bay Queen was built by Richardson for S. H. Palmatier of Bath.

Peter Davy was one of the original settlers of the Quinte district, at Trenton. He had two sons, Ben and George, and is said to have built a schooner and named her after them. Friend Fred Myers, Belleville born, gives the information that the vessel was named the Ben Davy, and was burned or captured in 1812 when Commodore Chauncey raided the Bay. The invaders reported burning a schooner at Ernestown, (Bath), and collected prize money for the schooner Two Brothers, captured at the same place. This may have been the vessel which was burned.

Still another Bath builder was Wm. Griggs, who, in the Rebellion year, 1837, built the Cinderella Davy, mentioned elsewhere, and must have built many other vessels. We would be glad to know more of the Bath-built fleet.

"NEAT GALLERIES, COVERED AND RAILED IN WOOD, FACING THE KINGSTON ROAD"