Candy Cane Comes Home: Schooner Days DCXCI (691)

by C. H. J. Snider

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EIGHTY-FIVE and happy to be afloat again, our young friend, Henry McConnell — "Harry-out-of-Picton," sixty years ago all over the lakes — fingered the wheel-spokes lovingly as we sailed up the Long Reach last July to moorings in Roblin's Cove.

We got talking about vessel names, and the Atmosphere was mentioned. When last seen in Princess street slip between the old sugar refinery and Paddy Burns' lower dock, fifty years since, the Atmosphere was anything but ethereal, being flat cheeked, black top-sided, red-bottomed, three-masted and shabby. She was a full-bowed American schooner built in Milan, Ohio, in 1863, during the Civil War, by Wm. Shupe, for a man with the intriguing name of V. Fries, She had been through the Chicago Fire of 1871. In the 1890's she brought the occasional cargo of coal to Toronto. She stayed alive as a lighter or tow barge, without sails or class, as late as 1914, when she was owned by R. P. Thompson and hailed from Port Huron.

At the time of seeing in Toronto she had three masts, the mizzen being small, like a postscript. That it was an added entry was promptly confirmed by Harry, who was positive that the Atmosphere was a fore-and-after—that is, a two-masted schooner—when he was in her, twenty years before the knee-panted schoolboy who now writes saw her at the foot of Princess street.

"After being in the iron ore trade all summer," said he, "the vessel I was in laid up, and I thought I could make a few more dollars out of the fag end of the fall, so I shipped in the Atmosphere.

"She was then a two-masted schooner, trading from Toledo, Ohio, to Buffalo, coal up Lake Erie and grain down. She was full-bowed, but had good runs, and was the fastest sailing vessel I was ever in. A Dane was her captain—I was with him in other vessels—and he never seemed to know any too much, and when he got excited, especially in bad weather, he didn't seem to know anything. He was one of those fair-weather fellows. One vessel I was in with him was owned by a priest, or held by him for the church, and the Dane fairly wore a groove in Lake Erie with her. He was all right for short runs on the beaten track, but pretty helpless out of that.

"Our last trip to Buffalo there was no more coal to go up the lake, and we loaded potash instead, for Cleveland. I don't know whether it was for fertilizer or factories, but it was in sacks, and a much lighter cargo than grain or coal, so that when we were loaded we had still a high side out, and in good shape for heavy weather.

"It was late in December when we started for Cleveland, and when we got within twenty miles of the place we got a gale from the northwest, with so much snow that you couldn't see anything. We went to work shortening sail, the gafftopsails off first, of course, and the vessel close-hauled on the wind, taking it easy with little headway.

"There was another Dane aboard and the captain had him at the wheel while we were all working forward, hauling down the flying jib. When a vessel is close-hauled on the wind it is hard to get the jibs down unless you let her drop off a point and then fetch her right back again by-the-wind. So the captain said to him 'Keep her off!' and he put his wheel up on her to do so, and kept it there, not knowing enough to bring her back.

"We had got the jib down on the horn, and I was making the downhaul fast before anyone went out to put the gaskets on it, when we saw her making for a big sea like a bull for a haystack. The two sailors with me jumped for the fore rigging. I didn't have a chance to reach the rigging from where I was, so I dropped down behind the windlass bitts. The sea burst aboard and went over my head, but as I was sheltered by the bitts and had my oilskins on I never got the least bit wet. After the sea passed I jumped up and was busy finishing belaying the downhaul when I saw her racing for another boiling sea. I started for the fore rigging, she gave a lurch, and I fetched up against the foremast and kept on going, up the hoops of the foresail, to stay clear of the water.

"'When she went into that sea she smashed her topgallant forecastle deck, a platform of four-by-four inch oak scantlings from the heel of the bowsprit forward, so that everything fell right down on to the main deck, and her anchors and chains washed clean back of her foremast. That sea cleaned everything there was loose overboard, hawser boxes, handspikes, spare plank, ropes, buckets everything. It went right past and over her cabin and soused the Dane who was at the wheel. Too bad it didn't wash him overboard, too, for it was all his fault for not bringing her back till she was closehauled.

"Well, there were the two men up the fore-rigging, and afraid to come down, and the captain and mate up the main rigging, and me up the hoops of the foresail; the crazy Dane at the wheel, with it hard a-weather, and only the cook left dry. She was in the cabin and unable to get out. As soon as I got a chance to look at the fly at the maintopmast head I saw he had her right off, with the wind abeam, and sang out, 'What in hell is that man doing at the wheel? Why don't he sail her up by-the-wind?' She was going a horse race at those big seas and she wasn't going over them, she was going through them, all under water in spite of her high side.

"The captain heard me and got the idea into his thick head, and yelled to the other Dane to sail her up by-the-wind. She waded through three or four more big ones before he got her up to the wind again and slowed down, and we could get down on deck to work her.

"We put two reefs in the mainsail and one in the foresail, and laid that way all night. Very little water came on her deck, and we were real comfortable all night—and didn't it snow and blow! But we didn't have a thing to do. We put the wheel hard down and made it fast, and put on lots of clothes and kept warm all night, and the watch below wasn't called till 8 bells and breakfast time.

"We lay this way till after twelve the next day, when it quit snowing and the wind lulled down, and shifted to the north, clear and cold. We shook out the reefs and made all sail and headed her for Cleveland. The tug sighted us just before the early dark, and came out and got us. So we got unloaded and sailed for Detroit, and laid up there for the winter. I packed my dunnage and struck for home, with a new hat on my head and dollars in my pocket. I surprised my folks in Picton, who thought I wouldn't be home for Christmas, by walking in on them with a red-and-white candy cane on Christmas Eve."

STRAPPING SAILOR OF SIXTY YEARS AGO

STILL STEERS A GOOD TRICK—HENRY McCONNELL of Picton, first mate of the "barque" GEORGE THURSTON, whose model above he has rerigged for the season of 1945, in two pictures—in his prime as a sailor in 1880, and at a yacht's wheel last summer.