Fast Water, 4-Poster, Was Canada's Pride: Schooner Days DCXCVI (696)

by C. H. J. Snider

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Her christened name was Minnedosa, meaning "Water of the Rapids" - She was the best oak and iron could make.

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PRIDE OF CANADA was the registered name of a lake barquentine built by Louis Shickluna at St. Catharines in 1859. She was a good vessel of her class, the Old Welland Canal type, limited by the locks to 138 feet length and 365 tons register, (he most that could be dragged over the sills.

The real pride of Canada in the lake trade came thirty years later, when James Roney, master builder for the Montreal Transportation Co., laid the keel blocks for the schooner Minnedosa in the company's shipyard at Kingston east of the old Tetu du Pont barracks, where the brick stables now stand. Work was begun in 1889, and on April 26th, 1890, she was ready for launching.

All the soft soap in Frontenac County had been gathered up to grease the ways. Two tugs were required to start her. The launching bottle was broken and the christened name pronounced — "Minnedosa." Minnedosa is a Sioux word meaning waters of the rapid. "Fastwater" would be an English equivalent.

ILL OMEN AT LAUNCH

Down the ways slid the great hollow-sounding hull, until the bow was almost clear. Then she hung. Her great weight had spread or broken the huge oaken timbers of the slideways under water.

A diver had to go down to ascertain what was holding her. It was a perilous task to remove the obstructions without injuring the vessel or being crushed by her. Scholars thought of the origin of the launching custom of shedding the blood of the grape on the bow, which is said to represent the blood of the human sacrifices with which pagan launchings were accompanied of yore. Sailors said if she killed a man at her launching she would go on killing men all her life.

But she was floated off without injury to herself or the diver, and had a useful career of twenty-five years. Yet the life-price of her christening was paid in the end.

LAST AND GREATEST SCHOONER

The Minnedosa really justified the name "Pride of Canada," although she never wore it. She was the last and the greatest of the thousand schooners built in Canada for the lakes. Her builders lavished labor and decoration upon her. She was as good a vessel as could be built from oak and iron in the 19th century. She was 250 feet long from stem to stern, 242 feet on the keel, 38 feet beam, 17 feet deep in the hold.

These figures from Dominion Illustrated, May 10th, 1890. I have not her registered tonnage. The Great Lakes Red Book credited her with 2,000 tons capacity as an ore carrier.

Her floor-frames, the heaviest part of her ribbing, were oak timbers 18 inches by 16 inches, as heavy as those of the famous Kingston-built three-decker H.M.S. St. Lawrence, of 102 guns, and there was only five inches of space between them.

Her bilge planks were great lengths of oak eight inches thick. Her sides and ceiling were 5-inch oak plank. All this oak was reinforced by a steel sheerstrake 5/8 of an inch thick belting her all around at the deck level and 18 inches deep. Below this, inside, she had diagonal straps of steel forming three 5-foot squares and landing 2 1/2 feet on the floor frames. This was to prevent hogging,

OUR FIRST FOUR MASTER

She had four masts, and the mainmast was 150 feet from heel to topmast truck. She was not a lofty vessel, for her proportions of beam to length, one to seven, and the impracticability of carrying ballast, called for a comparatively low-sail plan. But she had four topmasts, and was fully rigged on all masts carrying twelve working sails. With the wind abeam she was capable of making fifteen knots.

She had six cargo hatches. Her forecastle was a high, square deckhouse, under the foreboom. Nearly all other lake schooners had their forecastles forward, in the eyes of the ship, and below deck. She had a handsome poop-cabin aft, where her deck was raised. The cabin had two doors and two windows in the forward bulkhead, four windows on each side and a large skylight over the dining room, which was in the after part of it. The jiggermast came through the cabin roof, forward of the skylight.

FIGUREHEAD A MASTERPIECE

The stern was rounded with a beautiful elliptical transom and her stem had a graceful cutwater knee and trailboards, culminating in a life-size half-length figure of Ceres, the Grecian goddess of harvest. Behind her inverted cornucopiae, or horns of plenty, poured out the bounty of corn and wheat and the fruits of the earth, flowing back in a beautifully carved Greek scroll running along the cheek-knees. On the headrails which braced the figurehead was, at each end, a Canadian beaver with a maple branch in his mouth. Between the lines of the rails the name was carven deep. A thousand dollars was spent on goldleaf and painting for this figurehead. It was the finest ever set afloat on fresh water. It was designed and its construction supervised by N. Henderson, Kingston artist. The gilding, all in gold leaf, was done by John Martin. The artist who did the carving was Louis Gourdier, one of the most skillful wood workers in Canada. He even finished the catheads, the great foot-square oak timbers projecting from the bows for catting the anchors, with the heads of cats as large as tigers, carved in relief on the ends of the timbers, and these were painted to look like life.

It took 65-ft. oak sticks, 14 inches square, to build up her main keelson, and her sister keelsons were also 14 inches square. She had two decks and- two shelf-pieces 36 x 7 inches on each side, with doubled deck-frames supported by 140 iron hanging knees, each weighing 400 lbs. She cost between $60,000 and $70,000 to build in 1890. It is doubtful if the work could be done now at ten times the figure, if it could be done at all. We have neither the oak nor the carpenters.

LAUNCH OF THE MINNEDOSA AT KINGSTON, APRIL 26th, 1890

From an early photogravure in the Dominion Illustrated