Timber Droghing Rough and Tough: Schooner Days DCCVI (706)

by C. H. J. Snider

_______

Old Timer tells of many narrow escapes when he strode the deckload and the horses hove the capstan round a hundred years ago.

_______

WE were talking lately about Alexander Muir having been master of some of the early timber schooners mentioned in D. D. Calvin's fascinating "Saga of the St. Lawrence." Alexander and his brethren in due course became timber magnates after the pattern of Delano Dexter Calvin himself. They learned the timber trade in which they made a family fortune, the hard old handspike way, often in peril of death or dismemberment.

Alexander Muir received a $16 a month as a sailor for one season, $20 a month next as mate, and then $40 a month as master of his first command. In the schooner Granville, his first timber vessel, he had the first of many close calls. "While on this vessel I had a narrow escape from getting my head crushed between two pieces of oak timber. I remained till the end of November, when she was laid up, and I believe she never sailed any more. She was old and not considered worth rebuilding. Before leaving for my home on the Chateauguay, Mr. Cook (partner in the firm of Calvin, Cook and Counter) promised me a vessel to sail the following spring.

"I was in the Britannia three months," he continued in his memoir, written fifty years afterwards, February 22nd, 1890, "when I was put aboard a new vessel called the Harriet Calvin. She was built as a timber vessel (the clipper-lined Britannia was not) and freighted timber from the lake shore to Port Dalhousie and Hamilton. I had Alexander Donaldson as mate and he remained on the vessel for four months. We took a load of salt from Oswego to Cleveland, then loaded staves at Black Biver, on Lake Erie, for Garden Island.

HORSEPOWER GUILLOTINE

"While loading the Harriet Calvin this season at Grimsby I came near getting killed. I was standing on the stern and the horses (even these small timber droghers carried horses for their capstans) were heaving on the masthead purchases. The steel grips were floated out to lift the square end of the oak timber and when the strain came the grips slipped and flew past my head, tearing a piece out of my shirt and cutting a hole in my upper lip and loosening two of my teeth. This was my second narrow escape while loading timber. The grips went twenty feet in the air after passing my head. Had they hooked as they passed they would have taken my head off.

"In October I was given the schooner Queen Victoria to sail. She was a larger vessel, built on Garden Island two years before by a French-Canadian named Louis Goler. He had no school education but he built a large number of vessels at Cape Vincent both before and after this date. He had a large family of girls and they all married ship carpenters. He said he had to keep them employed, so he always had a vessel building.

"After laying the Queen up towards the end of 1840, I came to Port Dalhousie to see my new purchase." (He had bought a quarter acre on Queen street for $60 and built a little house. This was the beginning of Port Dalhousie's surviving enterprise, Muir Bros. dry dock, built ten years later.

"The old piers were short and it required great care in bringing a vessel in, or she would run into the lock gate.

"While I was at the port the Harriet Calvin came to the piers. Capt. Scott, in charge of her, was checking his vessel with his bow lines on the forward timber heads, when his legs got into the coil of rope. He was drawn up to the timberhead and his leg was cut off between the knee and the foot. The severed foot fell overboard into the canal. I went aboard and took charge.

"The schooner was bound to Cleveland, where, after we had discharged our cargo of salt, we loaded flour for Buffalo at 20 cents a barrel. Our freight was all paid in silver. In Buffalo I purchased fresh beef from the farmers at 1 cent per pound, cabbages 1 cent each and pork $5 per barrel, sheep 50 cents apiece, to be salted down for use next season."

QUEEN VICTORIA

"The four years following I sailed the schooner Queen Victoria with Bryce as mate. This period covered the years 1841-1844. Bryce sailed this vessel after I left her.

"In those days we made a trip a week in the timber trade between Garden Island and Port Dalhousie (a distance of about 180 miles). The timber at the port came from Chippawa Creek and Grand River, and was brought down in rafts. We made one trip in the Queen in three days up to Stony Creek and return to the island. In those days there were no tugs to help vessels in and out of the harbors.

"On this vessel I had many escapes with my life. While taking on a deckload out in the lake near Port Dalhousie I had a narrow escape from having both legs broken. The piece of timber had butted the hatch coaming. The dog drew out and passed between my legs and flew up forward under the windlass. In passing it cut a gash about two inches long in my leg.

TAKEN TO THE BOTTOM

"Once I fell out of her small boat in Hamilton Bay. Once while coming into Port Dalhousie in November, while handing the snubbing line to Mr. Woodel, the lighthouse tender, my foot slipped and I went overboard with the line in my hand. The sailors were lowering the foresail at the time, and the wind was after the vessel. I held on to the line, thinking the man at the wheel, William Bates, would haul me up at once, but the thought never seemed to cross his mind. I was holding to the line and as it was heavy 6-inch hemp it dragged me to the bottom. The vessel was brought up, the small boat lowered and two men got into her. Poles and oars had been thrown on to the piers, Woodel grasped a pole and as he saw my head come to the surface he pushed the pole down by my breast. I laid hold on it, let the hawser go, and was pulled up. I could not swim, so was afraid to let go the rope before.

"Twice while stowing timber in the hold of the vessel I came near having my legs taken off.

BLEEDING CURED EVERYTHING

"The cabins of these vessels were of inch lumber, built on deck so as to leave the hold for loading, and they were very much exposed and cold in winter. In the fall of 1844 I caught a severe cold, and when I arrived home on the Chateauguay I was sick nearly all winter with the pleurisy. Old Dr. Sims, who obtained his education in Scotland, came to see me. He bled me and I commenced to improve at once, but I was never bled before or since.

"For about a month in the following spring I was in the schooner Queen Victoria, and when coming up the lake on the first trip a man named Fish was ordered up to the head of the mainmast. When near the crosstrees he missed his hold and fell to the deck, a distance of fifty feet. In falling he caught his arms around a rope which guided him straight to the deck and on this account apparently he did not seem much hurt. The next morning, when we arrived in Port Dalhousie, John Martindale sharpened his penknife and bled him in the arm. Fish took some physic and in a short time was all right, for his allotted time had not yet arrived.

LIVERPOOL FULL-RIGGED BRIG

"At this time (1845) a new vessel called the Liverpool had just been finished on Garden Island, and I took charge of her. She was 135-foot keel, 26 feet beam and 11 feet deep. On this vessel we freighted oak timber from Port Dalhousie to Garden Island for nearly three years. This vessel carried topsails and top-gallantsails and was brig rigged. She carried a cargo of about 17 or 18,000 cubic feet. We made a trip a week for seven weeks in succession from Garden Island to the Port, and had no tugs to assist us. We had a crew of twelve and three horses to load our cargoes. We discharged our cargoes at the island seven Fridays in succession, and arrived at the Port the following Mondays. For those seven trips the wind never failed to blow north every Friday to go up and blow southwest every Monday to go down. It took a day and a half to fill the hold of the vessel, and half a day to put the deck load on. My wages were $80 per month, and one season the owners made me a present of $100.

MASTER OF STEAM POLLYWOG

"In 1848 the steamer Marion was built on Garden Island and I took charge of her. The Marion was what was called a pollywog. She had side wheels, the buckets of which were only 3 1/2 feet long, and there was a recess in the sides of the steamer in which the wheels worked. Her engine was 5 horsepower, and both it and the boiler had been on the mail boat Cobourg. She had two smokestacks and two boilers. Steamers at this time had no steam or water gauges and no rubber packing.

"This was the first season that lake vessels attempted to load for Montreal."

The lucky LIVERPOOL and the clipper BRITANNIA. These well-drawn engravings of a full-rigged brig and a topsail schooner—both rigs long vanished from the lake—give a good idea of what these two early Calvin vessels were like. Although not specific portraits, the schooner looks rather like the "mystery ship" identified tentatively as the Britannia.