Wilson, N.Y. - Mystery Port: Schooner Days DCCX (710)

by C. H. J. Snider

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JUST to beat Schooner Days' good friend, A. Easson, manager of the Oakwood Theatre, to the gun, let us confess that the "mystery port" of 1904, described in this week's number, was Wilson, N.Y., originally known as Wilson Creek, 12 miles east of Niagara.

The photograph reproduced last week was one Mr. Easson got in 1914, and the smart, dark-hulled powerboat in the middle distance was his own old clipper, Zeus II. The man shown in the boat was his shipmate, Alf Strowger. And the man standing on the little wharf at which she lay was Mr. Harris, proprietor of the Harris House, a summer hotel shown on the right of the picture.

41 YEARS AGO

WHEN the life boat left us that evening in 1904 we stood on under all sail in a dying breeze, and entered the unknown harbor as the sun dipped into the lake, well to the northwest. The long shadow of the squat lighthouse on the west side faded from its rest on the east pier like a gull taking its evening flight, The piers were of timber, sunken and decayed, a line of cribs filled with stones and joined by stringers and heavy decking, sagged and humped like a switchboard. They seemed to have been set on sand, and were sinking as storm waves sucked the support from under them in one place and piled it up in another. The channel was silting up; it had ten feet of water here, less than six there.

"HOW GREEN WAS MY GALLEY"

This did not bother us, for Frou Frou was a centreboarder, and could move wherever her 18-inch deep rudder could be dragged through. She was a light little, tight little ship, a grand craft of her inches.

She may have cost as much as $400 to build and rig, in the Gay Nineties. We got her for $75 in the next decade, used her for three seasons, and sold her for $125 to a syndicate headed by the present Senator Hon. Arthur Roebuck, and she went to Lake Timiscaming. She was a happy simple pleasure craft with a good turn of speed. She could carry a party of eight for an afternoon sail. Two of us cruised in her in simple comfort all around Lake Ontario, both sides, between Hamilton and Belleville. The writer often sailed her single handed, and twice sailed her so between Toronto and Port Credit.

She had no ballast except her 150 pound centreboard, and would float if capsized or swamped. We never let her do that. Addition of a topmast, for looks and to set the spinnaker, and of a small cabin, built one New Year's Day, to cover her big open cockpit and painting her green, over her racing blacklead, with two white "sailor collar" stripes, were the only improvements made in her. The cabin kept the spray out and gave 40 inches headroom. We could sit upright on the cabin floor.

WILSON CREEK IN 1904

BUT when we first made the acquaintance of Wilson Creek, as told here and in the preceding number, we had no cabin—and of course auxiliary engines, inboard or outboard, at this time were unknown. When the breeze died completely that evening we did not scorn to get out the sawed-off oar blades we had, and so arrived, as Frank King said poetically, "under full paddles."

The piers ran approximately south. At their inner end the water shoaled to port. We kept to starboard, and the space widened into a creek mouth of great beauty in the twilight, with a few cottages and summer hotels. There was a wooded ridge of land between the creek and the lake. Both banks were high, or had high trees. As we paddled on in the deepening dusk between the leafy walls we heard a queer metallic scraping sound. We hove our centreboard up higher, were relieved to find our projecting rudder still worked freely, and proceeded without further trouble to the landing float of a pretty little hotel with one lamp burning — no hydro then — which looked as though it would not throw such bedraggled lake-soaked voyagers as us out on our respective right and left ears.

THE SIMPLE LIFE

It was 75 cents apiece for supper, bed and breakfast, and we had to go into a huddle and do a lot of lend-leasing among ourselves before deciding on the luxury of not sleeping on the wet floorboards of the cockpit. Three dollars to the lifeboat had dug deep into the treasury, but strange to relate there was still $4 left among the crowd of five newspapermen. It was in Canadian money, but the hospitable Yanks took it without discount, dried us out at the kitchen stove, looked after us well, and asked no questions.

We made an early start next morning with a brisk southwest wind, for wherever we were, we had a long way to go back to Toronto, about fifty miles. Sailing down the creek to the piers under jib alone we heard the same scratching scraping sound at the same spot between the tree-clad banks, and lost steerage way at the same place. After monkeying with the centreboard and paddles and not losing the sound, or making any headway Ken McKay looked up and laughed. Our little topmast was foul of the bight of a telephone wire overhead! We pushed to where the wire was higher, and so went free, but dear knows what "Central" of those departed days had to report.

We steered northwest, or what we could guess at it from the sun and our watches, and before night fell we sailed into the Eastern Gap, Toronto, sunburned as broiled lobsters, and feeling about as comfortable, for all we had had to eat on the way across was the remains of a meat pie which had waterlogged in the gale the day before and gone sour in the July warmth.

WILSON MAKING COMEBACK

SUCH was our first and only acquaintance with Wilson, N.Y., which we hear has been an abandoned port for years and is going to be rehabilitated by the Americans, as a praiseworthy postwar project. Our government could profitably do the same for Bronte, Oakville, Port Credit, Frenchman's Bay, Darlington and Newcastle, some of which have been allowed to go to "wrack and ruin" and all of which have been neglected. Apart from their commercial value every one of these ports could be made as great a tourist attraction as is a hundred miles of good pavement.

OLD HOME OF SCHOONER CAPTAINS FIRST TO ANSWER

Sir:

Your Evening Telegram of Sept. 15, 1945, of Schooner Days asks what port the "Frou Frou" was towed to? I cannot pronounce "Etaoinshrdlu," but I would frankly say the port of refuge in 1904 was Wilson, N.Y.

Yours Very Truly,

CAPT. WALTER KIRK.

Lakeport, Ont., Sept. 16th, 1945.

HE WAS THERE TOO

Sir:

Your article on "Frou-Frou" in last Saturday's issue of your paper challenges the reader to name the port shown in the illustration. The scene is Port Wilson, N.Y., about 12 miles east of Fort Niagara on the south shore of Lake Ontario. The reason I know is that I was the "gremlin" introduced by "Pa" Wolsey at the last moment, and impressed to serve as "boy" for the voyage.

R. H. NICOLS,

21 Golfdale Rd.

Toronto.

ANOTHER FROU-FROU GRADUATE

C. J. HANRATTY, Montreal newspaperman forty years ago, and since then with the C.N.R. and Public Relations of WAC, hails from the midst of his present salvage labors:

"As an humble member of the Order of the Frou-Frou who once served as cook-deckhand, I want, to register my appreciation of 'Any Port In A Storm,' which appeared in Saturday's issue of the Tely and which I have just read. It was a tip top story and stirred the blood of my seafaring ancestors. That meat pie was a prize meat pie, and, to borrow from our Victorian betters, 'full justice' was done. Its memory serves to ease the cramped muscles which continue when recalling that our martinet of a skipper once ordered his crew — two in number — to hike to leeward so as to get the Frou-Frou on an angle to coax sufficient speed to slip into the Credit ahead of a stone hooker. It was done, but mutiny was close."

CORRECT

Sir:

I have read the interesting account entitled "Any Port In A Storm" in your issue of Sept. 15th.

I have studied the photograph of the unknown port, and, while I was not familiar with this locality in 1904, I feel very sure that it is Wilson Harbor. The distance of twelve miles from there to the Niagara River would confirm this.

LEWIS H. GATES,

16 Claremont Ave.,

Buffalo, N.Y.

HERE SHE COMES, "busting the lake wide open," and her dinghy behind her doing it too. This burst of speed on the part of Douglas Bruce's schooner yacht EL VIENTO made one think of Barrie's play "The Old Lady Shows Her Medals." She was leading the fleet from Oshawa to Niagara, with the sloops PINIONS and DIANA, convoyed by the power cruiser MARY LOU—and making her puff at times, too. Originally a club-topsail cutter, El Viento was brought to Toronto from Boston by Henry Carter in 1905. She was then known as Hebe, and was renamed Aida, from Verdi's opera, and later El Viento, Spanish for The Wind. In 1925 she was purchased from her then owner, "Barney" Edwards, R.C.Y.C., by the late Lieut. Col. Steer, and re-rigged as a schooner. E. K. M. Wedd raced her successfully for Mr. Edwards for several years. That she can still step is evident from this snapshot in mid lake on the Labor holiday.