Keel Cruise to Old Port: Schooner Days DCCXXI (721)

by C. H. J. Snider

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ONE of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club's first commodores, Dr. E. M. Hodder, published an interesting little lake guide seventy or eighty years ago in which he said he had been into all the ports then on Lake Ontario but two—-Sackett's Harbor and Port Ontario. Sackett's Harbor, war port of 1812, is still going strong. We bought potatoes in it this summer when there appeared to be no potatoes in Canada. Port Ontario, Dr. Hodder said, was in ruins when he wrote, its piers and wharves decayed and entrance filling up. Even its lighthouse lamp, last evidence of a port, was extinguished fifty-five years ago, long after its trade had vanished.

Still, it had been a port once, for the Big Cheese told about last week was shipped out of there by schooner in 1835. It was without expectation of finding much more than a memory of it that we set sail last month on a rubber-keeled cruise of the South Shore. We found it, memory and all, but not as expected.

FOLLOWING THE RIDGE

"Follow the Ridge road to Oswego, turn left at Mexico on to the Scenic Route and stop at the Salmon River and you'll be there," were the sailing directions. We crossed a Salmon River at Pultneyville and a Salmon River at Sodus before we got to Oswego and we knew there had been a Salmon River at Oshawa and doubtless several more on both sides of Lake Ontario. But twenty-five miles past Oswego on the log, when Ontario's shore had begun to run north and south, we came to a long bridge and a filling station and a few neat white painted buildings. There were no inhabitants visible, for it was early in a public holiday. But a sign said "Port Ontario," so we had to be there.

With bridge and fill the highway spanned islands well grown with bulrushes and marsh, with stretches of running water in between. A pleasant site for the summer cottages which showed among the trees, but no suggestion of wharfage, however decayed, no ruins of lighthouse, pier, shipyard, or shipping and no sign of Lake Ontario, for we had left the shore a mile or two to port and had had only most distant glimpses of ,the water since leaving Oswego.

The running water below had to reach the lake somehow, so, on the chance that this was the right Salmon River, we turned left on to the good road skirting it and sought its mouth.

SIGHTING THE LIGHTHOUSE

In ten minutes we had our reward. We came upon the quaintest of old lighthouses, a square three story building of red and black and grey field stone, capped by a lantern cupola that still retained the rails which had enabled the keeper to polish the panes from outside without falling off.

All around were comfortable well built wooden homes, many boarded up for the winter. Lake Ontario pounded and grumbled and gnawed across the narrow strip of sandy beach at the roots of protesting trees left naked on the bank above. Around the old lighthouse swung a hard paved roadway with a well designed parapet to protect it from lake and river, for the light had, been right at the point where the river rushed into the lake.

The lighthouse was occupied as a dwelling. Behind it, running north for a considerable distance, was Joseph Heckel's new Lighthouse Hotel, just closing for the season, and beyond it some well planned bungalows with all creature comforts, including lawns and flower gardens jealously guarded from the lake sands.

CENTURY OLD ONIONSKIN

In one of these, Mr. John E. Hunt's, a Syracuse banker's, we had the good fortune to be shown a copy of the original onion-skin map of Port Ontario, and a photograph of the lighthouse when it was in commission, at least fifty-five years ago, before me roadway was built around it or the summer hotel and cottages appeared. They date from 1920 onwards.

The map shows Port Ontario as it was contemplated and put on the market for subdivision, in 1836. That it ever "came true" as planned, with its two public squares, one on each side of the river, besides its School-house Plot and Washington Square, its six mill slips, wharves and canals, and its islands occupied with homes and manufactures, is to be doubted, but the little place did become a port.

ISLES OF THE LADIES

The islands in the river all had names 110 years ago, many now forgotten. There were, below a projected bridge, Kewana, Meadow, Bird and Great Day, perhaps in memory of the cheese embarkation. The, bridge was planned to cross Salmon Island in mid-stream. Above were the twin Adcane islands, and Susan F., Mary Ann, Martha, Maria and Julia, named for belles whose bones may have been dust for a century now, and Surveyors, Crab and Genesee.

On the map are two splay-mouthed piers—with an early schooner-rigged steamer like the first Ontario, entering them, and a lighthouse on the north pier guiding her in. This may not have been merely a fancy picture for there is a hollow in the sickle of the wooded sandbar now blocking the Salmon estuary which is known as the Wind Gap, and it may mark a former mouth of the river and the channel between piers used for the harbor entrance, and long ago silted up.

The stone lighthouse building, dating back to 1838 with a refitting in 1855, is on the lake shore a quarter of a mile northeast from the lighthouse tower and pier end shown on the map as running into the lake. Blackened fangs of piling still discernable in the tumble of waves hint that three piers or wharves may have projected from the lake shore. Two of these might be the piers of a later harbor entrance but none corresponds in position to the map's piers. The present outlet of the river, at the lighthouse, is marked on the map by two parallel black lines which may only indicate an intended causeway.

THE BIG CHEESE

There is one evidence of Port Ontario's shipping activity a few hundred yards from the lighthouse building. This is a rather handsome summer residence, very well kept and tastefully painted green above a beautiful green lawn, with a large skylight, belvidere or solarium above its second story, giving it a pleasant pagoda-like appearance. This, we are told, had been one of the port warehouses, the cheese storage, and thoughts at once flew to the giant cheese which started from Port Ontario for Washington one hundred and ten years ago. Perhaps it was loaded on to the schooner at that very spot.

ANOTHER FOR CHERRY VALLEY HONORS

From Little Britain comes this clipping about a Prince Edward County sailor of the Great Lakes:

"On Oct. 8th, at 10.47 a.m., aboard the SS Ralph Budd, 45 miles from Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., on Lake Superior, Nelson Donald Stokes Hudgin, watchman, was assisting in taking the hatches off and apparently , slipped and fell into the cargo hold, a distance of 25 feet. The crew gave first aid and at 11.25 a.m. the pharmacy mate from the coast guard station at Whitefish Point, boarded the ship and gave first aid with advice from a Sault doctor. Nelson was rushed to War Memorial Hospital at Sault, arriving at 3.10 p.m. Ho never regained consciousness and died at 3.50 p.m.

"The funeral was from the home of his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Wm. J. Stokes, Little Britain, to Zion Church at 2 p.m., Oct. 11. Rev. D. P. Morris gave a helpful message to the friends. Mrs. Owen Sweetman sang."

Nelson Hudgin was a South Bay boy, born there in 1929, second son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hudgin, and hewn right out of Prince Edward County oak. Old captains, mates and sailors like "Wait" Hudgin, Phil Hudgin, Lew Hudgin, Henry McConnell-—"Harry out of Picton"—George Bongard and G. W. Hudgin were all "uncle" to him, Eddie Rorke was his father's first cousin, and Marsh Spafford was his friend for the first fourteen years of his life, until the family moved to Blackwater. Nelson went sailing from Blackwater last May. He will be remembered when the roll is called at the county Mariners Service at Cherry Valley next season. His father was a Cherry Valley boy.

OLD AND NEW PICTURES OF CENTURY of PORT ONTARIO

ALL THAT'S LEFT, DEC., 1945

OLD PORT ONTARIO LIGHT, 1890 When it last sent its gleam across the entrance to the then decayed harbor.

ONCE STORAGE FOR PORT ONTARIO CHEESE, this pagoda-like building is now one of the handsome bungalows of the present summer resort of Selkirk Shore.

Of Port Ontario piers - perhaps the very wharf from which the Giant Cheese Rolled to Washington.

PORT ONTARIO AS COL. ROBERT NICHOLS SURVEYED IT FOR SUBDIVISION.

From the old torn onionskin map of 1836