Maritime History of the Great Lakes

The Bale of the BAILEY: Schooner Days DCCXXVI (726)

Publication
Toronto Telegram (Toronto, ON), 12 Jan 1946
Description
Full Text
The Bale of the BAILEY
Schooner Days DCCXXVI (726)

by C. H. J. Snider

_______

THIS picture has a ripe fragrance of tubs of grapes, sacks of corn, jags of lumber, slabs and tanbark, mingled with the gunpowdery smell of scraped limestone and the weedy whiff of boulders dragged from the lake bottom with long moss trailing from them like drowned women's hair.

Because the vessel depicted trafficked in all these items. Where she was built is not certain, possibly Pike Creek or Belle River or Deerbrook, on the north shore of Essex County, on Lake St. Clair, where timber was good and plentiful and cheap, because hard to ship out from the shallow approaches. But where she hailed from is certain for "E BAILEY — PELEE ISLAND" was painted on her stern. Long had she eared the harvests of that land of corn and wine for the wineries and woodyards in Leamington and Sandusky before she appeared on Lake Ontario as a stonehooker.

A WEARIN' O' THE GREEN

Capt. Richard Smith, of Oakville, Dick to many, brought her down in 1898 or 1899, a big, rangy V-bowed scow, then painted green up to her bulwarks and white above the covering board. On the trip down he found her a stiff vessel, after his long experience with the lean and tender Lillian, and fast too, while the wind was fair—but leaking like a basket under a press of canvas. That dampened both Richard's enthusiasm and his bunk. He had paid $200 for her in Amherstburg—to a Salvation Army man, too, and after pumping the lake through the Lillian he expected surcease from his labors for that much money. To be fair to Salvation he might have remembered that $2,000 would not have bought this paragon when she was new and the Army man had made no concealment of the fact that she was old in his father's time and he was selling her as was, not as had been.

THEY CALL IT RECONDITIONING NOW

Richard did remember that he had no peace with the Lillian's pump until he rebuilt her. After a few backbreaking seasons with his new charge he hauled her out on the low ground at the mouth of the Sixteen Mile Creek for this same major operation.

"Just because she's christened E. Bailey I don't figger on bailing her the rest o' my life," said Richard archly.

"Why not rename her Punkin?" Allan Kemp came right back "Spell it right, though, you know, the Pump Kin."

"Why," Fod McCraney said, "if she's as good as you told us she is, with 5-inch sides edgebolted and all that, it'll cost as much to tear her down as it would to build a new hooker."

There was some truth in that. To add to Richard's discouragement, when he got her out on the timbers in the marsh, her weary ends, no longer waterborne, drooped until the forefoot at one end and the rudder at the other rested on the grass. The timbers and the keel blocks amidships kept her bottom up in a gentle S curve.

The hooker boys had compassion on Richard's predicament and rallied to his help. Jimmy Jackson, fisherman and boat builder, became chief carpenter. A keg was discovered by some means and the boys agreed to work for nothing at tearing down while the lager lasted.

GENERAL ASSAULT

They came with axes, saws, chisels, peavies, crows and split-tongued spike bars. Wham! fell the first axe blow and the sparks flew, for the old craft was as full of iron as the Mesaba [sic: Messabi] range. She had been built of thick planks, dowelled together edgewise with 5/8 iron bolts, each bolt going through three planks. The work halted abruptly when the fourth axehead was nicked, but a grindstone was brought down on a wheelbarrow and one good Samaritan sat on the lager keg to prevent its premature emptying and turned the stone while another bore down heavy on the axe blade.

With renewed axe edges the three upper strakes of plank were reduced to chips and the wreckers called it a day. The plank had been good 4-inch pine but it was soft past caulking, here and there, and all had to go. Below the third strake odd short pieces and long ones were needed but the chine strake and bottom, having been always under water, were found caulkable.

BREAD UNDER WATER

Now Richard, a provident man, had observed the wreck of the sandsucker Ontario in the harbor; also a barrel of resin at the tannery, and another of pine tar. From the wreck he obtained enough three-inch pine plank to restore the ravaged sides at lesser thickness and enough oak to, put in sister keelsons to help somewhat in straightening out the warped and drooping keel when the ends were screwjacked up. Chestnut logs, squared on two sides, were used for new ribs. They were toed in to the heavy five-inch chine strake, and the three-inch wreck planks were spiked to them above.

The "iron mine" in the old timbers proved helpful, for with their ends flattened by the village blacksmith the long 5/8 bolts were used as clamps between the deck and the bottom planking.

The tar and the resin and all the old worn out rope to be found in Oakville were worked up into oakum for the caulking. The sheer or profile curvature which had been lost by the droop of age was restored by filling in wedge shaped pieces at bow and stern.

THE CROCUS OF SIXTEEN MILE CREEK

It took all winter to accomplish this but these alterations and a thin coat of white paint above and red oxide below gave a new lease of life to the old Pelee Islander. She came out in the spring like a crocus. But alack, the waterlogged pine of the sandsucker's bottom checked with exposure to the sun and she was not leakproof.

Richard and his revived charge were both past the age of hurrying and worrying and a few comfortable trips a season sufficed both. Country produce was cheap and he provisioned himself and Big Bill of Amherstburg, whom he had inherited at $10 a month when he bought the Bailey, with what he could get in trade with the farmers along the shore. Often he and Bill left the schooner in Oakville harbor and sculled down the lake as far as Marigold Point, or up as far as Bronte, in one of the assortment of scows he had. This they would load where they could, and bring back to the harbor at nightfall and unload aboard the schooner until she was swimming scupper deep.

Then he would wait for a light wind, preferably from the north, which meant smooth water, and, picking up a boy or two who wanted the trip to Toronto, they would slowly float down to the stone yards at the foot of West Market street, or out to the Eastern Gap, which was then still in need of cribstone.

The hooker was a big one and her loads, long to accumulate, would bring $50 to $70 when stone was selling at $8 and $9 a toise. It took a couple of trips a week to make money in the stone trade but five or six a season would keep a man alive. All he had to do was to lift four or five hundred tons of stone from the lake to the deck, from the deck to the hold, and from the hold to the dock.

FLOATING HOME AT EVENTIDE

In one of these leisurely excursions in 1903 or 1904 the Bailey had gone down to Frenchman's Bay to load instead of working the Oakville shore. Getting a light northeasterly air in the evening she started for Toronto with a cargo of cribstone on deck and in the hold, and carrots, corn, potatoes and turnips in the lazarette. The wind was light and over the quarter and she ghosted along quietly in the smooth water.

Richard turned in at midnight, leaving the faithful Big Bill at the helm, with orders to call him if there was any change in conditions, or at 4 o'clock anyway. Bill had no watch and the Bailey had no clock but when the sun came up he figured it must be pretty near four o'clock anyway and he was getting hungry, so, greatly daring, he called the boss.

"How's she heading?" demanded Richard from below.

"What does W stand for on the compass?" countered Big Bill.

"West, of course."

"Well, she's right on W, like she was when you went below."

"Moving any?"

"Not much. It's dead ca'm."

When Big Bill said "not much" it was a masterpiece of overstatement. Richard came up and spat over the rail.

"Why," said he, "she ain't movin' a-tall."

"Must be," defended Big Bill. "You went below at Petticoat Creek and now we're abreast o' Centre Point."

"Yes and stuck on the bottom!" yelled Richard suddenly. "Lookit the stones on both sides of her! You could walk around her with your chin dry."

"It was dark," defended Big Bill.

That was the end of the E. Bailey. In vain the dockwallopers scraping the sewer grease in Jarvis street slip for the price of a can crooned thereafter:

"Won't you come home, E. Bailey

Won't you come home?"

She moaned the whole night lo-ong,

"I'll do the cookin' darlin',

I'll pay the rent,

I knows I done you wro-ong.

I 'member that stormy evenin'

I turned you out

Wiv nuffin but a fine tooth co-omb,

I know I'm to blame

And aint it a shame!

E. Bailey, won't you please

Come home?

When the morning breeze came in with its little joggle of sea the E. Bailey bumped to pieces.

A PASSING HAIL

"Many thanks for Schooner Days each week, it sure is a treat to all lovers of boats, old and young.

"Inclosed find an enlargement made from a lantern slide, maybe some of the old-timers will recognize it. From what I know it was taken around the first of the century in Toronto Bay, The party who gave me the slide can't tell me very much about it. If necessary, through a third party I may be able to get more information.

Best wishes for the holiday season.

"C. E. ANTHONY."

870 Ossington ave.


Caption

THE E. BAILEY AT THE EASTERN GAP AFTER A WET NIGHT


Creator
Snider, C. H. J.
Media Type
Newspaper
Text
Item Type
Clippings
Date of Publication
12 Jan 1946
Subject(s)
Language of Item
English
Geographic Coverage
  • Ontario, Canada
    Latitude: 43.63341 Longitude: -79.3496
  • Ontario, Canada
    Latitude: 43.8175 Longitude: -79.0925
  • Ontario, Canada
    Latitude: 43.45011 Longitude: -79.68292
  • Ontario, Canada
    Latitude: 41.781388 Longitude: -82.657777
Donor
Richard Palmer
Creative Commons licence
Attribution only [more details]
Copyright Statement
Public domain: Copyright has expired according to the applicable Canadian or American laws. No restrictions on use.
Contact
Maritime History of the Great Lakes
Email:walter@maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca
Website:
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The Bale of the BAILEY: Schooner Days DCCXXVI (726)