Hours in Icewater Left 74 Year Scars: Horseboy Happenings II:Schooner Days DCCXXXVIII (738)

by C. H. J. Snider

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THE JENNIE GRAHAM was as fine an Old Canaller as you'd wish to see, painted white, and as trim as the pretty girl after whom she was named. And that was the wife of one of my uncles, Capt. J. C. Graham, of St. Catharines. She had three masts, and on the foremast she had a big squaresail that travelled on hoops on the arms of the long fore yard, with inhauls and outhauls and brails to gather it into the mast. Above this she had a square topsail, of the "single" style, with two reefs in it, a large sail that might take both watches aloft to reef. Above it again she had a pair of raffees or bat-wings sheeting home to either topsail yardarm.

Shickluna built her for Capt. John C. Graham and Capt. George Campbell at St. Catharines in 1871. She wintered in Toronto at the close of her first season's navigation. The schooner E. Hall was the last one in there, on Dec. 15th.

HORSEBOY AT $6 PER MONTH

Early next spring the Jennie Graham came across to St. Catharines where she was owned and I was proud as Punch to join her as horseboy, at $6 a month, though I weighed less than a hundred pounds. All I had to do was to feed and water and bed and drive two horses, which were carried to work the timber capstan, besides setting or furling those two raffees above the topsail yard whenever they had to be shaken out or stowed, which might be any hour of the day or night. Apart from these fixtures, I would have to cut wood for the galley or draw water for the cook or take a trick at the wheel, or help make or take in sail or tend lines as required.

The Jennie Graham was commanded by Capt. Duncan Graham, another uncle. Her first mate was Malcolm McPhee and her second mate for she had two, was Dave Smith. She had a man cook, and four sailors in the forecastle—-and the horse boy.

We didn't get our capstan horses until we reached Windsor on our way up to Cheboygan on Lake Huron to load square timber, so I was sole monarch of the blank circle or horse track around the timber capstan on the forward deck all the way up Lake Erie.

INTO THE ICY LAKE

The big tug Bob Anderson, built in Cleveland for H. N. and J. W. Strong of Detroit—she cost $19,000—-towed us up the rivers and into Lake Huron on the last day of April, 1872. The lake was still full of drifting ice driving down with the current and a stiff west wind. The water was smooth when we entered the lake and we swung every stitch we had, to get as far as possible before the wind worked into the northwest and ahead. It was grand sailing, but cold. The vessel listed over now and then in the puffs, and I shortened up the halters of my horses, making them fast to the capstan, to help them stay on their feet on the slanting circle deck.

Twelve miles out from Port Huron we got a sharp squall from the northwest. The man at the wheel let her come up, either to meet it or to clear an ice patch. In a fore-and-after this would have shaken the wind out of the sails, and it eased pressure. But our square sails, braced sharp up across the mast, were caught aback, and stopped the Jennie Graham like four-wheel brakes. Over she heeled for the opposite tack, and over she kept going, after she was on her beam ends. She turned bottom up, like a boy stuck in a snow bank turning a somersault. It was all so quick. I fell and struck something hard and then the ship seemed to be rolling on top of me and I was in the water and among ice, gasping. Oh, it was cold! I didn't know that the wind had been knocked out of me, for in my fall my port and starboard ribs had been telescoped across my midriff.

I had been amidships with the captain and first mate, trying to cast off the main halliards and braces. The second mate and the sailors were forward to the sails there. I came up close to where my uncle and the mate had hooked their fingers into the main chain plates. These were iron straps, bolted to the sides to take the deadeyes of the rigging. At the turn of the coveringboard there was a space large enough to get fingers into. The four main chainplates were crowded with the two men. I saw one of the sailors farther aft, hanging on by the mizzen chainplates. I managed to kick off my elastic gaiter shoes, and threw off my coat apd cap, and swam through the ice for the mizzen, about forty feet away. I just made it, and hooked eight fingers into the openings at the coveringboard. The sailor was doing the same.

THE CAPTAIN GOES

The vessel being bottom up, the bulwarks and main rail were five or six feet under water on one side. I could touch the rail with my toes. It was warmer in the icy water than in the air. We clung there up to our necks, sheltered by the hull hanging above us. It was a long time. An hour, certainly. Then we heard a scraping sound, and two great planks, sixteen feet long and four inches thick, which had lain on deck and been caught when she rolled over, and held under water by their own buoyancy, worked clear and bobbed up, My uncle was not a young man and he could not swim. He was almost exhausted with hanging on to the cold iron straps. The planks washed near him.

"May God take care of my wife and children," cried he, loosening his cramped fingers and flinging one arm over each plank. The wind whirled him and the planks away, his grey head showing up between them to the last. It was twenty miles to the nearest land to leeward. We never saw him again.

The wreck slowly swung round, and our side, which had been to leeward, commenced to be exposed. The wind was tearing the tops off the water, and the seas kept dashing the ice cakes at us, trying to scrub us off.

Three of us remaining, the mate amidships, the sailor and I at the mizzen, heard a thumping above, us. It sounded like seaboots walking over our heads. Then a voice, "My God, are you alive there?"

It was the sailor who had been at the wheel. As she went over he had jumped from the wheelbox to the rail and clambered out on her quarter and along the keel to the flat bottom, still slimy with the scum of a winter in a Toronto sewer slip. The eight-inch slot of the centreboard box made a hole where he could thrust his feet. He had heavy canvas overalls, and these he stripped off and cut into a canvas rope with his jackknife. Lying flat on the bottom he hove this to me, and hauled me up to where he lay.

HAULED UP TO LIFE

Exposed to the air the bitter wind —and the' pain in my chest—went through me like hundreds of knives.

At this moment with the changed position the Graham rolled back on her side, lifting the crew out of the water. We crawled from the bilge to the rail. Not only were the mate and the sailor beside me thus saved, but we found the men who had been working forward, and were concealed by the bluff of the bow, were alive and hanging on. We had lost our captain, my uncle, and the cook, drowned in the galley, and one sailor washed off forward. The capstan horses had been drowned in their halters.

Our yawlboat across the stern was upended on the davits. The sea shook the falls clear, and it drifted alongside, full of water. A five-gallon can was lashed to the port side. The sailor with the knife cut off the top, and bailed the yawl out.

What a relief to get into it and lie without hanging on!

SWEEPSTAKES TO THE RESCUE

Then along came the schooner Sweepstakes, a two-master, smaller than the Graham, out of Wellington Square, now Burlington, on Lake Ontario. Ted Thomas used to sail her, and her bones have been pickled long ago in the Big Tub at Tobermory. It was still blowing fresh, but she hove to, close to the wreck, and lowered her yawlboat, and took our yawl in tow, and got us on board, for a good hot meal. We gulped it down without waiting to wring out our clothes.

We shall leave our horseboy hero to enjoy the first warmth for hours and tell next week what happened to him and to the Jennie Graham, for fate was not through with either of them when the Sweepstakes came along.

CAPT. WM. D. GRAHAM

Another Charter Member of the EVERGREEN CLUB

Photo by NORMAN KENNEDY

221 St. Pauls Street, St. Catharines

THE CONTRIBUTOR of this horseboy tale is a vigorous gentleman with a voice like Big Ben and a big firm hand that grips yours like a patent anchor taking hold in blue clay. His home is in St. Catharines. He visits Toronto occasionally on business, and it was on a business call recently that he related the story to Schooner Days, almost as given here. It arose from a question about little white scars or cicatrices across the base of the fingers of those powerful hands. These scars, it turned out, were the marks of a struggle for life, when the wearer was hanging on to the sharp edges of iron chainplates in the ice water of Lake Huron, 74 years ago. For, incredible as if seems, Capt. Wm. D. Graham will be 91 if he lives till May 12th, having been born on that date in 1855, the last year of the Crimean War.

The JENNIE GRAHAM under full sail. She was 139 feet long, 23.2 feet beam, 11.5 feet depth of hold and drew about 4 feet light, with her centreboard up. She would load to 11 feet. Four sailors, two mates, a captain, cook and horseboy handled her fourteen sails. She measured 363 tons gross, 320 net.