Salt Through the Sacred Straits: Schooner Days DCCXL (740)

by C. H. J. Snider

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INDUSTRIOUS lady that she was, the Jennie Graham of St. Catharines, three-masted topsail schooner, rolled up her sleeves for work and tucked up her skirts for running, the minute the carpenters and riggers got through with her. She had been towed into Sarnia on her beam ends, after a disastrous capsize in Lake Huron in April, 1872. It was June before she was able to continue her voyage to Cheboygan, Mich.—the "Sheborgan" of the old droghers—for the square timber for which she had started from St. Catharines so long before. But she was undaunted, and so were her owners, Capt. John C. Graham and Mr. Wm. Campbell.

And so was her horseboy, whose uncle and shipmates and horses had been drowned in the bitter ice water of Lake Huron on the last day of the preceding April. The horseboy himself had clung to the chainplates for two hours, till his little fingers were cut through with the sharp edges of the irons. He was saved by a miracle, and lives happily yet in St. Catharines—Captain William D. Graham, a thriving evergreen. But his hands are sun-scarred with the bite of the chainplates.

Chainplates have nothing to do with either chains or plates, if your idea of these runs to watches or dining room equipment. A chain-plate is a metal strap, two or three inches wide and half an inch thick, through-bolted on the outside of a vessel, so as to attach the rigging to the sides. It was into a chink between the chainplate and the hull, where the metal was bent to accommodate itself to the wood, that young Willie Graham thrust , his numbed fingers in the death-grip that saved his life, seventy-four years ago.

Our horseboy hero continues a hero to us but he did not long remain a horseboy long. He got beef on his bones in the hard school of lakefaring, and in three seasons was rated an able seaman earning a man's pay. Those were the times when $1.25 a day was considered "good money," though more was paid in the fall.

HORSEBOY AT $6 A MONTH

In 1875, Capt. James Griffith as in command to the Jennie Graham, and our ex-horseboy was one of her crew, in the forecastle. Orders were received, in the fall of the year, to proceed to Kincardine on Lake Huron to load salt for the Philip Armour Packing Company in Chicago.

There is a great slab of salt under the western edge of the Ontario arrowhead defined by Lake Huron, and Kincardine was one of the places where it was then mined, or rather pumped. The salt wells were located near the shore in the harbor, and were owned by a Mr. Riternier.

After a few days loading direct from the baking ovens, the Jennie Graham set her sails to a fair wind up Lake Huron. Off Thunder Bay on the American side, she joined a fleet of Oswego vessels loaded with hard coal for Lake Michigan ports; for Oswego, which now imports her coal from Sodus or other parts on Lake Ontario, was at that time and for long afterwards the greatest exporter of hard and soft coal on the lakes.

CAPTAIN GRAHAM TAKES OVER

This Lake Ontario fleet under two flags worked up in company until they reached the Straits of Mackinaw, the entrance into Lake Michigan, and then, in Capt. Graham's words the other day:—

"The schooner Jennie Graham, being a Canadian vessel, had to come to anchor, and lower a boat, and row the captain ashore to report and receive a scrap of paper that would entitle us to enter the sacred waters of Lake Michigan!

"After many hours of enquiries, we located the officer playing cards in the basement of a saloon and got our precious entry paper.

"In the meantime the wind had shifted to the SW, a real equinoctial gale, and for 12 days it did blow! We worked our way as far as the North Fox Island and after splitting the mainsail and two jibs we ran for shelter under the Beaver Island, where there was once a big colony of Mormons.

"Our provisions were getting short so after anchoring we went ashore and purchased potatoes and fish. The island at that time was inhabited by the Irish, perhaps successors to the Mormons. The natives said that all the young people left the island on the steamers Idaho and Fountain City to work in Chicago for the winter, returning home in the spring.

CATCHING UP WITH THE JONESES

"On our third attempt we successfully reached the west shore of Lake Michigan with the wind blowing from the southard hard. When nearing this Wisconsin shore we saw a fleet of vessels at anchor in Mud Bay. So the captain decided to come to anchor here to wait a fair wind. So again we joined the Oswego fleet which had got ahead of us while we waited for our scrap of paper.

"As we rounded to in the bay, over our stern was a large log cabin and a string of deer hanging up. The ground was covered with snow, and the Oswego fleet were a hard looking bunch, sails partly down and frozen, and badly iced up. It was there about October 10, but cold as Christmas. When the fleet heard of our salt cargo they sent their yawl boats each with a hatch cover for a container and Capt. Griffith opened our hatches and supplied them with salt. This wasn't so necessary to preserve any fresh killed venison they might buy from the shore as to cut the ice from their frozen sheets and halliards and scuppers, and keep them from icing up again the next time it blew.

SALT FOR COAL

"In return for our saline hospitality they sent back several tons of coal from their cargoes—enough to keep us for the winter. We Canucks had the satisfaction of thawing out the U.S. fleet and of being thawed out by them, in forecastle and galley.

"The second day after our arrival in Mud Bay the wind came fair, and it was 'deil tak' the hindmaist." We being the last in were the last out, but as the Graham, with her moderate salt cargo was only drawing eight feet and the fleet was drawing at least nine with their coal, the Canuck arrived at Chicago first.

"We were towed in by the tug John Prindeville, her master's name Coon Quackenbush, from Port Dalhousie. After stripping the sails and placing them in a shed (for the vessel was to lay up here for the winter), we left via the Michigan and Great Western Railway, for Windsor and St. Catharines—feeling fine, and I being still in my 'teens."

THE FANNY CAMPBELL, topsail schooner, almost a duplicate of the Jennie Graham, built like her in St. Catharines, and named after a relative of one of the Jennie Graham's owners, Capt. Campbell. Capt. John C. Graham was the other owner of the Jennie.

AT THE SALT BLOCKS—Another schooner, the Horace Badger, loading name board-in, at the Kincardine salt wells.