Waterfront Cub Cuts in on Horseboy: Schooner Days DCCXLVIII (748)

by C. H. J. Snider

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YOUNG CHAPIN, cub reporter for the old Chicago Tribune, doing waterfront in 1880, watched the Twelfth street bridge swing.

A white three-master was oozing out, with the perspiring assistance of an apoplectic tug. Chapin knew her. She was the Edward Blake, one of the Canadians engaged in the great grain rush from Chicago to Kingston. What fixed her in Chapin's mind was the story that a few years ago she had crossed the Atlantic with a cargo of square timber from Lake Huron and gone on to Rio de Janiero from London before coming home. He wondered how many thousand miles of rushing water, salt and fresh, had been parted by those bluff bows now pushing ahead of them the oily filth of the Chicago Creek.

It was growing dusk. Schooners came and went at all hours, but Chapin wondered at the Blake pulling out now. He added to his "copy" all ready to turn in to the city desk: "Add clearances — Blake, Irving, Kingston, 22,000 wheat."

As he looked up the schooner had passed the bridge. But his reporter's eye noted two curious things. A tall man had swung himself aboard from the wooden bridge abutment as her stern was abreast of it, and kicked over a pot of black paint as he landed on the cabin top. And yet the mate had said never a word.

"Funny!" thought Chapin.

THE RUNAWAY COP

When he turned in his "copy" at the office—this was before the days of phones and teletypes—the city editor yelled at him: "McGarrigle's escaped: Cover every steamboat office and see if he's booked on any of the outgoing boats!"

"Fat chance," thought Chapin. "D'ye think he'd register with a brass band if he was going for a boat ride?"

But he beat it as bidden.

Chief McGarrigle was the flaming centre of the limelight in Chicago at this time. He had been arrested by his own men in a graft clean-up, and chucked into jail. He was suspected of being not an accessory but a ring-leader, in an orgy of crookedness which had emptied the civic coffers; something known as "boodling" in those pre-racket days.

OUT BATHROOM WINDOW

In jail he lay awaiting trial. That day, when being taken to the courthouse, he "prevailed" upon his old friend the sheriff, to go round by way of his home, and allow him to shave and change his shirt. McGarrigle went into the bathroom and out of the window, and that was all Mr. Sheriff had the honor to report.

"That dock-jumper of the Blake's was a tall guy," mused Chapin, "and so's McGarrigle. I wonder . . .

He was a reporter, and always wondered to some purpose.

"I wonder who owns the Blake now," he went on, to himself. "B. R. Clarkson of Toronto owned her when she went across, but that was five or six years ago. I'll look that up."

His well-thumbed Dominion of Canada Marine Register gave the information, "Frederick St. John, St. Catharines, Ont., owner."

"I wonder next," said Chapin, "if he's related to Dr. St. John of the waterfront hospital?"

UNWELCOME CALL

Dr. St. John was not pleased to be asked if he had a son in St. Catharines. No, he answered shortly. He had a brother there; his name was Fred. Did he know McGarrigle had escaped? No. When? How? Why, who'd have thought that of Mac? It just seemed like yesterday when good old Mac was warden for Dr. St. John in the hospital; steady, reliable—

Chapin did not wait. He burst back into the office with the story that Chief McGarrigle had got away in a Canadian grain schooner, the Edward Blake of St. Catharines.

First blood for the Tribune!

RIVAL TAKES UP TRAIL

Melville Stone, later general manager of the Associated Press and at this time one of the owners of the Chicago News, was furious. He engaged a powerful tug to chase the Blake and bring back her passenger dead or alive. The sheriff of Mackinaw three hundred miles away was notified to swear in deputies and hold up the schooner as she entered the Straits to get out of Lake Michigan and into Huron. The description was broadcast — "three-masted schooner Edward Blake, painted white, plumb stem, Welland Canal size," etc., etc.

Stone and his tug got to the Straits as fast as steam could drive them down Lake Michigan, but they did not sight the Blake on the way. They waited for her, and waited. But she did not come. After some delay a semi-soused sheriff's officer informed them that he had been deputed to halt the Blake, but nothing had passed through the straights since he got the order except a black schooner, boiling along like the tail race of Tophet.

The black schooner was the Blake, or at least one-half of her. Sandy Irving, her master, had driven her as she had never been driven before. He had plied the paint brush all the way down Lake Michigan, and changed the side of her visible to the lookouts in the Straits before passing through.

BLACK EYE FOR THE CUB

Chapin got to the Straits by train, a few hours after Stone had broken the second beat of the big story and telegraphed the news how McGarrigle had got clear away and was by this time in Canadian waters.

Chapin then spent his last dollar on a ticket for Port Huron, where Lake Huron narrows to the River St. Clair, and all traffic must pass. Here he wired his office, and the answer he got back made the telegraph form curl. He was told to come back and say why he shouldn't be sacked, for McGarrigle had got away clear and the News had got away with the story.

But Chapin had not done waterfront for nothing. Without a nickle left, he haunted the wharves, made friends with a tugman, and waited till the Blake hove in sight, steering for Sarnia Bay on the opposite side of the river. Chapin was aboard her before the anchor was let go; and the first man he saw was big Chief McGarrigle.

"Better come quietly, Mac," he said.

McGarrigle, with many blanks and dashes, demanded his authority. He took him for a sheriff's officer, and roared he had no right to arrest him in Canadian waters without an extradition warrant.

"That's all right Mac," said Chapin pleasantly. I've got no warrant. All I want is your story."

FUGITIVE COMES CLEAN

McGarrigle was so relieved that he sat down and poured forth a page account of his adventures in office and out of office, and when he left the Blake, safe on Canadian soil, be walked with Chapin to the telegraph place, and in a few hours the Tribune was flooding Chicago with "third blood" in the biggest newspaper battle of the 1880's.

The Blake went on down the river. She was stopped and searched before she reached Lake Erie, and again before she reached Lake Ontario by the Welland Canal. But Chief McGarrigle was no longer aboard, and her master had done nothing that was punishable, either in national or international law.

McGarrigle here disappears from public kin. He was reported in the early files of The Evening Telegram to have been registered at the Queen's Hotel in Toronto with a friend under assumed names. He was reported from many places, but, so far as is known, never from inside prison bars.

CAPTAIN DID NO WRONG

Sandy Irving went west to live, and settled down in Banff. Gossip said he got $1,000 for McGarrigle's passage, and this was magnified by rumor into $10,000 and enough to keep him the rest of his life, and so on. His retirement to a western farm, the supposed ambition of every sailor, seemed to confirm this legend. But Sandy, who was an honest chap, told the late Magistrate J. J. O'Connor, years afterwards, that all he got out of the McGarrigle scandal was the publicity and a patchy coat of black paint for the schooner above the waterline.

Chapin died in prison in 1930. He was serving sentence for wife slaying; but he was one of the most brilliant editors of the middle west. Of all his journalistic triumph, he was proudest of how, as a cub reporter, he had beaten the great Melville Stone.

BURLINGTON IDENTIFICATION OF LAST WEEK'S THREE-MASTER

LIFE is just one interruption after another and hence we have the lake history of our second horseboy hero, commenced last week, interrupted by a passing hail from a Burlington sailor which should not be unacknowledged.

The horseboy's initial story was embellished by a photograph of a large three-master, received from Capt. Frank E. Hamilton of Kelley's Island, Ohio, and its identification was sought. Promptly S. M. Saxby, 50 Burlington Avenue, Burlington, writes:

Sir—The picture in Saturday's Telegram is of the Schr. Edward Blake, Capt. Sandy Irvine, down bound from Chicago with the Chicago boodler on board. I believe Capt. Jarvis crossed the Atlantic in her. She had a very nice lined hull. I am getting old, but I still remember the old ship's lines, I have enjoyed your write-up of the old schooners, some of which I have sailed. In thanking you for that pleasure, I remain,

S. M. SAXBY.

Our thanks to you, Mr. Saxby. We have been told the Blake left Chicago on that historic voyage painted white and that by the time she reached the Straits of Mackinaw the side next the coast guard station was black, and by the time she reached Detroit she was all black, and no boodler was aboard, her fugitive passenger having been landed somewhere on the Canadian side of the St. Clair river.

You are right about Commodore Aemilius Jarvis having made a voyage to England in the Edward Blake, from Cheboygan, Mich., with square timber—the same sort of cargo our horseboy is loading in the Albatross while we interrupted his career. Mr. Jarvis' voyage was in 1875. The Blake crossed the Atlantic more than once, and came back to the lakes to ply them for 20 years, and figure in the escape of a Chicago police chief, as told alongside.

We never saw the Blake, but know the schooner shown in last Saturday's Telegram corresponds to her in many details, including the little top gallant rail all the way 'round, above her bulwarks. We did not think the Blake so much rounded in the quarters as the schooner shown, but are very grateful for the identification by one who knew her. The Blake was lost in the Middle Duck in Lake Huron in 1896. She was built at Port Burwell in 1872 by "Big Dan" Truman, and was full canal size at the time, 136 feet on deck, 23 feet 6 beam, 12 feet 2 depth of hold and 360 tons register.

—Compiler Schooner Days.

WHERE McGARRIGLE UPSET THE PAINT POT

THE BLAKE passing through the draw of the old Twelfth street bridge, Chicago, a snapshot of sixty years ago.