Story of an Escape: Schooner Days DCCLXVI (766)

by C. H. J. Snider

IN August, 1879, a big east blow lathered the lake with white and tawny breakers. The Eastern Gap, then merely a natural breach in the Island sandbar, was impassable for any craft. On the third day of the blow, Herrick Duggan, seventeen, and his chum, Gordon Bedford, eighteen, tried to beat out to sea with The Lugger. Herrick was already "master and owner," for he had acquired an old 20-foot clinker-built lifeboat of the steamer Cumberland, decked her forward and put a 14-inch false keel on her, and masts and two lug sails and been sailing her two years.

To beat out through the breakers required a smart piece of seamanship but the boys succeeded. Once over the bar the waves were not so wild, and they made good progress against them and worked a mile out into the lake.

When they turned to come back young Bedford took the tiller for the home run. A treacherous sea tripped The Lugger and rolled her over. Both boys were spilled into the water. It was impossible to right the craft. They decided to swim to the shore and allow her to wash in. They were good swimmers.

They had not gone far when Bedford said, "I'm going back," and struck out for the boat and reached it. "I'll go on and get help from the fishermen," called Herrick Duggan, and Bedford waved cheerily the from the upturned keel.

Herrick Duggan swam on, and on and on. The strong current and the undertow seemed to be carrying the shore away from him, he was so long swimming towards it. The next thing he know men were chafing his limbs and rolling him in blankets "Bedford's on the boat, get him," he gasped.

"Your chum's all right, young feller," said the fishermen, "we took him off the boat afore we got you.

"Bring him ..." said Duggan, and became unconscious again. He woke and asked for Bedford. They brought in a boy in borrowed clothes that did not fit him. "That's not Bedford," said he,"get him, quick! I tell you he's still in the lake!"

He was right. Another boat had been capsized in the bay, and this stranger had been picked up from it. Bedford and The Lugger were no more, in spite of Duggan's heroic effort to get help. Herrick had swum for hours, lost consciousness from exhaustion, and been found by the fishermen on the beach.

From his bedroom window in the select west end residential section on Front street adjoining the Parliament Buildings, Herrick Duggan had watched the billowing sails of schooners crowding Toronto Harbor from his babyhood. Waterfront boat building shops were a strong attraction from old Upper Canada College—two blocks north of the Parliament House—when he was entered there to become a "young gentleman." Sails, sails, sails filled his mind. So he did not turn his back on wild, untameable Ontario for this buffet. He rigged another lugger from another converted life-boat; studied designing as practiced by the Esplanade boat builders like Hodson, Aykroyd, Noverre, Warren. He found a patron in Captain J. G. Murray, the government engineer, who was blowing up old wrecks around the harbor; and that winter, financed by him, made a contract with Alex Cuthbert, then of Trenton, the rip roaring lake captain who audaciously built the Countess of Dufferin and the Atalanta for the America's Cup.

This contract was to build a 32 ft. trunk cabin centreboard yawl from Herrick Duggan's design for $200 for the hull, sails extra. The hull was in the water by the time Easter holidays arrived at old Upper Canada, Herrick and a school chum went by train to Trenton and took the little treasure down the ice-filled Bay of Quinte to Kingston, with snow on her deck. Here they completed her necessary outfitting, hired a schooner sailor, and started west in April, 1880, with only one day of the precious holidays remaining and Toronto 180 sailing miles away. At Point Traverse, at the end of the Upper Gap, fourteen newly fitted-out schooners were riding, windbound by the westerly gale. Unable to go farther the tiny Escape anchored inside them under the Little Red Onion, as the old light was called. At night the wind came fair, and the schooners one by one got away. The Escape was anchored so close to the Point that they had to fend from the rocks with a pole until daylight showed them the way out.

It was blowing from the east now, and the farther they went the higher were the seas—but they made a great run, close reefed. Off Scarboro three following seas struck her in succession, swamped her dinghy and tore it adrift. She broached to, rolling down on her beam ends and almost swamping, through the cabin companion slide being open. At about this same moment the 3-masted schooner Northman foundered and was lost with all hands off Port Credit. But the Escape, well named, righted. They furled the reefed mainsail and mizzen, bailed her out with a bucket and she staggered on.

They got her around Gibraltar Point of Toronto Island, and raced down the submerged Western Sandbar, setting the reefed mizzen, and hauled up for the hardest half mile of all, the beat in to harbor through the Western Gap. The first tack the jib-sheets parted, and the sail flogged itself to ribbons. All they could do now was to anchor in the partial lee of the old Queen's Wharf, and here they hung all night in the bitter cold, wet, foodless, and without means of reaching shore.

SO HERRICK DUGGAN was late for term. Hon. G. R. R. Cockburn, then headmaster at Upper Canada, talked rustication, expulsion, or some such nonsense for this serious affront of discipline. Herrick kept his hot temper under control, apologized most civilly, and saved his "year" and the threatened disgrace. But U.C.C. lost a "young gentleman" and Canada gained a great engineer, for he sought admission to the new School of Practical Science of the University of Toronto, plunged into engineering, and bridged the continent with steel, and the ocean with ships. The threatened reject of Upper Canada College became a D. Sc. of Toronto University and an honorary LL.D. both of Queen's and McGill, for building the giant Quebec bridge when all others failed. He was chief engineer of the St. Lawrence Bridge Co. and planned and constructed the steel superstructure which united the two high shores of the broad St. Lawrence where the racing river is 180 feet deep. He also became president and director of a score of heavy industries and financial concerns. And in his eighties, in the war winters, he supervised, both in the draughting room and in the frozen shipyard below Montreal, the construction of a fleet of large freighters replacing submarine sinkings. His boyhood haunting of the boatbuilding shops bore this fruit.

In the sixty years following the escape from being a "young gentleman" —futile, for he lived and died a great and very gallant gentleman—he satisfied his soul with sailing, of which a little more may be told.

IT has been said that when the Escape was built the rules of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club forbade yachts of the fleet getting under way on the Sabbath. No such bylaw can be found, but in Victorian regard for respectability, Sunday sailing was looked upon with disapproval. Even today there are sailors who do not approve of Sunday racing. They are none the worse for that. The Escape, returning from a cruise one Sunday at the end of her first year, sighted the Ella, centreboard sloop, capsized off Port Credit. Ten men were clinging to the up-turned hull. Herrick Duggan picked them up and brought them to the yacht club, rescuers and rescued alike drenched and bedraggled. Their unseemly appearance shocked the starched shirts, who had the honorary secretary-treasurer, the late Col. H. J. Grasett, afterwards Chief Constable of Toronto, send Herrick Duggan a letter which was much resented - and also much regretted. The indignant Escapists held a meeting in Hodson's Boat House, then at the foot of Simcoe street, and formed the Toronto Yacht Club. Its purpose, in its act of incorporation, was "to encourage yacht racing."

It was a live organization of young and active sailors and flourished for nine seasons, by which time the original rancor had died out and a happy amalgamation with the Royal Canadian was effected. Herrick Duggan was welcomed with an honorary life membership in the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, for his brilliant victories in the Seawanhaka Cup contests, his eminence as a designer, and his life-saving exploits, including the one which brought the Toronto Yacht Club into being.

In 1893 engineering having taken him to Montreal, he built a little yacht smaller than the Escape, called the Valda. He was out in her on Lake St. Louis in a heavy August thunder squall, which tore through the fleet and capsized many craft, including the sloop Black Eagle, flagship of Commodore Levin of the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club. Herrick Duggan had only one man to help him. but he brought his own craft through in safety, and worked like a Trojan in the squall, sailing around upturned or sunken boats and saving the drowning. Commodore Levin perished, but Herrick Duggan saved several members of his crew, and twelve lives in all. For this he received the Royal Humane Society's medal.

LITTLE YACHT HAD HER PART IN CAREER OF GREAT CANADIAN

ESCAPE, designed 1879, was a determining factor in GEORGE HERRICK DUGGAN'S life. She was his first creation. This picture of her, after she had been converted to cutter rig, is a fixture in the main cabin of the last large yacht he built. A brass plate, provided by the present owner five years ago on taking over, says:

Vivat — HERRICK DUGGAN — Floreat

MONUMENTUM SI QUAERIS CIRCUMSPICE

KINGARVIE, his 123rd design, gave him 20,780 miles of good cruising, between Atlantic and Superior, June 28th, 1933 —Sept. 13th, 1940

'"Ghosts of dead years are hovering round us now,

The locks of memory ope with magic keys;

Again the fresh spray sweeps across her bow.

Again she hammers through the swingeing seas,

The well remembered headlands lift and fall,

The havens snug at twilight gleam again;

Boys, don't you hear the dear old voices call,

Old boats, old men—"

—Selected by George E. Evans, long his shipmate."