Living Men Tell of Another Wreck 66 Years Ago: Schooner Days DCCXXIII (773)

by C. H. J. Snider

THIS other wreck which Walter and Willard Locie of Consecon (brothers eighty-seven and seventy-eight respectively) were talking about on the recent anniversary of the Belle Sheridan's, followed that one in three weeks time. It was the Garibaldi's, and it took place a mile or two farther up the shore of Prince Edward County, and near the Bald Head entrance to Weller's Bay. Bald Head island has since almost disappeared. The wreck occurred Nov. 27, 1880, sixty-six years ago and the Locie brothers are as clear about it as though it were that hard blow last month, before the eclipse.

"I wasn't in the boat's crew that took the Garibaldi men off," said Walter, who was a hero of the Belle Sheridan wreck," but father got aboard of her afterwards, and saved the vessel herself by replacing one of the hatches that had been torn off, so that she didn't fill with water and burst."

MOUNDED WITH ICE

"The captain, mate and a sailor were left in the wreck, frozen fast under the topgallant forecastle through the spray that burst aboard," said Willard. "Father helped get them out, and brought them to our place. I remember Capt. McGlenn was frozen he couldn't move his legs, and he lay in the sleigh like a crooked log with the limbs sawed off long, for he couldn't relax his arms. The mate was dead, and frozen solid. The captain had been under him. I think his name was Lewis Stonehouse. They'd both have died if it wasn't for the sailor, John C. Nelson. He was cramped up with them in the iceberg the boarding seas had made over the forecastle, but he felt a piece of loose board, and with that he chipped a hole out, after working for hours.

A FROZEN BURIAL

"She struck about noon Sunday, and it was Monday afternoon before father and the other men got aboard and got them free. Father brought them to our farm, and got the Methodist minister, Rev. Wm. Tomlin, to bury the frozen stranger in Consecon cemetery with Christian rites. He was so rigid they had to make a coffin extra wide to take his arms in, and they had to turn it sideways to get it into the grave."

So if in after years one skeleton should there be found lying on its side, it should not be taken as evidence of the moundbuilders occupation of the site, although that mysterious race have left many relics in Prince Edward.

The rest of the Garibaldi crew were French, the woman cook and three men. They had been taken off the day before, after many gallant efforts from some brave men from Presqu'isle, and the crew of a schooner believed to be the John Walters.

GARIBALDI of TORONTO

There were half a dozen Garibaldis, for the name was very popular eighty years ago. This one was a two-masted schooner, the Garibaldi of Toronto, built in Port Rowan, 1863, 104 feet long, 23.7 ft. beam, 9.9 ft. depth of hold, 209 tons register; owned by A. E. D. McKay, Hamilton, 1874, and soon afterwards by J. and J. T. Mathews, Toronto, as a big black M in her fore gafftopsail testified. On this occasion she was homeward bound for Toronto with 350 tons of coal from Fairhaven after a stormy voyage, and had worked up abreast of Frenchman's Bay by Saturday at sunset.

Wind increasing in the early darkness they reefed her, but she iced up, and the green light at the bay had not been left astern by ten o'clock, so they squared away again for Presqu'isle, into which they had already run for shelter once on this voyage.

LOST HER SAILS

With great difficulty they got the frozen mainsail furled, but while they were attempting to further reef the foresail it gybed, and sail, gaff and boom were lost, and the spray-coated staysail was blown from the hanks.

All night they ran under the flying jib alone. By morning they were off Presqu'isle, and by rigging a purchase on the peak of the mainsail (the halliards had been cut to get it down) they got a little after sail on her, and luffed her into the harbor, where the Belle Sheridan, in similar circumstances, had failed to enter.

She was riding to a single anchor, and the crew were at breakfast when a gust brought her up short and the chain snapped. Out into the lake she blew before a second anchor could be let go. They again hoisted the jib and tried to run her for Weller's Bay, six miles to leeward. She had cleared the tail of the bar off the intricate entrance where the sea was roaring, when an eddy wind from Bald Head shook her headsail with a noise like thunder, and she fell back on to the bar, stranding with her head to the north, as the Belle Sheridan had done. It was very cold, and the turmoil of breakers into which she had fallen began to mound her with ice. The crew were driven from the cabin by the water, so they huddled forward.

A little schooner, perhaps the Eugenie or the Alice and Mary, came flying across from Presqu'isle with fishermen towing the lighthouse boat. A yawlboat put off from the schooner Walters, riding in Weller's Bay, but capsized before it reached the wreck, just as the little schooner was coming in. The yawl boat crew saved themselves with difficulty. The schooner dropped the lighthouse boat to windward of the wreck before she ran into the Bay, and it got alongside and took off the woman cook and one of the Frenchmen. It was a long trip to land them and come back again, but the lighthouse boat made it. The rescued were carried to Amos Masten's farmhouse. The boat pulled back and got alongside again and took off two more men. A third time they tried, for three more remained on board, but they broke their rowlocks and were driven back, and darkness fell. All night the wind raved and the breakers roared and pounded. In the morning the Garibaldi was cased in ice to her crosstrees.

But she was got off next spring. Bobby Dale of Brighton made the trip in her to Black River, Lake Erie, next spring, with Capt. Hank Maitland and Tommy Uglow of Port Hope as mate. It was a hard trip, for she leaked badly. The Mathews firm towed the Garibaldi and the similar schooner Heather Belle with their steam barge Niagara for years after that. The Garibaldi of Port Hope was a different vessel.

"Wreck Corner" of Lake Ontario and one of its callers in the 1880's

SUCH WAS THE GARIBALDI, although the ship shown was a sister vessel in the Mathews fleet, the HEATHER BELLE. The illustration is from a large and spirited model belonging to the late A.E. Mathews of Toronto. Below it is a map of the well-known "wreck corner" of lake Ontario where many vessels got ashore--the GARIBALDI, BELLE SHERIDAN, IDA WALKER, QUEEN OF THE LAKES, ELIZA FISHER among them.