Sails Over Jordan: Schooner Days DCCLXXV (775)

by C. H. J. Snider

JORDAN BEACH was the little settlement which had grown up around the two 485-ft. piers the Louth Harbor Company had built in 1835, 20 feet wide and a hundred feet apart, where the waters of the Jordan River, alias Twenty Mile Creek, forced their way through the sandbar which cut off the twenty-mile pond from the lake.

This sandbar rims the "Head of the Lake" as early maps called it, from old Wellington Square to Twelve Mile Creek, or Burlington to Port Dalhousie. Behind its shelter lay Burlington Bay, Stoney Creek Harbor at Van Wagner's Beach, and Louth Harbor. The Queen Elizabeth Highway uses a great part of it now.

This is such a natural shortening of the road between the north shore of the lake and the south that we might suppose it had always been in use as a trail or roadway. But for the Indians and pioneers it had many defects. It was subject to irruptions of the lake in east gales, the outlets of natural harbors and ponds were difficult to ford or to bridge, marshes abounded and its soil was unproductive. Indian and pioneer alike preferred the high, dry and level trackway farther inland provided by the continuous escarpment of limestone called Burlington Heights and The Mountain on the north shore and Queenston Heights on the south.

The present highway, an obvious improvement, is as modern as its name. The old Louth Harbor Company undertook to bridge the outlet of Twenty Mile Pond or Jordan Harbor, but whether they crossed it with a roller bridge or a swing bridge or a fixed bridge or any bridge at all is not known. Fifty years ago, and even more recently, there was no bridge of any kind at Jordan Beach. It was a picturesque little port then, with a long row of net reels whimpering and purring as the fishermen wound on their meshes for drying in the wind—a few fish shacks — huts and houses - a general store, an inn, even a post office.

There was wharfage at the two piers with enough water for steamers to land, sometimes eight feet, and a warehouse for goods. If there was a lighthouse it was a lantern on a pole, a "private light."

White fishboats, clinker built, mackinaw rigged, would be hauled out on rollers on the beach, and others would bob at anchor in the broad, shallow harbor formed by Jordan pond within the entrance. On the marsh mud, which was particularly gooey, you might find a stonehooker schooner or two wallowing, like sows in a slough.

SAVING THE "PADDY YOUNG"

The big round bowed square sterned Paddy Young caulked her gaping seams that way after she had been dragged off the beach at Winona. Lew Naish and his Port Credit brethren fought valiantly to save her from being driven ashore there by the seas setting in ahead of an east blow. There was no wind to sail her out, and the three strong men on the sett poles could not force the laden schooner lakewards against the army of greybeards ceaselessly marching against her from the east. With her load in she weighed more than a hundred tons. She dragged back and was tossed upon the beach, and cracked her keel. When the threatened storm broke it was with such fury that Lew Naish was glad the schooner was ashore, and not out in deep water, for he had his wife aboard.

The Paddy Young was dragged off the beach and caulked with Jordan mud, and lived with a broken back for a few years longer. She was blown up, to represent the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine at Havana, in the Canadian National Exhibition of 1898—with three other marine cripples.

A METHODIST PUNCHEON

"Fod" McCraney of Oakville also used Jordan Harbor for his round-bilged scow, John Wesley, from down Picton way. She was nicknamed the Punchy, from her resemblance to a half puncheon, and was as strong as the Paddy Young was weak. But neither this nor her sainted nor profane name saved her from becoming a wreck on the beach two miles above Jordan. Her heavy keelson and floor timbers, hewn from Prince Edward oak in 1866, were long a riparian landmark, now buried in the sand and gravel.

The southwest corner of Lake Ontario was shunned by stonehooker men. The stone there was small, involving much handling in loading, and the holding ground poor, for anchor flukes went through the bottom sand like scuffler blades in a farm field. But Jordan was a good port of refuge for these shoal draught craft. The little George Lee, afterwards burned at Hamilton, went there, and the wee Minnie of St. Catharines sometimes varied her stonehooking by picking up cargoes of peaches and apples, or even the perishable strawberry, for she was fast and seldom spoiled a crate of berries.

Another stonehooker frequenting Jordan Harbor for the benefit of its free caulking, or to bring loads of fertilizer in, and sand, gravel, and beach stone out was the Jessie Stuart, alias Lady Stuart, sailed by many masters, including the Marks brethren, Jack, Walter, and George. She was a curious big box from Algonac on the St. Clair river, and may have owned her double name to registration difficulties when she changed her nationality, for she hailed officially from Montreal. At one time she carried grain from Toronto to Ogdensburg, but her late years were spent in humble coasting around the head of Lake Ontario. Wearying of this at the end of the century she settled down in West Market street slip for a good rest. This lasted several years, but she was dug out at the end and towed to Jordan to be filled with sand and stone and used as a dock.

THE "SWEET HOME"

These stonehookers were poor relations of the well kept lake schooners which once hailed from Jordan.

Nine years before the Flying Dutchman was launched at The Hogsback on the west side of Jordan Harbor a fine schooner of double her size, capable of carrying 300 tons dead weight or 10,000 bushels of grain, had been built. She was probably the largest vessel to kiss the Jordan's waves. Her name was fragrant of Jenny Lind and the Arcadian atmosphere of the time and place. It was Sweet Home. Her builder was Wilson, and in 1864 she was owned by the early Toronto shipping firm of Nichols and Sylvester.

Old Capt. David Sylvester, dead long since, gave the writer the impression that she was a three-master and a very handsome schooner, with clipper bow and high sheer, and sailed very well. Others have spoken of her as a "fore'-n'-after," which implies two masts, and would be more in keeping with her size. Her official dimensions were 98.4 ft. length, 20.9 ft. beam, 9 ft. depth of hold. The length would be short for a 3-master though the Sea Foam, Lizzie Metzner and Burt Barnes were shorter.

The Sweet Home was deep for a vessel built in waters so shallow that scows and flat-bottoms were favored there. The Flying Dutchman, although only half the size of the Sweet Home, was scow-built, and there are references to Jordan pond being navigable for "large scows."

Gourlay's Statistical Account in 1818 said that Twenty Mile Creek, which flows into the pond, was navigable for craft of five to twenty tons in its natural state. The shallops Mrs. Simcoe drew, lying on the beach, might be five-tonners. They were not scows. The Sweet Home passed into the possession of W. R.Taylor of Kingston in 1874, and was afterwards wrecked on Lake Ontario.

ONE OF THE PORT CUSTOMERS

THE P. E. YOUNG of PORT DOVER when the late Capt. John Williams sailed her for Charles Robinson, Toronto. She fell on evil days later and ended in a blow-up.