Hunting the Cradles of Coldwater Babies: Schooner Days DCCCIII (803)

by C. H. J. Snider

WE have searched, so far in vain, for anyone who saw the launching of the Coldwater vessels which made a seaport of the little Georgian Bay village, and we have slight hopes of succeeding now, for the babe in arms who said googoo when the Reindeer made the big splash would be 93 now, if still going. We should have started the search earlier.

AN HONEST WITNESS

Several in Coldwater said 'Renzo Caswell would be able to tell us, for he was an old timer and a descendant of George Caswell, the first settler, called King of Coldwater. We found Mr. Lorenzo Caswell a well preserved intelligent gentleman, dwelling on the main street, by the river's bank. And, unfortunately for the purpose in mind, honest. "Yes," said he, "I know vessels were built here. The building place was a little below that big old elm on bank with part of its top gone. There used to be two of them, but one went by lightning. I used to see vessels coming up the river to load. One was the Metamora (a $25,000 Cleveland propeller, built 1863). They carried lots of lumber, shingles and so on from the mill for Lovering and Sheppard, in the lumber business. But as for telling you what the Reindeer, or any of the other vessels were like, I couldn't. As a matter of fact, I never saw them."

"Why, wouldn't they be one of the sights of the village when you were a boy?"

"Not when I was a boy. I am 85, but they were built and launched and taken away five or ten years before I was born."

Mrs. Andrew Lovering, a couple of generations younger and married to a grandson of H. L. Lovering, who came to Coldwater in 1842 and was a farmer and lumber merchant with 800 acres in Medonte, brightly pointed to a curve in the river bank below the ancient elm which did not seem current-carved.

"They say they had to scoop that out with shovels and ox teams," said she, "to get one of the vessels they built here out of the river. She was too long to get around the bend without widening it."

THE REINDEER?

Hope leaped that this would have been the Reindeer, the largest of which authentic dimensions are obtainable. But—

Capt. James McCannell, veteran CPR master, with a keen eye for the historical, reported after a visit to Coldwater ten years ago, that the Sardinia was the vessel built on the river, right in the heart of the villlage; a two-masted schooner, 105 feet long, 24 feet beam and 202 tons register. The Sardinia was launched sideways, from the east bank, near the mill, in 1856. She was built by William Pigeon and owned by George Laidlaw in Toronto. She was in commission for forty years, trading all over the lakes. There is a picture of her in Sheboygan, Wis., loading lumber in 1891, and her name appears in the old harbor records of Port Whitby, when Capt. Godman was master of her. She passed to American register and hailed for some time from Milwaukee.

The Sardinia was of handsome model, with curved profile, a clipper bow and raking transom and remarkably good sheer even after 30 years of heavy deckloads. Her bowsprit and jibboom were long, giving her a saucy inquisitive look, and she had a fine turn of speed. She passed to the American register in the 1880's and was owned in Milwaukee. She was usually painted white above and green below, with green striping. Her name was an echo of her time, for she was launched just after the close of the Crimean War, in which Great Britain, Prance, and the Kingdom of Sardinia, that little Mediterranean island, were allied against Russia. Florence Nightingale, the Road to the Trenches, Sebastopol, Charge of the Light Brigade and two-dollar wheat in Canada, were the Sardinia's prenatal background. Several vessels launched about this time bore topical names —"Allies" "Alliance" and so on.

There is a cove below the three-hooked government wharf in Coldwater today -- sole suggestion the place was once one of seagoing ships — where the river widens out with the confluence of a small creek called the Saginaw. "Saga" appears to mean "mouth" in all the Indian combinations. Here, up to last year, Mrs. Lovering recalls, old timbers of great size and length could, be seen bedded in the ground. Present high water makes it difficult to locate them. They looked like the slipways or keel blocks on which large vessels could be built.

The river here is ten feet deep. It has been dredged since the Sardinia's launching. On the west bank is a lovely meadow of elms, good for ship timber, and Lovering park, long a Coldwater picnic ground.

The Lovering boys, John, William, Thomas and H. L., were English sons of William Lovering, a sturdy pioneer who was heartbroken with the crude and rugged wilderness he found in Canada, where friends had told him was the land of plenty. It was the loss of his wife, who died just after they had landed with a family of small children, that disheartened the father. He did not long survive, but his sons took root, and flourished, especially H. L., on whom the leadership devolved. He formed the Lovering and Sheppard lumber company, operating the old mill, still standing, where the Sardinia's planks were sawn—and from which she carried many loads afterwards. Lovering had a little paddle wheel tug, the Blackbird, with a merry blackbird whistle. She may have towed the Sardinia "to sea" the very first time.

The Lovering homestead, still in the family, is on the west bank of the river. The Sardinia was built either opposite it, near the old elm which marks the site of the Lovering wharves, with the old pay office below it, or—more probably—in the widening of the river before mentioned, just below the present CNR bridge.

Capt. McCannel heard of another cove, two miles farther down the river, where he was told the Reindeer, Duke of Argyle, and perhaps the Silver Cloud were built. We'll explore that soon.

THE LOVERING HOMESTEAD. COLDWATER, a century old and still in the family.

TALKING OVER THE SARDINIA, PERHAPS

H.L. LOVERING (left) Goldwater lumber magnate and his brother JOHN, from a rare old Victorian parlor negative. The Lovering mill cut much of the material for the Sardinia, and she often loaded there.

THE SARDINIA, built at Coldwater, 1856.