The Duke and the SILVER CLOUD: Schooner Days DCCCIV (804)

by C. H. J. Snider

THE SILVER CLOUD was the largest barquentine on the Canadian register (then kept at Montreal if you please) when Thomas' Marine Register of Lake Shipping was compiled, in 1864. She was then in her second year, classed E, equivalent to A2, and valued at $16,000. Her measurement was 469 tons register, which would mean an overall length of about 150 feet. John Potter, the master builder with headquarters at Oakville, where the old house known as The Folly, once a Victorian Casa Loma, still commemorates him, had gone north with his gang of carpenters and built the Silver Cloud in 1863 for the Toronto firm of Wyatt and Smith, which had large shipping interests. From her size the Silver Cloud would seem to have been intended for the lumber or timber trade. It is possible that she, too, went overseas, for we have not discovered further record of her on the lakes. It is to be hoped that for shipwright Potter and the owners this Cloud was all lining and solid at that.

QUEEN OF THE NORTH

In 1861 Potter had built another square rigger "in the bush," not at Coldwater but at the mouth of the Nottawasaga, the present Wasaga Beach. This was the $11,000 brigantine Queen of the North, of 337 tons register, and G. H. Wyatt and Co. of Toronto were the owners. The Queen of the North, so appropriately named, was smaller than the Silver Cloud or the Reindeer, but a very fine vessel, and gave good service for fifteen or twenty years until wrecked on Long Point, Lake Erie.

Capt. Jas. McCannell, CPR historian before mentioned, was of the belief that the Silver Cloud was a product of the Coldwater shipbuilding [ ]ge of Crimean War times, and that she was built in a cove of Matchedash Bay at the mouth of the Coldwater River, but his investigations did not confirm this.

Just where the Silver Cloud was built is vague. The earliest register gives her place of building as the "River Severn," which enters Georgian Bay on the east side, eight or ten miles north of the Coldwater. It seems established that she was not built in the Coldwater River itself, like the Sardinia. If the bank had to be cut away for that schooner to let her make the turn, the river would not have been large enough for the much larger Cloud. It is possible that the barquentine was built in the cove east of the river mouth, which was the birthplace of the Duke of Argyle and the Reindeer or she may have been built in the Severn, but she was regarded as a Coldwater vessel. In fact Miss Maria Caswell a daughter of the late George Caswell, Sr., who might be called the King of Coldwater, is believed to have christened her. Miss Caswell was a Coldwater belle in her early twenties when the Silver Cloud was launched. The family tradition is that she christened not one but two Coldwater vessels. The Reindeer might have been the other one.

DUKE OF ARGYLE

Of the Duke of Argyle all that diligent search has so far revealed is that she was built at Coldwater in the same place as the Reindeer. Possibly she was sent overseas and found a purchaser abroad as the Reindeer did. Her name reflects the strong Scottish element in Simcoe County's settlement.

In all, nearly two hundred wooden vessels, built in the Great Lakes in the age of sail went overseas with fish, forest products, the newly discovered coaloil, or odd cargoes such as manufactured goods or packing house bones for fertilizer. Many were sent to be sold, and found purchasers. Many came back to the lakes. Some, but not many, were lost at sea.

LOVERING MILL, COLDWATER, seventy years ago. It is still standing but almost lost among the trees which have grown up. Here was cut much of the plank required for Coldwater shipbuilding and for export cargoes.

One lone elm, survivor of a noble pair, shadows the old pay office of the Loyering and Sheppard mill and lumber company. It also marks the old "limit of navigation" of the Port of Coldwater where ships were built.

THE OLD MILL, COLDWATER. TODAY