How ST. PETER's Wave Walk Ended: Schooner Days DCCCXVI (816)

by C. H. J. Snider

THE ST. PETER OF TOLEDO was admiring herself as in a looking glass in the mirror smooth surface of Lake Ontario that 27th day of October, 1898, when Capt. Griffin's pleasing meditations, on the prospect of whitefish for dinner and a tow up the Welland Canal after, were interrupted by the masthead flies standing straight on end. These were whiplike cones of bunting, ancestors of the wind-sock which airmen copied from them.

"Don't like that," said old Capt. McLelland,the Deseronto man who was mate. "Shift o' wind, sure as shooting, and it'll blow hard."

The weather report from Chicago, which was holding the Toronto schooner Keewatin in port at Oswego since the day before, was coming true. A quick barometric change of atmospheric pressure was the cause of the antics of the flies. In a few minutes the 70-mile blizzard from the west was lashing Lake Ontario.

FORCED TO RUN

Aboard the St. Peter they did all that men—and one woman—could do. Clewed up, and downhauled, and lowered away. Turned tail to the smiter and headed back for Oswego, though within a few miles of finishing the first lap of their homeward journey to Toledo on Lake Erie. The 24 hours delayed gale was merciless as a tiger kept waiting for a meal. Her coal dust darkened canvas flew from her in great chunks like burnt paper, or streamed from her spars in black ribbons. The lightkeeper at Braddock's Point, sixty miles east of Niagara, saw her staggering past, yawing widely, laboring in distress from the smiting and pursuing waves. The mizzen mast went. The foremast billowed. Only the mainmast remained. She was unmanageable.

LIFESAVERS AWAY!

He telephoned the U.S. lifesaving service at Charlotte, 12 miles below. Captain George Grey, lifeguard coxswain there, begged help from Capt. Bob Russell of the handsome, powerful lake tug W. L. Proctor, sheltering in the harbor. Capt. Russell said he would take the lifeboat anywhere—but not with a man in her, through that sea. On those terms they started out, the lifesaving crew aboard the tug, their empty surfboat lashed to her after deck.

The distressed schooner had passed Charlotte and vanished in the early darkness. The tug zigzagged all night in the track she would have to make, rolling before the wind and sea. In the grey of dawn they sighted her spars a few miles from shore, five miles from Great Sodus.

They realized that she was foundering, or had foundered. It was one of her topmasts that showed above water. Steaming full ahead, in the first gleam of light Capt. Grey saw an upflung hand, close to. Manning the surfboat the lifesavers picked up one man, incredibly aged, unconscious, a yawl-boat oar gripped under each arm. Nobody else.

THE ONLY ONE

They thought he was dead. They brought him back to Charlotte, to Capt. Grey's house. He was unable to speak. He was Capt. John Griffin, the master and owner. His daughter came to Charlotte and nursed him for months, before she could take him home. He was completely exhausted by his struggle in the October water which might have killed a stronger man and had killed all who were with him. He had lost everything, ship, wife, freight money. Mrs. Griffin had $280 in cash when she drowned in the St. Peter's cabin. Possibly, in view of disputes over wages in Oswego and the toughness of the waterfront gangs of the time, the Griffins had felt that the old reliable Lisle Bank was the only safe place for money aboard the vessel. Neons had never been heard of.

Capt. Griffin had some insurance. He painfully filed a "protest," or his friends did for him, and tried to collect. But the company beat him, by contending that the St. Peter was "not sufficiently manned." They alleged there was no proof he had any crew at all besides the old man and the one woman seen on deck when the vessel towed out from Oswego, with the tug helping to make canvas. Yet one history of the lakes credits the St. Peter with a crew of nine all told, which would be two more than usual.

DAUGHTER'S DEVOTION

Miss Anna Griffin, his 19-year-old daughter, came back from Toledo next year and employed an experienced government diver, Henry Matott, to search for her mother's body and vindicate her father's claim. Coroner Vohinkel of Oswego lent his assistance, although the wreck was out of his jurisdiction. Wm. Baird, a Pultneyville fisherman, had discovered and buoyed the St. Peter northwest of Great Sodus, two miles off shore and three miles below Pultneyville, which is 25 miles east of Charlotte and 50 miles west of Oswego. The head of the maintopmast was visible in the clear lake on a smooth day, although 6 feet 6 inches below the surface. The vessel had canted over somewhat.

DIVER'S BRAVE ATTEMPT

Diver Matott descended by means of the topmast rigging for 55 feet, till he reached the main crosstrees. His suit was only built for pressure at 75 feet depth, but after coming up to report he went down again and descended by the main rigging until he reached the vessel's rail, 104 feet below the surface and 11 feet from the bottom of the lake. He walked aft along the rail for fifty feet and found the cabin, dislodged by the action of the water or the fall of a mast, lifted up, and partly destroyed. The deck was a tangle of torn canvas, ropes, gaffs and booms. Only the mainmast stood. Foremast and mizzen seemed to have disappeared or might be hidden under the wreckage. In most lake schooners the mizzen went through the roof and floor of the cabin to the keelson. The diver searched the wreckage of the cabin and could not find any bodies anywhere. He could not complete the search of the forecastle, for his helper, alarmed at his long stay below and the safety limit of the suit being so far past, hauled him up, though he clung to the rigging to prevent this.

A woman's arm was found by a New York visitor at Lake Bluff, a summer colony on the nearby shore. It was thought to have been Mrs. Griffin's, crushed in the fall of the mizzenmast, which probably wrecked the cabin. But this gruesome and dubious relic was all ever recovered from the St. Peter.

STORY OF THE STORY

AS a Lost-and-Found medium the Oswego Palladium-Times certainly covers a lot of territory fast.

Being in Oswego with Kingarvie the compiler of these Schooner Day records made inquiry along the waterfront about the St. Peter—and drew a blank, naturally, for she went down half a century ago. But friend Waterbury, President of the Oswego Historical Society and proprietor of the Palladium-Times, had his ace reporter Ray Carpenter put piece in the paper about this Canadian query.

Same day of publication the Oswego police radio car came alongside with a long-distance message from P. D. Vercrouse, 48, Furniss, N.Y., that he knew a man who saw the St. Peter go down and could point out where she still lay.

F. G. Blythe, 171 West Oneida St., Oswego, and Wm. Turner, also of that city supplied details and close shots at the year.

Capt. A. Norton, 128 Crawley ave., Buffalo 7, N.Y., hit the bullseye with the date, Oct. 27, 1898, as did Henry N. Barkhausen, of Lake Forest, Ill.

Capt. Norton is one of our north shore Nortons, having started sailing out of Port Darlington in the Vienna of Bowmanville in 1883. The Vienna was the inquirer's second schooner, with Capt. John Ewart at a later date, and the Norton who knew was fisherman Tommy, who helped rescue the Oliver Mowat crew forty-five years ago. Capt. Norton, now in his eighties, still handles tugs for the U.S. Engineers and in 1943 took three of them from Buffalo to Chicago on their way to New Orleans via the drainage canal.

Mr. Barkhausen is another amateur marine researcher, and sails the Butcher Boy, a replica of a Georgian Bay mackinaw, named in memory of the big topsail schooner which once bore that name on Lake Michigan. Last month he and his wife cruised in her from Harbor Springs, Mich., through the Straits of Mackinaw to Drummond Island and back. He supplied dimensions and official data on the St. Peter.

Marsh Spafford of Point Traverse, and the late Capt. W. R. Wakely of Port Hope, had already contributed information.

Other Oswego friends assisted. Perhaps first prize should go to Preston Matott of Amsterdam, N.Y. An alert Oswego municipal officer mentioned seeing in the Pal-Times that information was required, and Preston remembered seeing a clipping about the St. Peter years ago in a scrapbook his late father had kept. It turned out that his father had been the diver employed to explore the wreck and the clippings, promptly sent from Amsterdam, gave many before-unknown details and a mine of other lake lore.

That's the story of this story.