Last of an ALBATROSS: Schooner Days DCCCXX (820)

by C. H. J. Snider

"At length did cross

An Albatross

Through the fog it came" ...

THE FIRST ALBATROSS this ancient mariner ever saw was a big, black, bold-bowed, slab-sided box groaningly bearing that honored name, two masts, and 18 or 20 thousand cubic feet of squared oak timber down the Welland Canal, on the 24th of May, 1898. Manifestly, from her paint and model, a survivor of the great "A" fleet the Muir brothers commenced with the Ayr of that description in 1855, for what paint was left on her scarred sides had been black, with white trim at the coveringboard, rail and deck cabin, and for the nameboard and the rainbow arch above it spanning her transom. She was, indeed, an ex-Muirhen, having been built at Port Dalhousie in 1871 by that firm, to the standard dimensions for old canallers, length 136.9 ft., beam 23.9 ft., depth of hold, 11.4 ft., registered tonnage, 360.

These were the registered dimensions of the Albatross, It is curious that no two of the old canaller fleet measured exactly the same, not even the Muir vessels built in their own drydock, from their own timber and from the same moulds and templates. The variation ranged between 11 and 12 feet in depth of hold and was as much as two feet in beam and length. Shrinkage of the wood in cutting and "spread" or "give" after assembling might be one explanation.

She was, on this occasion bound for either Collins Bay or Garden Island near Kingston, with some of the last of the waterborne oak from Toledo or the Georgian Bay. She was literally crying her eyes out, for pump water gushed from her scuppers and even her white-rimmed hawsepipes as she went along, the canal tug Augusta grunting in sympathy. She had a couple of hundred tons of green oak sticks on her back, that is, piled rail high on her deck. And another five hundred tons were in her hold, rammed down her hatches or through the hinged sternports cut in her run. These were leaking copiously in spite of their caulking, because the deckload forced them all under water.

Next heard of this Albatross, Jim Playfair or some magnate in Midland had bought her. He cut down her spars so that they were only useful for derrick purposes repainted her black and lead color and put her in the less strenuous lumber or cedar post trade in Georgian Bay, towing her from place to place with one of his tugs. Wiseacres prophesied that he wouldn't tow her far or long, for her days were done, and by 1908 their I-told-you-so's rent the air, for she was shoved over on the sand of the Wye river, to make room for some vehicle which leaked less and carried more, with a smaller crew. Either her donkey engine, "the best man aboard," had worn out, or her old hull wasn't worth the repairs which seemed necessary.

But M. J. La Chapelle of Toronto, who was then tugging on the Bay, was surprised at the condition of the veteran when he strolled aboard the abandoned hulk. She hadn't hogged or straightened out-—much. Those timber droghers were built pretty straight anyway, to make it easy to load them on deck. He found her cabin well finished in oak and pine with enough fretsaw work and scroll work to do a yacht. It had a square stateroom for the captain, with a square galley opposite, the galley stove keeping the captain's room warm. On the port side was the cook's room, aft of the galley, and aft of that the first mate's room. On the starboard side was a room for the second mate—it was 40 years since she had had a second mate—and a locker room. Between these four narrow rooms, just wide enough for standing berths, was the dining room, an apartment of considerable size, where all hands, ten including the horseboy, when she was in her prime, gulped down their quick and silent meals at the one table.

Here, too, the midnight lunch was always laid out for the watch. To spend more than 15 minutes eating was a crime against the man at the wheel, waiting to be relieved, and to speak more than 15 words in the process was a solecism denounced as "gabbing." Whatever yarning was done in a drogher was certainly not done at the dining table.

The cabin had been well painted and decorated. The forecastle where lived the crew was a deep well, dark as Erebus, with bunks once straw-filled in tiers of three on either side, and seats formed by the chain-lockers. All the woodwork was unpainted, but stained with damp and dust and rust from anchor chains and salt-pockets, and polished by generations of soiled clothing and grimy fingers, and so whittled and notched with initials, names, emblems and tally marks of days and dollars, that by the light of a match it seemed to be encrusted with designs in filigree.

Engineer La Chapelle did not notice, but among the names and initials may have been Bucko Brennan's and Pat Canary's, mates and sailors in the year the late Capt. James W. Baby joined her as horseboy at $12 a month, when she was on her maiden voyage homeward bound from Bay City in 1871. Or perhaps Charley Staley's, the little captain's, although captains kept out of forecastles as a matter of etiquette.

Another who admired the Albatross-at-ease was Capt. Barney Dean. His admiration took practical form. What he gave for her, if anything, deponent sayeth not, but he became possessed of the Albatross, beak and claw, wing and feather, pumped her out, and put her into commission again.

He took the remaining masts out, cut her down to the solid wood and left her with an open hold, undecked except for a strip four or five feet wide running around her. This weakened her, but made her much easier to load and unload for the mixed cargoes which he carried.

His trade was a peculiar one. He delivered hay and camp supplies for the retreating lumbermen, and picked up drift logs and posts that had escaped their rafts, or loads of sawdust, tanbark, slabs and edgings at the mills, or sheep or hay from the farmers. Having no motive power in his dismantled hulk, he would persuade one tugman or another to give him a "pluck" on his way, for a consideration. He was peremptory, exacting and well liked. He carried a shotgun and could produce it significantly at the commencement of one of these marine hitch-hikes.

"Anyone that cuts the towline on me gets a dose of this!" he would say, patting Brown Bess. "If I want you to cast off and you can't hear me, I'll fire a blank in the air,"

In August, 1911, he arranged with Capt. Vent, who owned and sailed the tug C. C. Martin, built by Charley Martin, to tow the Albatross towards French River, to pick up a cargo. It was summer time and serene, and he took his daughter and her two children along for a holiday. There was plenty of room for all in the big cabin remaining from timber days. One man to handle his lines was all he needed, and the man he shipped for this purpose was Jo St. Peter. Up the east side of Georgian Bay was considered a "safe" voyage for such a craft, for most of it was in channels well sheltered by the thousands of rocky islands which the timbermen know so well.

Every August has its gale and this August had to choose the very night they were off Byng Inlet lighthouse to blow itself inside out. Either the tug broke down, or the Albatross waterlogged and pulled her into the trough of the sea, at a place where the wind had an 80-mile sweep. Perhaps she tried to turn around to get back to shelter and capsized in the trough, or she may have filled from the strain and gone down. Apparently there was some time for preparation, for afterwards rafts which the tug crew had tried to make were found on the shore. But when morning of August 29th came there was no tug and no Albatross, but Captain Dean, his daughter and children and Jo St. Peter were all safe at the lighthouse. They had got away from the ship in the 14-foot punt Barney had thoughtfully provided as a lifeboat. Later the bodies of Capt. Vent and his wife were found, near Key Harbor, to the north, lashed together, and the body of E. Hook, the tug's engineer, was picked up. There was a fireman lost with her, too, but as far as is known his body was never found. Nor the bodies of the three others who completed the crew of the tug C. C. Martin of Midland, 45 tons register.

RIGHT—THE ALBATROSS in her later days, among the lumber piles at Midland, after the Playfairs got her. Left to right are the Playfair tugs TRAVELLER, METAMORA and RELIANCE, the latter after a recent fire, lying alongside the old timber schooner, whose end is here recounted.