'Roll Call of the Reef' Between These Two Lights on Long Point Lie Bones of Hundreds of Ships: Schooner Days DCCCLI (851)

by C. H. J. Snider

SPEAKING of wrecks on the old "North Foreland," (Long Point, Lake Erie, which is lined with them), Hedley Abbott of Port Rowan, now in his 74th year, told us that when he was a lad his father called him, and they all ran to do what they could when the American schooner E. Fitzgerald got ashore near the west end of the point, across the Inner Bay about seven miles south of the village. When they got to the lake beach the Fitzgerald was beginning to break up, and the captain and crew made a desperate attempt to launch the yawlboat from the stern and so reach the shore.

He saw the yawl boat capsize and six men and the woman cook drown in the breakers. The schooner struck in a northeast snowstorm, Nov. 24, 1883, when she was trying to get in through the Old Cut at the west end of the Point.

Lightkeeper Lorne Brown at the Lower Light, pointed out where the wreck of the schooner Alzora has been lying for forty years, on the lake beach, a mile west of the light. She's now sanded over and covered by the high water. She was owned by Hagerboom of Port Burwell.

CATALOGUE OF CATASTROPHE

Those spoken of, like the steamers C. W. Elphicke, Pratt and Siberia, and the schooner Leadville, are only a few of the Long Point wrecks, of which traces remain. There are many more to tell of in their turn, among them:

Glad Tidings, of Detroit, a total loss Oct. 25th, 1870.

Fenton, of Wallaceburg, stranded Sept. 29th, 1872.

Miami, N. C. West, Frances Palour and Wild Rover, Americans wrecked In November, 1874. The Wild Rover was valued at $10,000.

Rising Star and Portage, two more Americans wrecked near Port Rowan in 1877, the Portage on July 27th of that year.

J. W. McGrath, of St. Catharines, foundered east of the light, Oct. 28th, 1878; she was valued at $6,500.

Eliza R. Turner. of Cleveland, and Madeira, another American schooner, stranded Oct. 5th, 1877, and total losses, the Turner worth $20,000 with a $3,500 cargo and the Madeira worth $15,000, but her cargo $27,000. Might have been 1948 head of lettuce.

E. P. Dorr, of Buffalo, foundered with all hands east of Long Point, Nov. 14th, 1881; loss $9,000.

James Scott, of Port Burwell, total loss on Long Point, November 1882

Siberia of Kingston, timber schooner, stranded on Long Point, value $9,000 Oct. 30th, 1883.

St. Andrew, of St. Catharines, old "Cap" Sullivan's first vessel, lost in May, 1882; $8,000; "ten miles southeast of New Cut lighthouse." This may refer to the lighthouse built at the west end of Long Point in 1879.

There were two or three "Cuts" in the 19th century and a lightship preceded the lighthouse there.

BURIED IN THE SAND

These all are mentioned in the Dominion wreck register kept at Ottawa. There were many others; the Queen of the North, built at the mouth of the Nottawasaga, so sanded in by the gale that when Capt. Frank Jackman, of Toronto, one of her owners, went back to salvage her he could not find her; the Muir Bros, schooner Arctic, whose decks lifted with the swelling of the wetted pine used for dunnaging her oak cargo; the Kingfisher, a three-master which got off; the Erie Wave twice tragically capsized.

Mr. Abbott, who was a member of the crew of the lifesaving station at the Old Cut light, at the west end of Long Point, also mentioned the Atlantic, Walcolken, Newburg, Dresden, Idaho, Commodore, Tibets and others as victims of the Point.

The schooner John Tibets of Oswego—name so spelled in Thomas' Registrar of 1864 - as built at Port Robinson by J. and J. Abbey in 1855, and then called the Perseverance. Loaded with soft coal she sank just east of the town line between Houghton and Walsingham.

The Dresden mentioned by Mr. Abbott was loaded with whiskey and broke in two, in 1922, about where the Fitzgerald came ashore. A schooner name Josephine Dresden of Chicago, built at Michigan City in 1853 was probably a different vessel.

The Walcolken sank about a mile off shore in 1887. Two men were left in the rigging. The lifeboat made two unsuccessful efforts but finally got them off.

The Newburg, lost in 1891, was loaded with flour.

The Commodore, barley laden, sank about opposite Port Royal, which is up the Big Creek at the west end of Inner Bay.

FRANK ROOT'S BRAVE DEED

The Idaho was an arch-built wooden steamer, lost with seventeen men, all hands but two, on the, night of Nov. 5th, 1897. Capt. Frank Root of the steamer Mariposa earned the admiration of all lakemen by his masterly rescue of the two survivors, clinging to the crosstrees of the mast of the steamer, after she went down in shoal water, J. K. Wells, 115 Lee ave., Toronto, told the writer seven years ago:

"I've been duck shooting on Long Point Bay since 1894, and on that Saturday, Nov. 6th, the late C. K. Rogers and myself were standing on the verandah of the Ocean House Hotel there, and he said to me, 'What is that steamer doing out there in the lake?' She would come up against the weather and then would pay away, only to come up again. She did this repeatedly. We found out the next day it was the Mariposa, picking those men off the spar of the sunken steamer Idaho. We couldn't see the mast sticking up out of the water, so far away. The Idaho should have gone under the Point for shelter, as she was an old boat rebuilt, and had arches and bilge planks to brace her up."

As a matter of fact, the Idaho had turned back and was trying to reach the lee of Long Point Bay when she filled and sank. Sixty-four steamers gained shelter under the Point the night she went down.

THEY BEGAN EARLY

The first wreck on Long Point of which we have heard was the Young Phoenix, in 1818, with many Irish immigrants for the Talbot settlement.The poor people saved their lives but nothing else, and landed hungry in a hungry land. Apparently she was a schooner.

A later immigrant ship was the steamer Atlantic, loaded to the guards with Norwegian passengers and their belongings in 1852. She was in collision with another steamer in fog off the Point and went down in the "deep hole" in 30 fathoms two miles off the end of Long Point, drowning two hundred and fifty people. Many efforts have been made to locate her hull, for $60,000 in cash was left in her safe when she went down, The water is too deep for a diver. The weather was calm, and the ship sank slowly. The poor Norwegians could have been saved had they understood English, but they panicked and rushed the boats and swamped them.

AND THE CONDUCTOR

And, of course, there was the Conductor in 1854, twenty-nine years to the very night before the Fitzgerald tragedy. Everybody who has gone to school should know about the Conductor, but the other night when a gathering of intelligent adults was asked about the heroine in that story, not one recognized her name—the heroine's not the schooner's—so we shall have a piece about her soon.

"LOWER LIGHT," 1948, AT EASTERN END OF LONG POINT

"UPPER LIGHT" which once marked the Old Cut at the west end of Long Point-—now all filled in, and the lighthouse a summer residence.

LONG POINT LIFE-SAVING STATION, NOW DESERTED, BEHIND RADIO OPERATOR'S COTTAGE

CAN TELL OF MANY WRECKS

HEDLEY BOWEN ABBOTT of Port Rowan, born March 3, 1875, is a descendant of Stephen Paine, English miller who came to America in the ship Diligent of Ipswich in 1638, and grandson of Timothy Abbott, Ontario pioneer. Hedley Abbott served three years and a half in the Great War, in France, Belgium and Germany, and had two sons in the World War — one wounded at Okinawa—and a grandson in the navy. He has a great-grandson three years old living in Toronto.