Son of Erin Saved More Than His Trunk: Schooner Days DCCCLIII (853)

by C. H. J. Snider

HOPE you've been wishing as earnestly as others that we'd go back to the Kellys, for they were, and are, a lively lot. The adventures of Michael of that clan, for fifty years a Toronto mariner, were recalled the other day when we were visiting Capt. Rooney of Cobourg, "Little Dan" of the schooner fleet, nephew of just plain Dan and of Hugh. "Little Dan," born in Cobourg—the Corktown section there- of—85 years ago, has no trace of the brogue of course, but a keen relish lor the ould sod he has never seen.

"Yes," said he, "when the Kellys and the Rooneys were together in Corktown, Cobourg always got s rousing."

Perhaps he had in mind the time "Knucker" (Edward) Kelly, now 80, living in Toronto, then mate with Capt. Sam Malcolmson, brought the Singapore into Cobourg without a rudder, and the job they had making and shipping a new one; or maybe it was a reminiscence of "Nowhy Knucker" Kelly, another of the clan, whose christened name was Jim. Or again in it may have been a recollection of "Nosey" O'Brien, christened Thomas, who was also a favorite with Michael Kelly, father of Knucker and patron, unrelated, of Nowny Knucker, who was a grand man before the mast.

And again it might have been Hughie the blacksmith, Michael's cautious elder brother, he was thinking of; Hughie, with a name like Capt. Rooney's own uncle, the harbor master and captain of the lifesaving crew at Cobourg, but of different temper. Hughie Kelly was a good blacksmith and a good sailor, with captain's papers; true he never sailed his own vessel, always his brother's, whether man, mate or master. He was careful. "He always could see more sundogs and storms coming next week than any man alive," was his admiring nephew's tribute. And when the Dundee, the Kellys' three-master, was laid up, as she was all too often in later years, old Hughie would appear at least once a week with a cannister of rock salt, to "salt her down and presarve her ould bones" against the wet and the frost and dry rot.

Always a good ship's husband.

THE "JAWN A"

We left Michael, captain of the John A. Macdonald (without the Sir), in the 1870's, "thin as a razor strap and straight as a yard o' pump water."

One black winter night Michael had to run for Presqu'isle in her in a heavy gale. He was just able to reach the point, and let go his anchors. She pounded on the bottom with the sea running, and he saw she would go to pieces. So he got his yawlboat down. It was small to hold them all in the sea that was running, and they were afraid of swamping and capsizing or having the boat roll over on them and kill them, but their captain said: "B'ys, if ye'll hang on to the sides of her in the water she'll ride topside up and float ye through the breakers and not roll over on ye at all. I'll swim beside ye and we'll all come through thegither." He went to his stateroom and dragged out his old-fashioned sea-chest, a stout wooden box like a trunk, only with cleats on the ends for the beckets or rope handles.

"You push off," he called. "I'll follow you with my chest. It'll float me."

As he cast the painter off, the crew had no choice but-to do as he said. He floated and swam alongside the yawlboat, bringing his box with him through the icy darkness. It was at night, late in November. They all washed ashore together, where the snow mingled with the foam on the frozen beach. They saw a farmhouse light and trudged for it, after Michael had made them haul the yawlboat, and the chest, well up above the breakers on the snow.

The farmer thawed them out and put them up for the night. They were wet to their ears and their clothes froze on them, but the English lever watch, a big silver one Michael Kelly wore on a chain like a bobstay across his vest, was still ticking merrily when he peeled off. Next morning Michael borrowed a horse and sleigh and drove down to the shore. He came back with his box. The Macdonald had broken up.

"And that trunk's all you've saved?" asked the farmer.

"Yes," said Michael truthfully.

WHAT HE SAVED

In the bottom of it was $600 in bills, his season's earnings. Masters were their own bankers in those days, and often kept all the ship's cash in the cabin, from the time they fitted out in the spring till they laid up in the fall. They had to do this because they needed ready money to pay their bills as they went along. The $600 was a nest-egg which eventually hatched into independence, in the form of the three-masted schooner Dundee. But this was at least ten years ahead in the uncertain future.

FURTHER ADVENTURES

of

CAPT. MICHAEL KELLY, fifty years a Toronto mariner, master of a dozen schooners and long resident on Adelaide street, in St. Mary's parish.

THE DUNDEE IN HUMBER BAY, 1908, after thirty years' ownership by the Kelly family.