In Search of a Sylph: Schooner Days DCCCLXII (862)

by C. H. J. Snider

"GO." said the inner urge, "find the bones of a sylph."

Sylph?

A moth.

A fairy.

A slender, graceful woman.

Any one of several species of very brilliant South American humming birds, having a very long deeply-forked tail.

An imaginary being, male or female, living in and on the air, and intermediate between material and immaterial beings.

Thus, and not very helpfully, the dictionaries. South America is far, seminaries near as the circumambient air, but sapphos, slender graceful women, moths, fairies, air sprites and brilliant humming birds with long, deeply-forked tails are sacrosanct. Their framework belongs to beauty, Was there no other choice?

"Go," said the inner urge, "take a jump in the lake."

Lake Ontario, last of the five great basins brimming over to the sea? Not a bad idea, with the thermometer at 101 on a Wednesday!

Why, of course, there was a Sylph on Lake Ontario in the War of 1812, probably the world's largest schooner in her time, for she measured 340 tons.

LIVED AND DIED 100 YEARS AGO

This Sylph was a departure, both in rig, model and gun carrying ability, and in speed of construction. She was an inspiration of Henry Eckford, born 1775, died 1832, shipwright alike to Uncle Sam and the Grand Turk, who anticipated Harry J. Kaiser of 1941 and accepted no limitations of time or size. Assuredly her bones would be worth finding—if there were any left after a hundred and thirty-five years had passed.

Nelson's Victory took seven years to build, after her timbers had been fourteen years seasoning and pickling. Eckford's Sylph was built of green timber and launched in three weeks from the day her keel was laid. Fast, sharp and limber, she could not be expected to last long. Yet she was so stout that although she was only given ten guns at first, four of these were 32-pounders, the heaviest available, and she soon received 14 more heavy carronades. Next year she had 26 guns in all, four more than the new 500-ton brigs Jefferson and Jones. Her crew was only 100 men, four to a gun, and not enough. Her 26 guns were heavier armament than the square-rigged flagships of the opposing fleets had carried the year before. She needed 200 men to fight her and sail her properly with her new rig and armament.

Perhaps there might be something left of her yet. But where?

WORTH ALL OTHERS COMBINED

Commodore Isaac Chauncey's correspondence with the Secretary of the Navy was full of her praises. Writing from Sacket's Harbor, on Lake Ontario, the day after she was launched, on Aug. 19, 1813, he told the Secretary of the Navy:

"The schooner Sylph having been launched yesterday, and as I can fit her for service by the 24th, I shall take her with me. She is a very fine vessel . . . and as from her construction she must sail fast she will add very much to my present force, and in point of real service fully counterbalance the vessels which I have lost."—These were four smaller schooners. The Scourge and Hamilton, with 19 guns between them, capsized, and the Julia and Growler, eight guns more, were captured in the so-called Niagara Sweepstakes. "I regret," Chauncey went on, "that I have not another schooner of the description of the Sylph, as in that case I would leave all my heavy sailing schooners in port, which are really of little service to me upon the open lake, for, with the heavy winds that we have had, they were found quite useless. However, the fate of the lake must be decided before I could build another, and I hope before the enemy can get another out."

There was not enough boltrope for the Sylph's sails (her mainsail must have been 70 feet on the foot, an unheard of size for a fore-and-after then) but they used halliards and running gear in place of the boltrope and so got her wings ready for her to fly with the General Pike, flagship, Madison, another three-masted ship, Oneida, brig, Governor Tompkins, Ontario, and Pert, converted cargo schooners, and the little Lady-of-the-Lake, dispatch schooner and scout, in all mounting 91 guns. The Sylph had to tow one of the converts all the time, to keep them up with the fleet.

IN THE FIGHTING LINE

After sundry brushes and a running fight from Rochester to the False Ducks, on Sept. 11th, Chauncey came to grips with the six vessels of the British squadron and partially dismasted Sir James Yeo's flagship, the Wolfe. But the gallantry of Capt. Mulcaster, in throwing the Royal George into the breach, and the encumbrance of the useless schooners which the Sylph and other vessels had to tow into the battle line saved the day for the British. The American fleet was badly mauled, their flagship losing spars and bursting guns and having five men killed and 22 wounded. The Governor Tompkins' foremast went over the side. The Sylph, under orders, had to tow the Ontario, which immobilized her own heavy 32-pounders and the two heavy guns of her tow.

A week later, on Oct. 5th, the Americans had their revenge, capturing five of a fleet of seven transports. The Sylph here took the convoying British cutter General Drummond and the Lady Gore, a schooner which tried to escape between the Main Duck and Yorkshire Island. Another of the transports had been burned by the British, after transferring her troops to the vessels later captured. The only one to escape to Kingston was, strangely, an American prize which had been captured at Olcott, N.Y., and was being used in the British transport service. She was the small schooner Enterprise, of Pultneyville.

On Oct. 23rd the Sylph picked up Lieut. Scott of the 2nd Regiment of Artillery and forty men who were stranded on Wolfe Island in their attempt to gain the rendezvous at Grenadier Island on their way to attack Montreal by way of the St. Lawrence River. The troops had lost their large bateau and had been in hiding on the Canadian island. Lieut. W.[sic: M.] F. Woolsey, commanding the Sylph, brought the men to Cape Vincent but it was blowing too hard at the time to take off the 60 barrels of provisions and camp equipment salvaged from the wreck of their boats.

FALSE ALARM?

The Sylph continued to assist the American expedition of 10,000 men aimed at Montreal. She must have drawn 12 feet of water, for Commodore Chauncey was going to lighten her and the General Pike to that draught or less, to warp them through the reef which separated him from the British fleet which made the dashing attack on the American army concentration at French Creek, but the British got back to Kingston before he could do so, and he returned to patrolling Lake Ontario.

Either the water was very much lower in 1813 than now, or the Commodore was needlessly concerned, for the chart shows 14 feet least water where the British fleet came through from Kingston, at Quebec Head, and we found 17 feet there this month, with 26 feet in a channel nearer Grindstone Island.

Before the month of November was out the American fleet was tossed by violent head winds and were firing distress guns all night. The hard-luck Governor Tompkins, struck on the Niagara bar when trying to get into the river and lost her rudder, the Fair American was driven ashore there, the Madison was damaged and the Julia went missing. The Sylph disappeared also. She rode it out by herself and came into the rendezvous at Sacket's Harbor within an hour of the Commodore. She had been searching for the Julia. The others, all got in later.

It is interesting to note that the Governor Tompkins was the largest schooner on Lake Ontario when she was launched three years before. She was the converted commercial schooner Charles and Ann, and measured 100 tons, less than a third of the Sylph's measurements.

Commodore's letters and such went dumb about the Sylph after the launch of the great British three- decker St. Lawrence in 1814. That put a period to war on the Great Lakes, a full stop which has held for a hundred and thirty-four years, thank God. The Sylph and all her gun-toting sisters, St. Lawrence and all his thundering companions, were laid up to rot in ordinary or find employment in peace.

Schooner Days will continue the search for the bones of a sylph, this Sylph.

NOT THESE

SAPPHO AND SYLPHIDE-Bright blue South American humming bird of the genus hylocharis, known as a sapphire-throat, firetail, and sappho, hovering above DANILOVA, prima ballerina, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.