Still in Search of a Vanished Sprite: Schooner Days DCCCLXIII (863)

by C. H. J. Snider

FORTY years ago we started to seek remnants of those honorable sailing vessels which fought on either side in the War of 1812 on the Great Lakes. A harmless folly of extreme youth, with the emphasis, please, on the extreme. To date we have found a dozen of the two hundred ships, brigs, schooners, sloops, and gunboats that took part in that conflict. We do not expect to find many more, for "no man at all can be living forever," we have the word, of Riders of the Sea for it. Even oak does not last that long tho' we have seen the keels of veteran vessels of the American Revolution and of the Conquest of Canada, which takes us back 190 years.

All sylphs are swift, elusive, intangible, whether they be moths, humming birds, fairies, or slender, graceful women. Commodore Isaac Chauncey, in command at Sacket's Harbor in 1813, considered the man-of-war Sylph, whose relics, if any, we are endeavoring to trace, a very fine vessel, a particularly fast number. As she was rushed together in three weeks, from unseasoned timber, possibly a green tree today and a rib, knee or plank tomorrow, the chances of finding anything of her at this date would appear to be remote, even apart from the elusive qualities attached to her name.

ON A FALSE SCENT

Ten years ago we thought we had her tracked down. Henry Doville, a genial boat builder and boat liveryman in Great Sodus, mentioned that one of the vessels rebuilt in the shipyard his grandfather operated at Sodus Point ninety years ago, had been named the Sylph. She was then very old, and had been very fast. When she was rebuilt she was renamed Wanatee and went to the Upper Lakes for the lumber trade.

This fitted with what J. H. Safford of Grand Haven, Mich., has said, that some of the schooners which came up from Ontario for the developing lumber trade of the 1870s were thought to date back to the War of 1812.

We also learned that there was a Sylph owned in Oswego by Chesney and Co. in 1864. She was mentioned by the old Toronto Leader in 1866 and it looked probable that this Oswego vessel was the one rebuilt at Great Sodus—and that she was the original one built at Sacket's Harbor, the prize of our long stern-chase.

But inquiry showed that Chesney & Co's Sylph had been built at Ashtabula on Lake Erie in 1848 by a shipwright named Lent, and moreover her tonnage was only 161, less than half the man-of-war's. This latter was, in her day, the largest vessel yet rigged as a schooner, and measured 340 tons. So, reluctantly, we had to adopt the Scotch verdict, "Not proven." Besides, we still had no corpus delicti, no hint of where this Sylph or any Sylph, had gone. It was like asking the coroner to bring in a verdict without first finding the body.

HER WAKE IN WAVES OF INK

Next Chief Librarian C. R. Sanderson showed us an item in a type-script copy of "Historical Notes on Great Lakes Shipping by James Van Cleve" now in the Public Library:

"The Brig Sylph (of 10 guns) was fitted out in 1832 or '3 by parties at Sacket's Harbor for the timber trade. Her service was short in that trade as she went ashore near Oswego and broke up in 1833 or '4. By her enrollment it must have been in the fall of 1834. Enrollment was dated in Spring of 1834."

That seemed to settle it. But only seemed.

This note called her a brig, Which is as different from a schooner as a pear from a peach. A brig is square-rigged, a schooner fore-and-aft. But it was on record that in her second year the Sylph had been changed from a schooner to a brig, from reasons to be discussed later, so she would be a brig when she was refitted for the timber trade later. It was also true that she had 26 guns in 1814, but, she was "of 10 guns" when she first came out, and may have been always so rated in the U.S. navy books.

This Sylph was "pierced" for 24 guns, that is, built with 12 gun ports to a side. Her first armament was four 32-pounders (big guns for the year 1813) and six 24-pounders, which may have been all there were available. There was not enough boltroping to finish her sails when she was launched, end everything else may have then been in short supply.

Later Sir James Yeo, the British commodore, credited her with bigger s guns, one a 42-pounder and fourteen others that were carronades, quickly worked heavy guns used for short range battering. A deserter who came to him from the American scout vessel, Lady-of-the-Lake, told him the Sylph was being changed from a schooner to a brig, and being given twenty-two 12-pounder long range guns for 1814. Another said she had twenty-six guns and would be brig rigged.

Perhaps they were telling the truth. The Americans may have found the schooner rig too ambitious or too precarious for a 340-ton man of war. It had never been tried in vessels of more than 100 tons before. A French spy who reported Americans were rigging 300-ton vessels as schooners was not believed in France. The British had changed their own schooners on Lake Ontario, smaller than the Sylph, to brigs, because one hit was less likely to cripple them. The Sylph drove one of these converts — the Magnet — ashore at Four Mile Point near Niagara in 1814. A brig's two masts were in three sections, a schooners in two. One roundshot into the schooner's mainboom or masts and she was out of action, but a brig could replace everything except her lower masts even in the heat of battle.

When Sir James' 3-masted square-rigged flagship lost both main and mizzen topmasts in the running fight between Toronto and Hamilton he put her before the wind and crowded sail on to his foremast and continued the action for hours. A schooner or fore-and-after could not have done that. When the schooner Governor Tompkins lost her foremast in these same Burlington Races, in which the Sylph also took part, she automatically removed from the battle line her own guns and the guns of the vessel which had to tow her. This Governor Tompkins was the largest schooner on the Great Lakes before the Sylph was built, but only measured 100 tons.

SCHOONER VERSUS BRIG

Susceptibility to major injury was the objection to the schooner rig in broadside-to-side, yardarm-to-yardarm work. But for gaining the weather gage and fast long range dueling the schooner rig was incomparably superior. Broadside battles were expected for the year 1814 by both fleets, and that was the reason for the additional guns and the square rig being put in the Sylph. The brig rig must have been useful when she was refitted for the timber trade twenty years after the war was over. Several early timber droghers on Lake Ontario used that rig because it left their decks clear for the working of the timber by the elimination of the long booms which ran the length of every schooner's deck and split it into two compartments. The square yards of the brig rig, handy for hoisting in boats or guns in war, were also excellent substitutes for derricks for hoisting in the heavy sticks of timber. Schooner rigged vessels used their gaffs, which were shorter and not so strong.

There were, however, other points in the typescript version of Van Cleve which seemed to need clarification.

Capt. Jas. C. Van Cleve, born in New Jersey, came to Lake Ontario in 1820 and was master in steam and sail for forty or fifty years on this lake. He was in the timber trade himself in 1831, when Capt. John Vorce had the timber schooner Ohio, and so of his own knowledge he should have been able to write correctly of other timber droghers. He was part owner of the first propeller on the lakes ten years later, and the master of many steamers.

His interest in shipping was keen, and he left a monumental history of lake shipping to the City of Oswego in 1877, before he retired to Sandwich, Ont., where he died in 1888. This history was in manuscript, and beautifully illustrated with water color drawings of ports and vessels.

Certain differences between the remembered title of the manuscript and that of the typewriting, which must be a copy of something and an impression of a change of style, suggested that it would be interesting to compare the two. The Chief Librarian could not, under the terms of a trust, allow the typescript out of his custody, so after copying accurately the paragraph quoted, and one or two more for good measure, we hied to Oswego, where the Van Cleve "Reminiscences," as their short title there runs, lie in equally sacred trust at the City Hall.

The journey was worth while. The corresponding paragraph in Van Cleve's own handwriting read verbatim et literatim:

"The war brig Sylph of 10 guns was fitted out in 1830 as a merchantman and was engaged entirely in the timber trade. She was owned by Smith and Merrick. Her hulk was finally sunk in the bay at Clayton about 1843, where, portions of her still remain. Capt. John Vorce was in command of her for a time."

WHICH WAS RIGHT?

Capt. Jas. C. Van Cleve wrote that with his own hand in 1877, being then of sound mind and in good health. He was writing specifically about the timber trade, in which he had been engaged, and which he was describing. He was mentioning the early vessels in it, and what he had said two paragraphs earlier in his manuscript may have had a bearing on whether the Sylph was broken up at Oswego in 1834 or visible at Clayton as late as 1877. Capt. Van Cleve wrote:

"The Madison, sloop of war of 24 guns was dismantled and sunk at Sackets Harbor after the war. In 1833 she was raised and fitted out as a merchant vessel by Capt. Robt. Hugunin, and was confined to the timber trade, under the name of Gen. Leavenworth. She went ashore near Oswego 1835 and broke up."

It seemed strange that practically the same facts should be recounted of different vessels.

Whether the copyist of the typescript was confused in his notes, or copied from dictation by someone confused in reading or in recollection, we felt inclined to rely on Capt. Van Cleve's own hand-of-write of 1877. We had, thirty-two years ago, found his note upon the location of a French schooner sunk at the time of the conquest perfectly accurate. He and his friend Capt. Vorce had examined her together in 1831, about the time of the Sylph's conversion and the French schooner was still there in 1916 when we went hunting her. We got timber, copper and lead from her. It was not likely that Capt. Van Cleve would make a mistake about the Sylph, which had been commanded by his friend Vorce who saw the French vessel with him.

The needle seemed to point to Clayton, N.Y. But what could one expect to find in 1948 of a wreck vaguely visible in 1877?

Yet we hie us thither.

SYLPH BUILDER'S MASTERPIECE THAT NEVER WET HER KEEL—This was the line-of-battleship NEW ORLEANS, intended for 120 guns. From her shapely underbody she should have been the fastest three-decker in the world, but work on her was abandoned after peace was declared on Christmas Eve, 1814, and she was never launched. The photograph was taken in the 1880's, when she was broken up. Black dots around her are the frame-heads of contemporaries of the Sylph which were dismantled and sunk in Sacket's Harbor when the war was over. All but one of these wrecks were removed long ago.

TOPSAIL SCHOONER OF SYLPH'S TIME

This modern reproduction from lines of British sloop-of-war SWIFT, by H. I. Chapelle, naval architect, has proved a very successful yacht.