Axe to the Root of a Mystery: Schooner Days DCCCLXV (865)

by C. H. J. Snider

ON Clayton's west-side waterfront, in from the St. Lawrence, on the foreshore of the Otis-Brookes Co.'s long established lumberyard, a row of black dots bobbed in the backwash of the stiff west wind. From our deck—we were anchored off a few hundred yards, as close in as safety permitted—the black dots looked like the rung-heads or upper ends of the floor timbers of a wreck, and a long black line indicated a keel or keelson.

Were these the bones of the long sought Sylph, man-of-war of 1812, that we had come two hundred miles to see?

Eagerly we pulled ashore in the longboat.

Foiled again. The black dots were only the wet ends of planks, the keel or keelson the stringpiece of a little submerged wharf.

Young Larry Brookes, grandson of the founder of the lumber firm, stood on the foreclosure to welcome us. His father was still stormbound on Amherst Island by the same gale there that had brought us down.

"Look," he said, "would this be what you are after?"

High and dry above the receding waters, in the spot where it had lain since dredged up twelve years ago to the Brookes firm's cost and inconvenience, was enough heavy wreck timber to sink our little longboat and a dozen like it. It was in two sections, each held together by heavy bolts of blacksmith iron, three or four feet long and ranging from one inch to an inch and a half in diameter. There were also 8-inch and 10-inch hand-wrought spikes or ship-nails. The larger section was made up of five main timbers, each about 12 inches square, one of them twelve feet long, the others perhaps half that length. The other section was of similar pieces with smaller ones attached. All ends were broken off short by a sharp quick fracture.

"We had to dynamite the heap when it was dumped here by the dredge," explained Mr. Brookes, "to make the pieces small enough to handle."

THIS was plainly the deadwood of a large wooden sailing vessel of the 19th century or earlier. It was not as sound as the timbers of the Nancy, built in 1789, but it had been exposed to worse conditions, having been sun-dried and frost-bitten for ten years after a century of submersion.

A crosscut saw went into a square foot of it like a het knife through butter at first, slowing to the pace of cutting a dry-frozen ice cream brick in the middle, and falling through the outer shell again almost by its own weight. The outer faces were crumbly with years of rain and sun after long submersion, the core was still wet, and showed a deep purple hue, drying to indigo blue. Good white oak always does that if it stays long enough under water. Irish bog oak, submerged for centuries in the peat, comes out solid black. Each timber, by its grain, was a heart-piece, the oldest, strongest, hardest part of an oak tree which had been growing on the shores of Jefferson County, New York State, one month in 1813, and furrowing the waters of Lake Ontario the next. The sour smell of white oak sap was still in it.

Deadwood is not, in vessels, the superfluity it is in metaphor or thee forest. It is an essential. Webster's dictionary defines it as "a mass of timber built into the bow and stern of a vessel to give solidity." It is the timber foundation upon which the whole structure is reared. From the deadwood, as from the foundation, the shape and size of the structure can be determined with considerable accuracy.

This deadwood was as heavy as that of what we used to call an Old Canaller, meaning not a canal boat but a schooner built to the limit of the locks of the "Old" or second Welland Canal. The present is the fourth. These Old Canallers were large enough and strong enough to traverse all the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, as many of them did, and they had a carrying capacity of up to 750 tons dead weight. Their measured tonnage, or tons register, ran between 320 and 350 tons, on dimensions varying little from 140 feet over all, 26 feet beam, and 11 feet depth of hold. Their loaded draught was 11 feet, and light draught 4. They were comparatively shoal, for they had to negotiate limited canal locks and harbors. They were really intended for a 9 feet draught limit, and sailed well when loaded to that, but they could load down to 11 feet or even more.

This deadwood probably belonged to a vessel 11 or 12 feet deep in the hold, and with greater draught of water, but not 140 feet in length over all, and possibly more than 26 feet beam. Her shorter length would i reduce her tonnage, her greater beam and depth increase it, so that her registered tonnage might be as much as the Old Canaller's, but her carrying capacity would be less. This would depend upon the relative sharpness of her model.

The deadwood offered definite information about her shape. The lowest member of four parallel timbers, one which we assumed might be the keels to which the other three had been bolted together vertically, had a groove or scoring in it, meant to take the lowest edge of the lowest outer plank of the hull, the garboard strake. This groove, called the rabbet (or rebate) indicated 3-inch planking. This might be light for a "full canal-sized vessel." They sometimes run to 4-inch planking and 5 inches in the bilges. The deadwood timbers, impressive as they were, were not heavy for a canaller, though heavy enough. Averaging 12 inches vertically, with slight variations, they were 10 inches across, suggesting that they had been slimmed down for greater speed through the water. In the same way the comparatively light planking suggested speed, not cargo capacity.

Above the garboard rabbet the timbers were scored 2 inches deep with shallow oblong openings or mortices, twelve to sixteen up-and-down and from 5 1/2 to 6 inches across. Some of these ran across the whole depth of the second timber from the top well into the second one from the bottom of the four. Several still held bracket-like knees of the natural crook of the oak limb or root which had been used. Here was where the "ribs" which gave the ship her shape towards the stern, called pitchers or cantframes, sprang from the deadwood. They had either rested on these curved pieces or been lodged into the mortices themselves. It was impossible to say whether the cantframes had been sawn off when the wreck was on its side and being dismantled, leaving their heels in the mortices, or whether the heels or knees had been placed there originally to offer support for the rest of the frames.

Enough remained of these natural crooks and the mortices to indicate that the vessel had concave garboards and clean lines aft, with her framework rising at sharp angles. All this suggested a deep sharp vessel, built for speed, and built very strongly, without any waste of bulk or weight, so that she would not be pushing one unnecessary ounce or sliver of wood through the water.

THE SYLPH?

THE WISH was father to the thought, but we did think that this was the wreckage of the Sylph, and will continue to think so until offered proof to the contrary.

The evidence to hand shows that the Sylph, after her war career and commercial adventures, was sunk in the bay at Clayton near this spot and was visible here as late as 1877, and this wreck had been a menace to navigation from then on, until dredged out ten or twelve years ago.

The descriptions tallied. The Sylph's tonnage was 340 when she was a man-of-war, 236 when she became a merchantman. Tonnage oft naval vessels was usually kept "up," because their building was paid for by the ton, so the builders measured them as "large" as possible, when the commercial vessel's tonnage was kept "down," because the owners had to pay customs tolls and harbor dues on it. It makes a large difference whether you take the actual length of the vessel or the theoretical length of the keel and subtract an allowance for the beam, and whether you take the outside measurement of the breadth or only the distance between the inner skins of the two sides.

We know the Sylph was comparatively deep, for the American commodore thought she drew 12 feet of water with her guns and stores in. That would be right for a sharp standing-keel schooner of around 100 feet length that did not use a centreboard like the flatter-bottomed Old Canallers.

Drop keels, ancestors of the centreboard, were used by Lieut. Schank, RN, in 1774 and were adopted by the British Admiralty in 1790. In 1796-8 dozens of British men-of-war brigs were using them. Centreboards began to appear on Lake Ontario six years before the Sylph was built, the first being tried out in a Niagara-built skiff at Oswego in 1806 or 7, but we have no record of them being used in any American man-of-war on the lakes, or in any but small vessels during the Sylph's lifetime. Had she had a centreboard, Commodore Chauncey would have mentioned it. We have earlier discussed the probability of the centreboard having been used in the Toronto Yacht, built at the Humber in 1799.

IT may relieve readers anxiety (if any) to record that we turned right around before lunch that day and stormed back across the St. Lawrence and up the Bay of Quinte and Lake Ontario, against the last forty hours of the westerly gales. Without parting a rope yarn in the 3 1/4-day voyage of 420 stormy miles, we moored in the RCYC lagoon at the Island with half an hour of our 80-hour limit to spare. And so heard Big Ben across the Bay strike midnight as we drifted off to dreamland on a sylph. If anyone has another identification, let him speak.

"THE BONES OF A SYLPH"

Horn timber or after end of keelson

Mortices for "Pitchers" or Cant-Frames, rising from deadwood

Dislodged deadwood with end of rib

Part of keel

Rabbet for garboard, lowest outside plank