ERIE WAVE Left Place Like Emptied Nest: Schooner Days DCCCLXXVII (877)

by C. H. J. Snider

PLACED as picturesquely as a Devon hamlet, Clear Creek village on our Erie shore wears the look of a robbed bird's nest. The old mill still grinds an occasional grist, and flat-bottomed boats still poke out through the fangs of the long ruined piers. But there are no 100-lb. sturgeon stored in the pond any more, and no lineup of wood-sleighs or lumber teams from the general store to the wharf warehouse, now fallen and-wave washed. And the few homes seem to draw away from one another instead of cuddling together.

The core seems to have been taken from this little russet apple of the Norfolk orchards. Something warmer than the village blacksmith shop has indeed been missing from the hamlet's heart for 59 years—eight farm boys and sailor boys, whose passing has left an unexplained legend of the Light of the Erie Wave, which is said to come up when a storm is brewing.

HOW IT BEGAN

AFTER ten days trying, on a Sunday evening (Sept. 30th, 1889), they were getting the little Schooner Erie Wave free from where she had been driven ashore half a mile east of Clear Creek, in Norfolk Co., Ont. Young Joe Crawford, fearing a storm, went down to the shore to see how his sixteen-year-old brother Charlie was faring. Charlie was one of four farm lads who had gone to help the Port Burwell crew of the schooner release the vessel.

When Joe came to the high gully-seamed shore the vessel was still so close to the steep bank that she could be reached by the plank from her deck. But they had pumped her till the pumps sucked for the first time since her stranding and got out most of the water, and all the ballast she had and all the weight she could spare. Her anchors and chains had been carried out into the lake and firmly bedded and a hawser had been led back to the windlass, and a good strain taken. Still she wouldn't budge from the clay shelf on which she had been driven. The lake was flat calm, not a breath stirring. But Capt. Tom Stafford confirmed Joe's forecast. They'd be getting wind presently, out of the southward, and with the wind the sea. Soon as the sea began to run she'd lift with the rising water and then they'd all heave on the windlass and work her off every time her bow rose. Joe stayed on board to help.

When the advance rollers began to come in they all worked like mad on the windlass brakes, and sure enough she slid into deeper water and floated.

"Keep her going, boys!" urged, Capt. Stafford. "Walk her out! We'll sail her to Port Burwell or the other place! You boys keep a-heaving, and we'll get ready for the wind when it comes!"

They expected a tug to come down from Port Burwell as soon as she was free, but with a gale threatening the captain did not think it safe to wait.

In the bustle of heaving the windlass round, fleeting back the chain, and tallying on to the halliards as the flailing sails rose no one noticed the vessel's motion — no one except young Charlie Crawford who began to retch. The motion really was terrific, for the unballasted vessel, always unstable, and now helpless as a barrel, lurched and rolled from side to side in the confusion of the rollers. Every, man, had left the pumps to weigh anchor and make sail, and the leaks were gaining fast, for she had been strained worse than they knew. From bilge to bilge washed, the water in her hold and she began to roll it in over the rails on both sides and even down her open hatches. A current seemed to be hurrying her up on her bedded anchors, or it may have been the oncoming squall. But she came up in her groundtackle faster than they could heave the chain in, or weigh the anchors. She tripped with her own headway just as the wind filled her hoisted sails, and over she went on her side with the snarling seas washing over her.

LIKE A GHOST

AFTER church time in the early darkness of the autumn night Joe Crawford suddenly appeared at his own father's door. Water was running from his clothes and forming pools at his feet, he was smeared with salmon colored clay, his hair was plastered over his face, his eyes were glazed and his jaws hung slack. He looked like the ghost of a man just drowned or dead from exhaustion. But his hands were bleeding.

"She's over again!" he gasped, "We got her out to her anchors and she overran them and went down on her side, with everybody hanging on to the cabintop."

"Do they need help?"

"Course they do."

"Come on boys," called the father, "rouse out the neighbors and bring lanterns. What about Charlie?"

"Charlie was deathly seasick and was washed overboard. I got him back on the cabintop with the captain. Then a sea swept me off and I swam for the shore. It wasn't far. But I couldn't get up the steep banks though I tore my nails off trying. I was knocked back time and again and carried down to White's Gully before I could make a landing."

Clear Creek people ran shouting pin the dark towards the lake. Someone galloped to Port Rowan, seven miles away, and the lifeboat started out.

Lanterns waved over the brink of the fifty-foot bank showed by their wavering arcs of light, nothing but how black and ugly the lake was, how venomous the spitting foam that seemed to rear up from nowhere and fall back to nowhere. There was no beach to build a watch fire, but they swung their lanterns and shouted as they patrolled the cliff top. After a time they heard feeble cries from the Gully and found a man named Thomas Baker or Taylor trying to get up the bank. He said he couldn't swim but had clung to the schooner's mainboom and had been washed ashore. Later Angus or "KI" Vaughan said that he had swum at least half a mile from where the schooner had gone over, and attempted again and again to scale the cliffs and finally succeeded, the third survivor.

BY THE DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT

NEXT MORNING, from the cliff top edge of Dan Moore's farm,, the sun rose on a fearful sight - the green hulled, sharp bowed Erie, Wave, bottom up, in almost the same spot where she had stranded 10 days, before, and where so many had worked so hard to save her.

Alongside of her, tangled as a pound-net through which a steamer had smashed, were her masts, topmasts, gaffs and bowsprit, with torn sails, snake-like standing rigging, and coils of sheets and halliards all mixed.

Somewhere in this mass, or in the muddy rollers of Erie still pitilessly pounding the unpitying clay banks were her captain, Tom Stafford of Port Burwell, who left a wife and three children; Capt. George Bell, of Port Dover, acting as mate; Edward Soper, a sailor from the nearby village of Vienna; Robert Marlatt, another sailor from Port Burwell, and four Clear Creek lads who had lent a hand to get her afloat—Charlie Crawford, Len and Jim Stevens, two brothers, and Lew Pelky or Walker. The names given are as gathered from Hugh Crawford, of Clear Creek, a surviving brother of Charlie and Joe; Hedley Abbott and C. L. Saxton of Port Rowan, and the Simcoe Reformer of the time. Another man supposed drowned was said to have been seen in Buffalo afterwards. But all these eight never more came home.

ENGLISH CHANNEL SCENERY?… No, Lake Erie's shore, with a worn wagon road climbing down to the port of CLEAR CREEK.