Devil's Horse Block Off Never-Never Town: Schooner Days DCCCLXXXII (882)

by C. H. J. Snider

HONEST Lieut. Thomas Paxton brought the Provincial Marine schooner Speedy into the new port at Presquisle with a sigh of relief, one fine day in 1804.

Wherever the French voyageurs sailed or paddled on all the Great Lakes they left Presquisle place-names behind for the English. This one was towards the northeast corner of Lake Ontario, where Prince

Edward County juts out. Its French name survives in the summer cottage colony of Presquisle Point, five miles south of Brighton, Ont. In 1804 it was beginning to boom as the site for a new capital in Upper Canada, to be the county town of the District of Newcastle, and to outshine York. Lieut. Paxton had passengers and freight from Niagara for this new metropolis, for the Royal Navy on the lakes was still a common carrier, although there were a dozen small freight vessels on the lake.

The Speedy's pumps were going as she came in, though the weather was fine. Built at Kingston eight years before, the government packet soon showed signs of that curse of the early lake marine, dry rot. Unseasoned timber, hard winters, hot summers, and poor ventilation were the causes, Paxton had had trouble keeping her afloat these last three seasons.

He looked with envy on the new trading schooner which Capt. Charles Selleck, the enterprising Englishman who had commanded the Duchess of York, had built and fitted out. She lay snug in Presquisle Cove, loading pear ash from the log piles the new settlers had burned. She was new and staunch and tight as a drum - and prospering, Selleck had done well, he reflected, since coming to this wilderness with his ship carpenter father-in-law from the Woolwich dockyards. They had built this schooner, and called her the Lady Murray, and got their share of government contract work. And now he could see the new courthouse rising by their efforts among the pine stumps. It was to be three stories high, 50 feet long, 30 feet wide, the finest building between York and Kingston, with rooms for the judges and officers behind the courtroom, and cells for prisoners, for it would be the district jail as well. And besides all this it had accommodation for the traveling public. It was to be a government hostel, like the one up the lake at Port Credit. And the lucky Sellecks and their in-laws, the Gibsons, were the caretakers and innkeepers for the government, and had already moved in and fitted the finished part of the building with rude amenities.

Paxton's naval service had not been happy. Nobody's was in the Provincial Marine. He had been appointed second lieutenant, equivalent to a mate's berth, in 1791; three shillings and sixpence a day. It was 1797 before he was promoted lieutenant, and given command of this leaky transport. Two of his crew, Thomas Dobbs and Wm. Young, stole the ship's boat and deserted at Kingston. Paxton was censured because he was sleeping ashore that night; another of the trials of a family man. Fast rowing-gigs probably from the Swift or Duke of Kent, recovered the abandoned boat, but not the absconding men. Paxton was ordered to take the Speedy out with a cargo of Indian goods for the west when the wind was fresh in his teeth, and demurred. On it being urged he set sail and soon came back to Kingston with his main topmast carried away and his vessel leaking so badly that the stores were damaged. He was blamed for this, and packed off again after repairs with a cargo of pork and a flea in his ear. A dog's life for six shillings a day, he reflected, with 10 shillings a day, the pay for captain's rank, dangled always , for the future, like a carrot ahead of a donkey. He had often said that if he hadn't a wife and seven children to support he would chuck the service. He remembered how 20 years before His Majesty's brig Ontario, rotten when she was four years old, had drowned a whole regiment, the 8th King's. He would rather have a freighter to sail. But lieutenants in this Upper Canadian navy got their six shillings and the master of a merchantman only got four. What could a man with a wife and seven children and 13 years' seniority as lieutenant do?

Capt. Selleck himself put off in a boat to meet the Speedy, hailing His Majesty's servant respectfully and asking if he might pilot the schooner in.

"No, I thank you," said Paxton stiffly. He needed the pilot's fee for himself.

"I've news for you, sir," said Selleck, unruffled. "Notice anything strange coming in? Well, I did last trip from Niagara, and you should know it."

In a glassy calm one morning recently, with the crew singing and yarning on the hatchcovers, he had sighted a dark object under water close aboard. Putting down his yawl-boat he and his mate and one sailor had passed off from the vessel and found a sunken rock not half a fathom below the surface. It was about forty feet in diameter, and the lead line went down plumb to eight fathoms on all sides of it. This was about four miles offshore. Selleck had taken a compass bearing, lining up three stall trees on the land with the south end of a point once called Milligan's Beach.

With boats and sailors from each vessel next day pulled south along Selleck's range and found the rock without difficulty, although the water was very deep around it.

"Devil's Horseblock, I'd call it," said Selleck. "Whoever steps on this in the dark mounts for heaven or hell."

"Or, his Hitching Post" amended Paxton. "It stands up like a chimney, and he sides go down as straight."

Five months after this Capt. Selleck and the whole Presquisle settlement searched and searched in vain for this Devil's Horseblock.

So, too, did Admiral Bayfield in 1817, when making that great survey which is the basis of present lake charts.

So, too, did this writer, in 1948, and annually for five years before. And found only this:

Four miles south of the mainland shore, and a mile south of Proctor Point, an island once known as The Bluff, 60 feet high and connected with Presquisle by a sunken causeway, is the Camel Shoal of the charts, showing 2 1/4 fathoms least water over it and 6 fathoms close around. Four miles farther east, about as far south of the mainland, and a mile south-by-west of Presquisle lighthouse, is the wider Gage Shoal of limestone rock, with 2 3/4 fathoms least water over it, and seven on its fringes.

These are chart records. The least water we got on either was 3 fathoms, eighteen feet. The lake level has been high since 1943.

Honest Thomas Paxton was not one of those who searched and searched in vain with Capt. Selleck and the whole Presquisle settlement in October, 1804. Why, will be told in the next instalment of these chronicles of Newcastle Neverwas.

CAT HOLLOW CALL

"Sir;—Just a line or two if you care to use it in your schooner days.

"One of these days, there will come a day a day, when the McGlennon boys won't be here to say a few things about your article, which is so good every week that it would be a shame ever to discontinue it.

"So here is a passing hail, and hoping that when the great day comes to you, passing on, that you do have a son or an in-law who will be able to continue on as faithfully as you have for so many years.

"This is from the brother Frank, the younger of the four, 224 Langley ave., Toronto 6, who followed the lakes for a few years on the old wind punchers and finished up on steam.

"So, too. the elder, William (Bill), who is hale and hearty, now living in the U.S. at Detroit; Nelson (Mac), deceased; Henry (Harry), who is the only living survivor of the Schooner Augusta; and me, who is in dry dock, and has so been for a few years, but still gets a kick out of life. The reason for sending this to you, is because of your article on the Schooner Wing, which is a museum on Belle Isle at Detroit, and that the Brother Bill was engaged as ships carpenter to help put her ip shape and get her to the last resting place of the last sailing ship on the Great Lakes.

"So again thanking you for published articles, and a reminder of a few boys who came from Old Cat Hollow, and wander back there once in a while. Again thanks, we remain as B 4.

THE McGLENNON BOYS

per (Frank)

Same to you, boys, I've two good brothers.

BOBBY DALE, Nestor of Brighton, born near Prequ'isle, discussing the mystery last summer after celebrating his 90th birthday.