Emerald Flashes—I: They Went Fast Sixty Years Ago: Schooner Days DCCCXCV (895)

by C. H. J. Snider

SPRING came just as early on the Toronto waterfront sixty years ago, and by the second week in April the big timber drogher Emerald of St. Catharines, 394 tons register, length 139 feet, beam 24, depth of hold 12 foot 3, had fitted out at the Gooderham wharf at the business end of the old Windmill Line, and the tug Frank Jackman towed her out through the Western Gap. Tug and schooner were resplendent in fresh green paint, the Emerald wearing hers above a flaming petticoat of red-lead, the Jackman having green pilot house and engine house, white bulwarks with red beading, and green from her black fenderwale downwards.

An innovation in the Emerald was the new donkey engine salvaged from the Oriental which had sunk off Port Dalhousie the year before. The upright boiler was still red with the rust of submersion, due to disappear under a shining coat of black. These "iron sailors" were just beginning to displace the horse teams with which droghers worked their timber cargoes C. T. Roddy, (the Roddy's have beer commercial printers in Toronto for years and years), was in his teens at this time. He had shipped in the Emerald at man's pay, $1 a day as donkeyman and roustabout, having run the 8 h.p. steam engine in his father's printing plant, and feeling that he wanted some fresh air.

He got it.

FOUR o'clock in the morning of April 21st, 1889, and bitterly cold in Lake Ontario, with the stars still shining.

Came a pounding on the forescuttle of the timber drogher Emerald

"Heigh below you sleepers

Don't ye hear the news?

It's eight bells!

Show a leg! Show a leg!

Show a leg!

All hands ! ! !"

boomed Capt. Mike Troy, subbing as second mate while Capt. John Coolahan, old and efficient, got his voice back.

Grunts, groans and yawns in nine different keys responded as eight men tumbled out of the Emerald's eight forecastle bunks, and the donkeyman got up off the floor.

You may have noticed the fine row of old pines on the north side of the lakeshore highway before you come to Burlington? Those pines, and the post office, are about all that now marks Port Nelson. It used to ship grain and lumber, and had a wharf and warehouses, all gone now. The Emerald had been a week lying here at anchor, loading from the beach the last cargo of squared pine timber to be shipped from Port Nelson. The final tiers of it were now piled three deep on her decks, clamped down with chains from rail to rail, all powdered over with the hoarfrost of the April night.

Much had to be done before breakfast—the yawlboat sent ashore to cast off the long shoreline, the anchor hove short, covers and gaskets off the sails, and the last wedging shoring and chaining of the timber checked. When the sun showed a bright eye above the lake rim the cook's bell rang and there was a breather for breakfast—fifteen minutes—and no stopping to light your pipe afterwards. She had tailed around now so that her jibboom pointed towards Wellington Square, another port since vanished. The wind was coming off, a fair wind! Go ahead on the foresail halliards, throat and peak! Weigh-heigh, up she rises! Beat the sun! Up the sky! High and higher! All so high!

The donkey engine pants and puffs and grinds the last of the anchor chain in, dripping with the bottom slime. Run up those jibs! Haul the sheets a-weather! Give her the staysail, and put a stopper on the boom to hold it a-port! Lord Moses, get your wheel hard up! There she goes, she's falling off, she's canting right—Ease your wheel, son! Keep her nor'east for Gibraltar Point!

"Mainsail next?" asked First Mate John McLennan "When I had the Pride..."

But posterity was doomed to disappointment over what happened then, for Himself Coolahan rumbled "Nough for now," and he was right. The wind was coming off hard from the northwest, making with the sun, knocking splinters from the lake.

LOOKIT that water!" one after another exclaimed as she began to push a bow wave out in long thundering rolls. "The whole lake's turned to milk!"

As far as eye could see the lake, beaten smooth under the keen hard wind, was neither blue nor green nor yellow with the spring freshets, but white, laced with spray.

The Emerald had ten pieces of fore-and-aft canvas and three of square, but with only the foresail and three jibs set she ramped along leaving a wake like milk a-boil. She shaved Gibraltar Point close, and was so near the Eastern Gap that as she passed people could read her name.

Down along under the Highlands she tore. Then they kept her away for Long Point, and socked the close-reefed mainsail to her. It pressed her till the bow wave came roaring in through the lee hawsepipes, and the chained tiers of pine timber threatened to go overboard The stools in the cabin slid to leeward, those on the weather side at dinner slipped under the table and those on the lee side had their plates in their laps. So they settled the mainsail again bit by bit till they had it all on the boom. But she went faster than ever, in smooth water beaten white all the way, with the wind on the quarter—and the sun was still shining on the roofs and walls of Portsmouth Penitentiary and the Asylum at Kingston as they boiled into port that evening. Young C. T. Roddy noted this at the time, and recalled it yesterday. After a lifetime in the printing business, with sailing for recreation, he lives hale and high-colored at 158 St. Clair ave e.

On April 21st the sun shines 13 hours and 42 minutes on Lake Ontario. Knocking off 42 minutes of sunlight for the beginning and ending of the wild race and allowing 185 statute miles from Port Nelson to Collins Bay, where they had to unload, we get an average of 14 statute miles per hour for thirteen hours of sailing. Best time ever heard for the run.

Capt. Charles Smith, for many years later master of the steamer Cayuga, was one of the Emerald's crowd in this flyaway trip sixty years ago. He is still with us and sound as the wheat. Wonder what he has to say?

THE EMERALD AND THE PERSIA IN THE OLD WELLAND CANAL