Emerald Flashes—II: Tough Oak From Toledo: Schooner Days DCCCXCVI (896)

by C. H. J. Snider

AFTER the record-breaking run from Port Nelson to Collins Bay in 14 hours, April 21st. 1889, the Emerald sailed for Toledo, Ohio, on Lake Erie, up the Maumee River. She loaded squared oak timber for Kingston. This was much heavier cargo, and she only took two tiers on deck, but even so, she was deeper in the water than before.

It was desperate hard, wet, muddy work, this timber trade, killing for men, schooners, horses, and even donkey engines. The square timbers were floated to the four yawning ports in the stern, two on deck, two into the hold. The port-lids were four-inch oak plank, on heavy iron strap-hinges.

Timber quills projected over the stern and to these the first sticks were "quilled up" till their ends were above the sills the lower parts. They were then hauled through into the hold by a wire cable—and the donkey-engine. They were berthed by various skillfully placed pointed pieces of iron, known as niggers, teasers, toggles, dogs and persuaders.

When the load in the hold brought the port-sills close to the water, the lids or doors were closed, bolted, and caulked, inside and out, and the rest of the cargo was quilled up to the deck and run in either through the deck ports or the hatches.

The last of the cargo was piled on deck in tiers, rising as high as the six-foot cabin top.

Young C. T. Roddy, at $1.25 a day out of Toledo as donkey-man, used to get so tired keeping up steam, adjusting the chains and lines and helping heave in the timber that sometimes when he had to crawl in between the wet timber in the hold and the deckbeams, to clear a dogchain or unhook a messenger, he would fall asleep while he worked. Loading hours were from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. You might have all the rest of the night to yourself, if the anchor or something else did not call you out.

But it was good to be alive then, and young. It still is, Roddy says.

The eight bunks in the forecastle were full so the ninth man had to sleep on the floor. In the cabin aft old Capt. John Coolahan, ill, but capable, had the master's room. The first mate was Capt. John McLennan, recently master of the "barque" Pride of America, and fond of saying "when I had the Pride." Capt. Mike Troy acted as second mate, to relieve Capt. Coolahan till he got better. Mrs. Fraser, wife or widow of a lake captain, cooked for the hungry baker's dozen of the Emerald's company.

By the 24th of May the Emerald was well down Lake Erie on her homeward voyage, when

"The wind, the wind, where Erie plunged

Blew, blew, nor'-east from land to land."

Old Capt. Coolahan, recovered from his illness, cracked it to her, closehauled, until she went over so far that they heard the top tier of the cargo in the hold sliding to leeward under the deck beams. It had not been wedged and shored properly. That made her heel still more and the deckload inched over until its 200-ton weight was on the lee rail. The stout 6-by-8 stanchions cracked, the covering board split, and the rail was sprung. The openings, now well under water, drank Lake Erie in great gulps.

They couldn't raise steam in the donkey, for its fire was washed out and the firebed swamped. They had to shorten sail, and run before the wind. To lighten her and get her back on her feet they tried to heave the big oak sticks back into place or overboard by means of halliards or purchases, but they were too heavy to be budged.

So, with pumpbrakes clanging continuously, she went rolling and reeling all the way back up Lake Erie, until they rounded Point Pelee's long sand-finger, and hauled up for the shelter of its lee. This brought the wind abeam, and she rolled down until she buried the lee cathead, and the square sail yardarm—even the two arms of the topsail yards, fifty feet up, dragged in the water. These topsail yards added a toil of weight aloft and threatened to capsize the vessel.

They thought she was, in lake parlance, a goner. Seven feet of water was spurting through and over the timber in the hold, and the forecastle stove, red hot, bolted down and stayed with wires from the deck carlins overhead, broke adrift. It swung up against the lee bunks, held by its wires, and almost set the place ablaze.

The oak cargo was so heavy that had she filled she would have gone down as though laden with stone. But they managed to roll into Pigeon Bay still floating, and let go their anchor off Leamington, amid a fleet of forty-five schooners and steamers seeking similar uneasy shelter. It was so rough in the roadstead that the water came spurting up in geysers higher than the deckload through the opening for the centreboard pendant, and they had to nail planks over it.

No sooner was the anchor down than old Capt. Coolahan "lit into" John McLennan, his mate, who had commanded the Pride of America in 1863, and raised the sunken ferry boats' engines from the bay bottom with her throat halliards after the great Esplanade fire of 1885. Poor Mac never got over the memory of "when I had the Pride," but he had none left, either upper or lower case, when the Old Man emptied his collection of omadhauns, spalpeens, heart scaldings and curses-of-Cromwell upon his devoted head, for not wedging those timbers properly.

Coolahan was not blasphemous, in fact his strongest expression was "Lord Moses, man!" but he tongue-lashed his overwrought mate, a captain like himself, until the tears ran down his cheeks and he turned away sobbing.

"Whisht, now," said Coolahan, patting him on the shoulder, "Sure now I know ye didn't do that an porpose a-tall a-tall."

When the stormbound fleet commenced to get under weigh the tug Mystic ranged up and bargained for a tow—a hundred dollars before they put a line on her. Rejected with more Lord Moseses, but accepted after twenty-four hours' consideration of the fact that every day at anchor cost thirty-nine meals and $20 in wages for the crew of thirteen all told. Perhaps that explained the luck.

So they towed down to Port Colborne, having to put into Cleveland for fuel, for she towed heavy with her wet cargo. At the Canal they found the steamer Glengarry and her tow, the Glenora, racing to get unloaded and on the drydock before their wet grain cargoes burst them. They had been in Lake Huron in the same gale.

On Lake Ontario the Calvin fleet was scattered by it, and the Bavaria's whole crew of eight were lost. One man, probably the captain, was seen clinging to a plank. A schooner passed close to him, tried to pick him up, and failed. Her mate felt so badly over that that he quit sailing. In every wave he saw two despairing eyes silently imploring succor.

CAN YOU FIND IT?

Old Board of Trade at Front and Yonge was highest building in Toronto when this snapshot was made for C. T. Roddy sixty years ago. Its cupola is in the middle background. You are looking at the deck of the schooner EMERALD which has just installed her donkey engine (right). Note—(left)—the heavy stanchions which broke under the strain of the deckload. The double-topsail yards which made her roll so hard are laid on deck - beside the mast. They weighed a ton.