Port Credit Postcard: "Of Her Bones Are Coral Made": Schooner Days DCCCXCVII (897)

by C. H. J. Snider

THE Coral was a homely hooker less than fifty feet long-26 tons register, 47 ft. 7 in. length, 13 ft. beam, 5 ft. depth of hold. She may have cost $400 to build in the hungry 1870s, when white oak and white pine sold for $10 a thousand and $1 a day was "good money" for a carpenter. She was a heart-breaker to sail her early days for she had no topmasts and her masts were so short that she could hardly spread enough sail to work clear of the shore in a breeze.

Yet this investment of so little cash and so much elbow grease provided an honest - and arduous - livelihood for several honest hard-working families in her forty-six years of existence, and the mere mention of her a few weeks ago rewarded Schooner Days with a volley of cheerful passing hails.

One early owner found it so hard to make her "go" that he took a good shore job at $9 a week and rented the under-canvassed Coral to the late Capt. David Reynolds for $5 a month. He said the $30 he received that year was the first and only money he ever saw for his floating venture.

It was either the Skeltons or the Blowers who re-rigged the Coral with tall topmasts and kites to match, but she was never fast on any point of sailing—not even "running," with the wind astern, which was a scow's long suit. Her lines were against her.

"Not enough of a skimming dish," Samson Blowers would say, apologetically, although she scarcely drew 4 feet of water if she was loaded with her customary cargoes of stone sand, or gravel till her deck was awash. Yet she made an honest living for him and many others.

HE SAILED IN HER

Another who hailed the mention of the Coral with joy was Mr. George McCraney, 1262 St. Clair ave. east.

"Recognizing your-picture of the schooner Coral sure taken us back to my one-time home in that same old box," said he.

"My uncle, Capt. Andrew Skelton, about 1886 owned and sailed the Coral out of Oakville, and my father, Clem McCraney, sailed with him. I of course had to tag along. My aunt, Mrs. Skelton, was along with us. We got to Toronto after floating in no wind for some time, and some days later left Toronto for home, about 9 o'clock at night. I turned in. But Lake Ontario decided to go on the rampage, and we slammed around so that I woke up with the water closing around in the cabin.

"Hey, there's a leak down here! I hollered.

"Come on up out of there!" was all the thanks I got, and they sounded a bit anxious. We were off the piers at Port Credit, and the captain decided to run in while she still floated, and headed for the light.

"The current running out and the wind coming offshore baffled her and she couldn't make it. A squall ripped our sails and tore them so badly that the only thing to do was to anchor. We let go, not far from the lighthouse, and pumped her out, with one eye on the big open scow we were towing astern, as stonehookers always did.

"With the varying wind and the sea running she dragged her anchor all over the stony bottom, and the scow-painter parted. The scow must have had a lot of water in her, for she had not drifted fifty feet before she rolled over on her side and vanished. There went our safety. Our only chance of reaching shore if the hooker went down at her dragging anchor.

"Old Lake Ontario, however decided she had played with us long enough, and slammed us in on the beach west of the pier, stern first. The rudderpost and deck started to crack up, and it looked as though the Coral was a goner, though we might get ashore alive.

"Uncle Andy got a long plank that would reach the gravel of the beach from the stern, and helped my aunt and me slide down it and carried us to dry ground. We all stayed the rest of the night at a house on the west bank, it may have been Abram Block's.

"In the morning I asked my old man, "Dad, when do we go on?" He roared at me: 'Your sailing days are over. You get back to Oakville and to school, and you stay there!"

THE REGISTER'S RECORD

The Coral's sailing days were not. over, however. A glance at her register shows what a career she had before she took her long rest in the mud below the bridge over the Credit, where the bulrushes and arrowheads and water lilies grew in her hold. Even then she was not through, for, as told recently, young Abraham Blowers resuscitated her for the Port Dalhousie sand and gravel trade and she kept going till 1920.

Built at Oakville in 1874 by Thomas Thomas, her "subscribing owners" were Charles Lynch, carpenter, 22 shares; James Hull, bricklayer, 21 shares, and Chas. A. Lynch, mariner, 21 shares — each a third, there being 64 shares only in every vessel. Hull, the bricklayer, was the master for registration, and within two months Lynch, the carpenter, transferred his shares to the other two owners, who then gave Moses McCraney a mortgage to secure $400 at 8 per cent. Borrowers certainly paid for their whistles in 1874.

Two months later Hull sold his half interest or 32 shares to Capt. Wm. Skelton, of Bronte, brother or father, possibly of Andrew. The Coral then jogged along for six years, till June 8th, 1880, when C. A. Lynch, owner, and M. McCraney, mortgagee, transferred 32 shares to Patrick Long and 32 shares to George Thompson, of Port Credit, and Long and Thompson gave McCraney a mortgage for $200 at 8 percent. The record shows both mortgages discharged.

Thompson sold his half to Michael McAuliffe, of Port Credit, in the following year. Five years later, in the spring of 1886, Long and McAuliffe sold the vessel to Joseph Adamson, wharfinger, of Toronto, who had the little galvanized iron grain elevator at the foot of West Market street. For thirty years it was a rendezvous for stonehookers. Mr. Adamson had shares in most of them. In 1889 he sold the Coral to Benjamin Lynd, gentleman, of Port Credit, and the latter in 1891 sold 32 shares to James Blowers and 32 to his brother George or "Samson."

So she passed to the Blowers family of Port Credit, where she remained for seventeen years, until Harry Fowler and Wm. J. Kivell, of Port Credit, got her in 1908.

Her last bill of sale, at the time of the resurrection from ten years in the bulrush and waterlily bed for the Port Dalhousie revival, was dated May 10th, 1919: "Wm. J. Kivell, Port Credit, mariner, 32 shares to Abraham Blower, mariner, Port Credit. Henry Rufus Fowler, mariner, Port Credit, 32 shares to Henry Blower."

ARE coral made?

Yes, yes, I know, but that's the way Shakespeare wrote it,

—Schooner Days.

COMRADES OF THE "CORAL" forty-four years ago—left, WHITE OAK of Port Credit; right, REINDEER of the same place.