Last Light on the Lost EMERALD: Schooner Days CMV (905)

by C. H. J. Snider

Emerald Flashes

FORTY years after the Toronto schooner Emerald disappeared so mysteriously with Capt. Frank McMaster and his crew, an eating house on the south side of King near the Portland corner still displayed a spiritedly drawn portrait of the vanished vessel in its front window. That part of the city in the Bathurst vicinity between the old Queen's Wharf and what was then Arthur street was full of schooner families. Capt. McMaster had bought a house on Bathurst street, three Kellys, "Nucker" (Edward J.), his father Michael, and his uncle Hughie, all captains, had homes on old Defoe street or Little Adelaide, or Tecumseh or Wellington—where Edward lives yet—Capt. David Reynolds was on Mitchell avenue. Even we had a house on Robinson street. The disappearance of the Emerald shook the district worse than the South African War had done.

The steam barge D. R. Van Allen, Capt. Wm. Van Vlack, had left Charlotte after the Emerald had sailed out of that port with a light fair wind for home. At nightfall she overhauled her off the Devil's Nose, easily shouldering the old sea left over from the southwest gale, all sail set, lights burning brightly, and all well; within an easy 12-hour sail of home. The lake is a lonesome place late in the fall, and there is then great friendliness among vesselmen. The Van Allen blew a salute as she passed, and the Emerald answered with the shrill scream of her donkey engine whistle, a ceremony usually reserved for the last trip of the season. In the trade we had to economize even on whistle-breath.

At midnight, just at the time of changing the watches, the light southeast wind shifted suddenly in a squall and came in fresh from the northeast. This was still a fair wind for both the Van Allen and the Emerald, and should have brought both into Toronto before noon.

But only one came, and that was the steambarge. The wind had worked around into the west by next day and they thought the Emerald had been headed off. She was reported to be holed up in Prinyer's cove, but this report was contradicted. She was not there.

Capt. Williams brought the Straubenzee home in due season without mishap. Knowing Capt. McMaster and his family well, Capt. Williams started at the old Ashbridge's Bay cut, then called The Jetty, and trudged every foot of the lake beaches between that and Brighton. Here Mrs. Walter Sharpe told of seeing a three-masted schooner running before a westerly gale on Tuesday, Nov. 17, and vanishing. She saw her far out in the lake ten miles southwest of Presquile Bluff. Capt. Williams brought back a little door from a cabin locker. Mrs. McMaster recognized it, for the hinges were new and she herself had bought them for the schooner.

East of Cobourg some wreckage of a cabin or deckhouse, had come in on the beach and been burned by duckhunters before Capt. Williams saw it. There was also the Emerald's provision box, a sort of deck pantry. Between Cobourg and Port Hope, near the Gull Rock, a rounded stanchion, six feet long, the height of a timber-drogher's cabin trunk, washed in. That was the Emerald's. Her broken foremast came in on Wicked Point, sixty miles farther east. The timber for the new bowsprit, which had been carried on deck, with the Emerald's name in blue pencil on it, was found at Cat Hollow, midway between the stanchion and the foremast, the Gull and Wicked Point.

Many explanations were offered, all plausible, none provable. In the midnight shift of the wind the schooner might have carried away her foremast or bowsprit in a sudden gybe. The timberports in her counter, unopened for years, and caulked tight and reinforced with heavy pieces of oak during the preceding winter, might have been stove in by the broken spars. Two significant features were the fact that all the wreckage recovered was from above the deck, and not one body was ever found. Seven men and a woman cook, Mrs. Wright, of Oswego, N.Y., with two small children, perished in deep water. The mate was Capt. Thos. Slight, of Port Hope; the crew, Johnny Bowerman, John Sellick, Edwin Ashley, of Prince Edward County; Alex Wright, of St. Catharines, and young Walter McMaster.

That same year, in July, the $150,000 steel dredge Sir Wilfrid, most modern of its kind, was completed by the Polson Iron Works at the foot of Frederick street for the Dominion 'Government, and left Toronto for the seaboard, in tow of two tugs, her sixty-foot spuds sticking up like chimneys. Spuds are heavy timbers which are lowered to the bottom like table legs to hold the dredge in position when she is working. When not in use they are hoisted up for easier towing. Off Port Hope a hot whiff of wind struck the dredge and her spuds. She rolled over under the pressure, filled and sank, the tugs having to cut the towlines to save themselves. The Sir Wilfrid went down somewhere outside the Gull Rock. All that summer searchers sought her in vain.

Four years later, in July, 1907, they found her upright in 70 feet of water, a mile offshore, near Port Hope. Her spuds came to within 12 feet of the surface. She was raised; a big salvage job, for she was still worth $150,000. One of the divers reported the hull of a large schooner lay not far from her. He did not examine it. No one told him to, and his airline would not reach that far. If the wreck was the Emerald's it was an amazing fortuity that with all the diligent search being made for the dredge, this fine old vessel, with her hard-working well-deserving captain and crew, should find the one square foot in all Lake Ontario that spelled death to all. Because if this was the Emerald she must have spiked herself on the prong of one of those spuds when she dipped in the trough of a sea.

A light buoy was placed on the spot when the lost dredge was found, but it was taken away when the dredge was salvaged. And so the Emerald's last light went out.

RED WRECKBUOY MARKED "SIR WILFRED" PERHAPS THE EMERALD

Passing snapshot made off Port Hope forty-two years ago this summer.