"Geography Class": Schooner Days CMVI (906)

by C. H. J. Snider

THE Bavaria found unharmed on the Great Galloo in May, 1889, with her crew missing from that day to this, was one of the geographically named fleet of the Calvin company which for generations ruled a timber empire of which Garden Island, opposite the city of Kingston, was the capital.

Her European sisters were the Siberia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Prussia, and her Asiatic cousins Oriental, Ceylon, India, Burma, Simla and Armenia, the last four being steel barges, built to carry even bigger cargoes than their tows. The Oriental and the Denmark were two-masted, the others were all full-rigged three-masted schooners, built by the firm from their own timber in their own Garden Island shipyard, whereof Louis Goler and H. Roney were master carpenters. The sisters were of "Old Canal" size and model, full-bowed, wall-sided, with timber-ports in the stern, over 300 tons register, 140 feet long, 25 feet beam, 11 feet depth of hold, being limited by the locks of the second Welland Canal. They were mean[t] to sail, but often towed to save time. The firm had other vessels, barges without sails, which were always towed. This great fleet brought timber from as far west as Illinois, to be made into rafts at Garden Island and sent down the river to Quebec. The Calvin steam-barges were painted green, with white upper works, The tow-barges were all black, The schooners were black above and lead color below, with a white stripe at the line of the deck.

"Leadcolor," as used in lake decoration, was the ancestor of the battleship grey with which the world became all too familiar in 1914. (Before then British battleships had been black and Americans white.) Leadcolor was often a pleasing paint in the schooners, if used for the bottom and lower sides, in combination with either black or white for the topsides. It concealed the stains of harbor slime and river mud. It was got by mixing whitelead with a touch of lampblack, often improved by a judicious quantity of blue. The lighter it was kept in hue the better it looked. It was also smart for rail-trim, but it was dismal if used all over on a wooden hull.

The Ceylon, a later member of the family, was used as a tow-barge, but schooner rigged, with topmasts , and was distinguished by an orange stripe in her black side.

The Ceylon was a hard vessel to steer, and used up nine rudderstocks in her existence, but she was shapely, with her clipper bow and well-moulded transom stern. Perhaps if given a longer bowsprit and more headsail, a raffee or square topsail, she would have made a good deepwater sailing vessel. She was staunch, and crossed Superior once after her towline parted, and made the land for herself without mishap. She survived several strandings, and was last seen at the Portsmouth, Ont., dockyard twenty-five years ago.

The Calvin fleet was not more marked by disaster than other timber droghers, perhaps less so, but the trade, as has been remarked, was a hard life for horses, vessels and men.

It was especially hazardous because the vessels did their own loading, and much of this was on the unprotected shores of the lakes, where timber had been skidded to the beach or thrown over the bank. Delano Dexter Calvin began his empire in 1836 by cutting timber on Garden Island itself for rafting to Quebec. When it ended in 1916 his grandsons had been bringing timber to the same island from Wisconsin.

White oak—and wooden shipbuilding-had virtually disappeared from the Great Lakes region. The wooden shipbuilding attempted in the Great War and in World War II was a mere skeuomorph of what had been a glorious human achievement, full of pride of material and workmanship, both lavished on a product intended to outlive its creator.

The D. D. CALVIN, first of that firm's steam barges, loading time in Toronto Bay near the old Brock street wharf. She was painted bright green with white upper works.