Ups and Downs of Bounding Antelope: Schooner Days CMXVI (916)

by C. H. J. Snider

TALKING about Muir Brothers' Antelope, third of that genus of flower-eyed gazelles to grace the Great Lakes in schooner days, her freight of $7,020 for one trip from Chicago to Kingston with grain was the highest individual earning heard of in that frugal era which considered it progressive to lower unit costs with improved production. It was at the phenomenal rate of 27 cents a bushel, paid to beat the fall freeze-up by someone who had to have wheat in a hurry. It was so high that it passed into legendary lore with lake sailors, along with stories of Lochy Dochy and the appetite of Paul Bunyan's blue ox Babe.

The next best was 22 cents from Milwaukee to Oswego in the American Civil War, carried calmly in the Milwaukee Board of Trade's report of 1863. The Antelope's rate was in Muir Brothers' books for either 1874 or 1876. Such rates were three and four times the average then, and would be fantastic now, when a bulk freighter can carry twenty times the Antelope's greatest cargo in one trip, and in half her best possible passage time and gets 6 to 7 cents a bushel for it.

THIS Antelope was not always so lucky in freights. When the Conger Coal Co. of Toronto had her in 1900, a slack year, with coal yards full and sales lagging, they thought they would have to lay her up for a month. But she would cost two men's wages lying at the wharf and have nothing to show for it. The company heard of a corn charter, to load at Toledo on Lake Erie for Kingston at the foot of Lake Ontario, and at 1 1/8c a bushel; starvation rate for a schooner, but better than paying two men's wages for nothing and letting the vessel dry out or rot in the heat.

AN EIGHT DOLLAR PRIZE

Careful figuring showed that with average luck there might be $8 over after the actual expenses of the five-hundred-mile voyage had been met. So Capt. Will Wakeley, always willing to try, sailed out of Toronto to save at least one tow bill, and reached Port Dalhousie and the Welland Canal that day. That night a lock gate was smashed in the canal, traffic was held up for a week while repairs were being made. Wages and grocery bills went on; he couldn't pay off the crew and leave the vessel stranded in the canal. On the eighth day he locked through—it took fourteen hours then for a good passage, using a tug—and on the ninth day started up Lake Erie against a light head wind.

He beat all day and by evening was only up to the Mohawk light, fifteen miles from Port Colborne. Then it freshened, still dead ahead. He carried sail on her till she was over so far that the hawser box and provision locker or deck pantry began to slide down into the lee scuppers. And still she was just crossing back and forth, tack after tack, without making any real headway; going through the water, not getting over the bottom. Those big wall-sided droghers would do nothing at all by-the-wind when they were light, you reefed them, for their flat sides caught as much wind as what was left of the lower sails.

BACK TO THE CANAL

So he had to run back to Port Colborne, and take a tug in and out again. Got away next day, and up to Toledo by the end of the second week after leaving Toronto. Here he loaded, and towed out into a light head wind again, which freshened and shifted, putting him on a lee shore. For four hours he carried a press of sail to flog her clear of the Dummy, at the west end of the lake. Those vessels were good by-the-wind when loaded, and she worked clear for him in grand style.

He kept his pumps going, but they sucked air all the time, for if there was any water in her it was in the lee bilge, away from the limbers. Once he could start his sheets she went boiling down the lake with a wall of foam ahead. As soon as he reached Port Colborne he telegraphed a "protest," in case they should need insurance on some of the corn getting wet while she was down on one corner.

To make a long voyage shorter in the telling, they got to Kingston on the 24th day after leaving Toronto. The corn was all right, or the insurance looked after it, but the $248 freight money earned left the vessel $50 "in the hole," as we used to say, after the bills were paid.

Conger's couldn't blame Will Wakeley. As a matter of fact they thought so much of him that they gave him the command of their biggest schooner, the Stuart H. Dunn, next season. But they sold the poor Antelope, though it wasn't her fault, either.

OLD LADY OFF TO WAR

THAT was the beginning go the end for her. She was bought by the Reid wrecking company at Sarnia, and dismantled and used as a lighter. Overloaded with derricks and other contracting plant she went into rhythmic rolling while in tow and rolled right over. Nobody was drowned, but a lot of tools were lost. She was righted and bought by the Point Ann quarries, in Haney and Miller's orbit. This firm had already used the A. Muir as a brick barge. Quarry trade was the death of several good schooners, for they cut the hatches wider, all the way across the deck, so that they could more easily load and unload the crushed limestone. That of course soon broke their backs.

I last saw the Antelope and the A. Muir lying at the quarries inside the Minnie Blakely shoal in the Bay of Quinte in 1917. Both were painted in monotone, a dingy red like faded barns. Their sister the Albacore had been wrecked at Oswego and the Albatross in Georgian Bay. But the Antelope was still alive. If she was broken backed she was not broken hearted, for she winked at me through her empty hawsepipes, as much as to say " 'member when we made $7,020 in two weeks with grain from Chicago to Kingston?"

"That was 'fore I was born," I answered, "but I saw it in Muir Brothers' ledger."

"Well, anyway, we did it." said she. "And now we're waiting to be taken to salt water to win the war." Many of our lakers went out that way. The Antelope had then been sailing forty-four years.

The Antelope Towing Out, Light, Before She Became a Barge