Short Cuts are as you Find Them: Schooner Days CMXVIII (918)

by C. H. J. Snider

"SNARLEY" SHORTT tried the new Murray Canal short cut into Lake Ontario after he heard of Will Ostrander's luck in 1890, He made the venture with the Great Western, to the command of which, he had just succeeded. About this time she was renamed F. H, Burton. He got through the canal with a very light wind, and was confronted with the problem of passing the first lighthouse of the two range lights which led you up to the turn off at Brighton wharf.

The schooner was barely moving in the channel outside the western end of the canal, with waterlilies to starboard, and little mud turtles sunning themselves on their leaves against a background of wild woods; and to port tall reeds and arrowheads, with marsh wrens and blackbirds flitting among them and singling merrily, while the herons stood one-legged, watching for frogs. Ahead was the new white lighthouse, with a quarter of a mile of open water on either side of it—-on top. But how much below? Which side was the channel? It had not been buoyed, the government thinking that two range lighthouses and a back light was enough.

"Which side do we take that light?" snapped "Snarley" at his mate.

"I ain't never been through here no more than you," answered that worthy non-committally, "but I'd leave it on my starboard hand."

Alex. Taylor was at the wheel. The mate looked at him as he spoke. "You leave it on your starboard hand, sir," said he. He had been in the Royal Navy, and knew enough to sir even Snarley Shortt.

"Who in hell's flames asked you?" replied his captain tenderly. "I don't believe either of you know what you're talking about. You mind your course, and speak when you're spoken to. Steady as you go."

"Steady as you go, sir," responded Alex.

Slowly the Great Western floated up to the lighthouse.

"Hard a-port!" snarled Snarleyow. They gave helm orders crossways then, as for steering with a tiller. This order would have put her on the wrong side of the lighthouse, and Alex, said so.

"I'm giving the orders here, and you're carrying them out. Hard a-port!"

"I'll put her wheel whichever way you say, sir," said Alex, "but I m telling you, that's the wrong side."

"You either put your wheel hard a-port or get forward and pack your turkey."

The wheelspokes whirled. "Wheel's hard over, sir."

The lighthouse slowly sidled past till it was on the port quarter. Snarley snorted triumphantly. "Straighten up your wheel, and steady as you go." "See! I knew this was the right way to pass that lighthouse, though I'd never been here 'no more than you'"—with a dig at the mate.

"She don't answer, sir," said Alex, humbly.

"How can she, you fool, when the wind's died out? She's just lost headway. But it'll be right back. See, the fly's straightened out ahead of us.

"Yes, sir," said Alex, "and the yawlboats straightened out ahead of us, too!"

The yawlboat usually carried on davits, had been towing astern on a long painter while they were in the canal zone, for running a line or getting out a kedge. It had mysteriously overtaken its parent, and was now the length of its painter ahead of the timberhead to which it had been made fast. The sad fact was that the Great Western had silently taken the soft mud on the wrong side of the lighthouse, away from the channel, and come to a full stop, period. She was bedded in a foot deep all around.

Having many children in our audience we shall not report Snarley's language verbatim, nor detail the efforts required to release the Great Western. These required four days. They had to carry out anchors, threw overboard most of the deckload, and heave in vain on windlass and capstan. Then they got a tug to come up from Belleville. He broke all of their lines and some of his own, before he budged her and dragged her out into the channel. It was two more days before they could get past Presquile, for the wind was now dead ahead and light. It was another week before' they got to Oswego. Here they found other vessels unloading their second cargoes, for they had slipped out by the older and longer Bay of Quinte passage, and made two trips while the Great Western was coming.

Snarley Shortt's smartness had cost him a $500 "wrecking" bill and two weeks' wages—and his berth in the Great Western. He left her in Picton, and never came back to the Bay of Quinte. He went "up above"— no, not to heaven, but to the Georgian Bay, where he ended his days decking on a rafting tug.

The "GREAT WESTERN" (left) in Picton Harbor