Chips and Ships in the Sawdust Trail: Schooner Days CMXXI (921)

by C. H. J. Snider

Lumber Shoving

LAKE ONTARIO vessels were not as well calculated for the lumber trade as the "up abovers," the lumber hookers of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. On the upper lakes lumber carrying was a specific industry, and the vessels were built for it, beamy, shallow in the hold, pretty flat in the bottom, and with some overhang. The Ontario model was narrower, deeper and shorter in the ends, This was better for cargoes of coal, grain, ore and perhaps timber, but the amount of time spent in stowing and unloading the deep hold made for poor despatch in lumber carrying.

For the lumber trade some of the Upper Lakers were sparred and rigged like giant ketches, so that there was more convenience in handling their high-piled deckloads, there being no mainmast and mainboom to worry about. This may have been the real origin of the curious "Grand Haven rig, so called because so many schooners hailing from Grand Haven, the little city on Lake Michigan opposite Milwaukee, used it. Traditionally, the rig was "discovered" by a captain of a three-masted schooner who had to have his mainmast taken out because it was rotten, and found his vessel sailed under her remaining mizzen and foresail as she had before with the two additional sails on the mainmast.

It is true that this was done to three-masted schooners on all the lakes without decreasing their speed or maneuverability much, even in light winds, This was because the three-masted rig of the lakes was never a fast rig, because a third of its area was placed where it interfered with the work of the other two-thirds. Running before the wind the mizzen blanketed the mainsail more or less. Beating to windward the mainsail was back-draughted by the foresail and back-draughted the mizzen. It was impossible to "wing-out" a three-master as successfully as could be done with a "fore-and-after," with foresail on one side and mainsail on the other, like the wings of a butterfly. The merit of the three-masted rig was that it required smaller sails and lighter spars and therefore fewer men.

CANADA FIRST WITH 3-MASTER

THE FIRST three-masted schooner on the lakes is said to have been the Owanungah of Moy, built at Moy House, near Walkerville, by Angus Mackintosh or McIntosh, for that was how he spelled his name. He became a member of the Legislative Council of Upper Canada, the Hon. Angus McIntosh, before returning to Scotland to head the clan as The Mackintosh. He was probably the uncle of Alexander Mackintosh, the heroic sailing master of the heroic Nancy in the War of 1812, whose bones are enshrined at Wasaga Beach and whose model is on view daily in the city hall, Toronto. Alexander's uncle Angus was a shipowner, and they had both come to Canada from Moy in the Hebrides. The Owanungah antedated the lumber trade on the lakes. She was driven ashore in Lake Michigan in June, 1836, but was released and may have set the fashion for three-masters for the upper lakes. They certainly flourished more there than on Lake Ontario, where they were looked upon as "foreign inventions" even in the 1860's. We have no record of any on Lake Ontario before 1850.

But to return to the Grand Haven rig. The mizzen mast required headstays after the mainmast was gone, so it had a stout stay run from its masthead to the foresheet post, with lighter stays from the mizzen topmast forward to the same point. On the stout stay was set a large staysail, sometimes with a boom on its foot, sometimes not. This partially replaced the area of the lost mainsail, and was very easy to handle. But the rig developed into two masts of equal height, with a very wide space between, the short mizzen of the former three-master and the giant ketch being replaced by a mast as tall as the foremast, with a sail equally large. It did not seem to work as well as the giant ketch idea, for windward work, but it left a larger space clear for the deckload, which seems to have been the original object of the Grand Haven rig.

This rig was rare on Lake Ontario. The only "Grand Haven rig" ever seen in Toronto was in the Oswego-built John McGee, hailing from Buffalo at the time, which appeared here with coal cargoes in 1903, 4 and 5. She later was a barge in the Canadian register, being owned by Joseph and Albert Robillard, of Montreal, up to 1925. She was one of Oswego's finest schooners, three-masted in 1869 when she was launched. Her conversion was of unknown date, but she sailed as well as the average Lake Ontario schooner when she reappeared with the changed rig in the 1900's.