Lazyman's Loads Paid Dividends: Schooner Days CMXXII (922)

by C. H. J. Snider

Lumber Shoving

PECK AND MASTERS of Cleveland built the large "barque" City of Chicago for Charles Ensign of Buffalo in 1861 especially for the lumber trade, so designed that she could carry half her load, a deadweight of almost 400 tons, on deck. Having no foreboom, as a barquentine, there was more space to pile lumber forward of the mainmast. She was the first to carry so large a deckload. This broke her back in thirty vears—but not her owners' pocketbooks, though it may have burst them. She was so profitable that she cleared her original cost of building, $15,000, every five years. She had paid dividends of nearly $100,000 by the time she went to the boneyard, which was about 1895. She had lost little time in port, taking in or discharging cargo, because so much of her cargo was readily accessible, never having to go under hatches.

Charles Ensign also had a sister ship, the City of Milwaukee, built in the same year. She registered 436 tons and the Chicago 437, under old measurement, and about 100 tons less under the new, ten years later. The City of Chicago was not so good as a grain carrier, because the grain had to go under hatches, and her hold, was, comparatively, shoal.

She came into Collingwood Nov. 10th, 1879 with 21,000 bushels of corn from Chicago, an average load for a canaller. Her master, Capt. "Cro'jick Jack" Isbister, liked the place so much that he married one of the town's belles, a Miss McLeod, possibly Miss Jane, after whom the schooner Jane McLeod was named. He had the City of Chicago rebuilt or extensively repaired there in 1881.

Her dimensions after her rebuild were 140.2 ft. stem to sternpost, 30.2 ft. beam, 11.5 ft. depth of hold, 327 tons register. This was about five feet longer and five feet wider than the canallers. She was too large to pass the Welland when she was built originally.

There's an Old Country ballad that says:

"I'd like to be a collier

"And go with one to sea:

"When the collier goes a-sailing

"He sets his courses three,

"The foresail for to lift her

"And the mainsail for to drive,

"And the pretty little cro'jick

"That makes her look alive."

Cro'jick is the saltwater pronunciation of crossjack, applied to the yard and sail lowest on the mizzen mast of a square-rigger, perhaps because it crossed the jack-stay or other support of the fore-and-aft sails on that mast, perhaps because it was originally "barren," that is, had no sail below it. Capt. Isbister was not a saltwater man, but was nicknamed "Cro'jick" or 'Crojy" because, like some others, in times of excitement his eyes went at cross purposes—and he was excited pretty often.

He was a popular hustling skipper, and graduated from the rebuilt City of Chicago to the larger schooner F. L. Danforth, with square double-topsail. She was a fine clipper-bowed vessel, nearly 200 feet long, the largest schooner on the Canadian register, and a splendid carrier of anything, lumber, grain, or coal.

He took her out of Collingwood one fine morning with a good breeze, and was back in town that night without any hat, and his vessel on the beach twenty miles away. He got her off, and she was cut down to barge rig, and towed for years with "Cap." Sullivan and the Steambarge Erin. "Crojy" blamed his affliction for the accident. He said the Danforth got squinting through the wrong hawsepipe, and didn't go where she was looking. The hawse-pipes are rimmed holes on either side of the stem, through which the anchor chains pass; often called the eyes of the ship, and certainly suggesting them.

PRIDE OF COLLINGWOOD, the F. L. DANFORTH, once a topsail schooner, was a fine vessel even after being cut down to barge rig.—Photo per kindness of M. J. Lachapelle.