Three Sisters, One in Chains: Schooner Days CMXXIV (924)

by C. H. J. Snider

Lumber Shoving

THE SARAH ANN MARSH of Port Hope, a three-masted barquentine built at Marsh's Creek hard by, became so strained by her heavy deckloads of lumber that she had to be trapped or corsetted by chains passed around her hull and tightened with turnbuckles on the deck, like the cables which undergirded St. Paul's Alexandrian corn-ship, with her two hundred and seventy-six passengers.

These chains held her together a long time, and what became of her ultimately is now a matter of doubt. She was built in 1854, the last of three vessels built by Collins of Port Hope for William Marsh of Port Britain, and named after his three daughters, for whom they were wedding portions, with 200 acres of Durham County farmland as alternative. The young ladies all married well and lived happily.

The Sarah Ann Marsh was the best lumber carrier of the three. The Caroline Marsh was faster but rolled so hard in a sea that her wake was often a street of bobbing planks or bunches of shingles. The Sarah Ann was fitted with sternports for loading timber as well as lumber, and built flat for that purpose.

The Sarah Ann Marsh was alive thirty years later, for George W. Collier of Picton recalled in 1933 that his brother, Sidney D. Collier, had been in her when she was lost in a December snowstorm in the 1880's.

The "crew," he said, "were in her yawlboat for some hours before they found a landing place. It snowing and blowing heavily and they could not see for any distance and had no idea as to their distance from the land. When they made a landing on Nicholson's Island they were cared for by the woman occupant of the brick farmhouse that has since stood, gaunt and deserted, doorless and windowless for many years, on the height of the island. They were lucky to find Nicholson's Island. The schooner struck behind Huyck's Point, about a mile away."

Lieut. Commr. Nik Beketov now of Victoria, B.C., found the remains of a large centreboard schooner on the beach below Huyck's Point when duck hunting on the Prince Edward County shore in 1935. These were supposed to the Sarah Ann Marsh's, but they were covered up by tons of shingle soon afterwards, and could not be measured or identified.

Bobby Dale of Brighton, now ninety, had a friend drowned, taking out an anchor in a small boat, when the Sarah Ann Marsh was being got off the Prince Edward County Beach in the 1880's. He thought it was farther north than Huyck's Point, but it might have been following Sidney Collier's experience, so she may have been salvaged.

Capt. Frank Jackman said she was taken to Oswego and ended her days in that harbor, chains and all, as a waterfront dance hall at The Kitchen.

James B. Chalmers, Acton, Ont., wrote: "The Sarah Ann Marsh laid up in Owen Sound harbor after serving as a barge in the 1880's, and rotted there. She was condemned as a derelict and bowled to the Brook Shore about two miles east of the harbor and blown up by dynamite but her frame remains somewhat visible, all of white oak." This information is probably confused with what happened to her sister, Jane Ann, which was wrecked south of the Eastern Gap, Toronto, in 1868, but was refloated and sank in Owen Sound harbor in 1883.

What difference does it make now? None. But these Marsh sisters were interesting ladies and interesting vessels, vivid and vital in freshwater affairs. Should Mazo de la Roche collaborate with C. S. Forester about them, what a Canadian saga series would we have!

The SARAH ANN MARSH before she was "frapped."