Great Ones of the Great Lakes: Schooner Days CMXXV (925)

by C. H. J. Snider

Old Square-Rigger of 1814 Topped Ail For Tonnage And For Delivering The Goods—Runners-Up Could Not Touch Her While Ships Were Made Of Wood

WHICH was the biggest schooner on the lakes?

Measured both by tonnage and by what she achieved, the greatest sailing vessel navigating any of the Great Lakes of North America was that proud Canadian product, the 112-gun line-of-battleship H.M.S. St. Lawrence.

She was 2,304 tons measurement, and built by John Dennis and other Canadian shipwrights at the Royal Naval dockyard at Point Frederick in the harbor of Kingston, U.C., in 1814. For Ontario, smallest of the Great Lakes, she was rather like a king sturgeon in a bath tub. There were only three harbors she could possibly enter; and only one of these was available. She lived in the open lake, until she had accomplished the purpose for which she was built, which was winning the war in her sector and establishing a basis for enduring peace.

As told elsewhere, she achieved this, speedily, by great activity, and without firing a shot. She then retired gracefully to honorable but humble employment as a fuel depot for the steamboats which sullied the lake skies with their woodsmoke for the next sixty years.

SCHOONER WAS LONGER

The largest lake schooner was the David Dows, launched at Bailey’s yard at Toledo, Ohio, in 1881.

She had five masts, all carrying gaff-and-boom sails and topsails, so that there was no question, she was a full-rigged schooner, using nineteen working sails.

In addition to this proper fore-and-aft canvas, she had four square sails on the foremast, four jibs forward of it, and topmast staysails from main and mizzen topmast heads. These were her highest masts, 160 feet long, their trucks being 140 feet above the deck. The other masts were shorter, in graceful proportion. The two after masts were called the jigger and spanker. She spread altogether 18,680 square feet of canvas, and required a crew of twelve men, two mates, captain, cook and cookee.

The Dows was designed, built and sailed by and for Capt. Joseph L. Skellonden, one of many Scandinavians in lake navigation. He was, perhaps, over ambitious. Hector Munro, of Gibraltar, Mich., who sailed in the Dows, told Loudon G. Wilson, architect and illustrator, that when she towed out of Buffalo on a passage up Lake Erie it was the usual thing for the process of taking in the towline when the tug cast off, making sail, and coiling down the miles of gear, to keep all hands on deck for the remainder of the first watch out, and for most of the second; in other words, from four to eight hours’ steady work. To stow all that sail and get the covers on and hatches off ready for loading at the next port took almost as long.

CONTRASTS

HMS St. Lawrence was not a schooner. She was ship-rigged, three masts and square sails. She had twenty working sails, including six staysails between the masts, and in addition she had twelve studding-sails and possibly more. Her complement was one thousand men; there was a war on.

She was 191 ft. long on her upper-most deck and 170 ft. on the keel. She made up for her shortness by being 52 ft. wide and 36 ft. deep from upper deck to keel.

The Dows was 265 feet long, 37 feet beam, and 18 feet deep in the hold. She registered 1,418.63 tons, She could carry a deadweight of double that, but probably never did so, because it would put her so deep in the water that she would be unable to canal or dock. The St. Lawrence could carry twice as much deadweight as the Dows, probably 5,000 tons, but was never called on to do so, even when storing cordwood.

FATE OF THE DOWS

Both required a lot of sea room. Lake Michigan is 300 miles long, but while the Dows was being shortened down in heavy weather, she ran into and sank the schooner Richard Mott, somewhere between the Foxes and Beavers and Skillagalee. It is unfair to say she had 300 miles of water, for the islands and Gray’s Reef passage with its L turn narrows the sailing space at the foot of the lake.

Four men were on the upper topsail yard, furling the sail, when the collision occurred, and they went overboard with the foremast, which snapped at the cap and carried with it all the head gear. The four were killed or drowned.

This spelled the doom of the Dows as a sailer, and when she was towed into port she was shorn of her remaining spars and given a barge rig. This left her with some sail, but not enough to keep her off the bottom. She foundered of Whiting, Indiana, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 27th, 1889, breaking her back by great length and lathlike proportions as she labored in the seas. Capt. Thos. Roach and his crew of seven were taken off by her towing consort before she went under.

SCHR. "DAVID DOWS", LARGEST AMERICAN, from a spirited painting by Louden G. Wilson