Canada’s Largest Lake Schooner: Schooner Days CMXXVI (926)

by C. H. J. Snider

UNDAUNTED by the fate of the David Dows, Uncle Sam’s largest schooner on the Great Lakes, Canada attempted the maximum in the very year the Dows foundered. This was the great schooner Minnedosa, designed to be 225 feet long, 38 feet beam and 18 feet in the hold, and register around 1,200 tons; and to have four masts, with lower sail and topsail on each, four jibs or headsails, and no square canvas.

Her owners were the Montreal Transportation Company, which had a large fleet of steamers and tow-barges plying the St. Lawrence River between Lake Ontario and Montreal. The Minnedosa was intended for the long-haul grain trade from the head of the lakes to the river.

LAKES OLDEST YARD

Her building place was where brick stables now stand east of Tete-du-Pont barracks at Kingston, Lake Ontario’s earliest shipyard, where the French built before the conquest. James Roney, son of Henry Roney, master shipwright of the Calvin fleet of Garden Island, was the Minnedosa’s builder, and he designed a craft as strong as oak and iron could make. It may be noted that she was less lathlike than the Dows, her length being only six times her breadth and the Dows being seven, and the depth of hold about equal. She was certainly intended to be strong. Her bilge planking, the heaviest in her, was eight inches thick, each plank really a beam. Her floor-frames, crossing her bottom, were 18 inches deep and 16 inches wide, each as heavy as an average vessel’s keel or keelson, and they were only five inches apart. There were over a hundred of these. A sheerstrake of 5/8-inch steel, 18 inches deep, ran around her outside, at deck level, and inside her were diagonal steel straps, forming diamonds five feet square.

GOLDLEAF AND BEAVERS

Nor was beauty sacrificed to strength or utility. She had a very handsome stern, the transom rounded to a perfect ellipse. Her cutwater knee and figurehead were as beautiful as any yacht’s or clipper ship’s, the finest ever shown on fresh water. Mr. R. C. Whalen describes the figurehead as a life-size half-length figure of Ceres, Greek goddess of harvest, with cornucopiae inverted behind her, out of which poured the bounty of corn and wheat, running along the cheeky knees in a beautiful scroll. At each end of the headrails was a Canadian beaver, with a maple branch in his mouth. Between the beavers was the name MINNEDOSA in gilt letters. The catheads for the anchors, each bore a cat’s head, carved in relief and painted to the life. The figurehead and trailboards used $1,000 worth of work and gold leaf. N. Henderson of Kingston, a contemporary artist in oils, was the designer and, supervisor of the decoration, and Louis Gourdier was the carver. The vessel herself was satiny black from stem to stern, with white cabin and large white deck-forecastle, a novelty on the lakes. Her mastheads were black. The monotony of 200 feet of unbroken bulwarks was relieved by three panels picked out in yellow beading.

ONE SHOOK HIS HEAD

The Minnedosa was, launched with great blowing of whistles at the end of April, 1890. Everyone was exuberant except James Roney. His heart was heavy through the management’s decision to cut down her topsides by 18 inches from the original plan. The argument was that the Dows had never been able to use her full depth of hold, and that even 16 feet depth was too much while the Welland Canal maximum draught was 14 feet. Logical; but James Roney knew how much strength there was in 18 inches of solid oak set edge-wise, 18 inches of strength his darling was to be denied.

Also he did not like “of Montreal” on the Minnedosa’s graceful stern; a masterpiece of elliptical moulding. True, she was owned and registered in Montreal. But Kingston, Ontario, was where she was built. There, he felt, she belonged, and Kingston deserved the credit on the archboard.

The Minnedosa was finished as the management wanted, and rigged with four topmasts, and actually sailed. Both N. Henderson and C. I. Gibbons made contemporary pictures of her showing four gafftopsails set.

Her first master was Capt. Robert Irwin. It was intended that she should be towed through the Welland Canal, the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, River St. Clair, St. Mary’s River, and the Sault Canal, and in and out of all harbors, as were all large vessels.

The first snag was that there was not room for her and a tug at the same time in the 26 locks of the then Welland Canal, so she had to be towed through with teams of horses, from Port Dalhousie to Port Colborne.

While she could sail at 15 miles an hour when she got the chance she had to do so much towing that she needed continuous steam convoy.

This was provided by the steamer Walker. Later the Steambarge Glengarry, which had been towing the barge Glenora, added this largest schooner on the Lakes to her string. Still later the Minnedosa and the Melrose, a smaller barge, towed [by] the steamer Westmount.

HOT RACING

Much long distance freighting was done by towage at this time, the towing steamer being able to carry as large a cargo herself as one of her barges, and sometimes having three of these astern of her. The Minnedosa escaped from dependence upon horses for canalling by sacrificing her beautiful figurehead and cutwater and reverting to a plain, straight stem. This permitted a new canal tug, the Escort, built very short by snubbing in her bows, to work with her through the locks. The consort towing steamer, of course, had to lock through separately.

There was intense rivalry ini these towing outfits, for first come, first served, was the rule of the canal, and a petty propeller or rabbit with two or three barge on her towline might block a large tow for a day or more by nosing into the guard lock a minute ahead Chief Tom Mowatt of Oswego, who was a tug fireman before he became a police officer, recounts a ding-dong battle the Glengarry had, coming down Lake Erie, with the Minnedosa and another barge probably the Glenora in tow, against some other propeller with three smaller barges. Nearing Port Colborne the Glengarry, scraping the bottom of her bunkers, broke up her hatch-battens and threw all the paint cans and linseed oil in the paint locker i not the firehold for a final outburst of steam. She passed her rival by so doing, but dared not slow to shorten in the long towline lest she lose her lead. In consequence Garry, Minnie and Co., entered the canal with whistles screaming, anchors splashing, wheel thrashing, lines smoking and fenders splintering. By a miracle no one was sunk in the melee—and by another miracle the Glengarry escaped a fine.

JANE ANN MARSH AT OWEN SOUND

Sir—In reading, your article; CMXXIV of 5th inst., would say as! a resident of Owen Sound since Jan., 1874, that Mr. James B. Chalmers of Acton, Ont., is way off course, re the remains of the schooner Sarah Ann Marsh as having been laying on the Brook shore here. Those remains were of the Silver Spray, a side-wheeler burned here—sorry, too young at that time to remember the incident. My uncle, Mr. Michael Forhan, had an interest in her, and many a time as a boy I rowed across the bay while trolling and gazed interestedly at them, just barely covered with water.

You are right the remains of the Jane Ann Marsh. Her bones rested a couple hundred feet off the east shore in about eight feet of water with stern post well above about 2 1/2 miles down from harbor and opposite a boat house of an adjoining farm known then as Lloyds Farm. This, as I remember well, was in the late eighties. Many a time those days, the writer snubbed it for a rest while out fishing.

As you say “What difference does it make now? None.” However, even in as trivial incidents, as to where the skeletons of those old pioneer vessels were peacefully resting after their life’s labors are over, it is well if to have correct memory inscriptions; of them, also for official records. Continue your interesting “Schooner Days.” What would The Tely readers be without them?

Sincerely yours,

LEON C. JROLIEU,

1430 8th ave. E.

Owen Sound.

Thanks, skipper, you are very understanding. It does make a difference whether we get things right or not in our own minds, even about Schooner Days, and the compiler is grateful for your continued help.

THE GREAT SCHOONER "MINNEDOSA"- BEFORE SHE WAS CUT DOWN TO BARGE RIG —Drawn by C. I. Gibbon