Merry? Christmas: Schooner Days CMXXXI (931)

by C. H. J. Snider

DECKLOADS that bloom in the fall, tra-la, may have nothing to do with the case, but we would like to get on with what was sometimes called the "maple leaf fleet" because their originator was proud of his country and his national emblem and started his vessels off with a big maple leaf in full color above the nameboard.

THERE WERE three Suffels in schooner days. The name is uncommon, not appearing in my edition of the city directory, but it is a good English one, and George Suffel brought it to the village of Vienna, on Big Otter Creek in Elgin County a hundred years ago.

Vienna, Ont., is six miles inland from Port Burwell on Lake Erie, and Port Burwell might be called the Lunenburg of Lake Erie, the Gloucester of Ontario, so many lake schooners were built there, and they spread over the world. Half the schooners hailing out of Port Hope on Lake Ontario, were born at Port Burwell. The Edward Blake, with "of Port Burwell" on her stern, carried oak timber from Cheboygan, Michigan, to London, England—and came back after a call in South America.

George Suffel of Vienna had one small schooner built at Port Burwell in 1866, year of the Fenian Raid and one year before Confederation. She was 75 tons register and was 72 feet long, 18 foot beam, 7 feet deep in the hold, and he called her after himself. He sold her, and she had various owners afterwards, among them D. F. Rouse of Bath on the Bay of Quinte, Lake Ontario, by 1877. George Suffel prospered and had another schooner built at Port Burwell in 1874. This was the port's biggest building year, five schooners going down the launching ways.

This new Suffel schooner was of 238 tons register, 120 feet long, 26 feet beam, 9 ft. 8 in. depth of hold. She was christened the W. J. Suffel, after which relative we are not informed. The maple leaf on her stern was five feet wide. She had a clipper stem but no figurehead.

She was a fine vessel for the time, of great carrying capacity for her dimensions and the crew required to work her, and therefore profitable. Like her predecessor, she was two masted. Such schooners had pretty big mainsails, but the W. J. Suffel was easy to handle with four men in the forecastle and three in the afterguard. Before she finished she had to be sailed by fewer, to make ends meet, as freights fell and wages rose. She was so rigged, with long topmasts and short mainboom, and foresail and mainsail of almost the same size, that she had plenty of canvas to drive her but seldom had to be reefed. Clewing up her big topsails was as good as single-reefing other vessels. She had plenty of flying kites, sporting a fifth jib at the end of her horn, and a maintopmast staysail aloft, at least as we knew her.

THE W. J. SUFFEL was born a little too late. Enlargement of the Welland Canal from 1874 onwards encouraged a flock of full-bodied three-masters which could carry two hundred tons more cargo with the same manpower. Smaller vessels had to cut down crews and seek short hauls. Such a vessel as the W. J. Suffel could make little money later on the long voyages from Cleveland to Toronto, with cut stone for the then rising Parliament Buildings and City Hall. The round trip took two weeks and the one-way freight for her was as low as $150. Out of this she had to pay $75 tow bill for the Welland Canal and $25 more for tugs at Toronto and Cleveland. The leftover would not buy groceries and pay wages for the fortnight required. There was no return freight to take up the slack.

The W. J. Suffel stayed on Lake Ontario for the shorter hauls. Capt. John Corson and his brothers from Presqu'isle became owners of her. She was wrecked at Hamilton April 2nd, 1889, unable to make the Burlington Piers because she was iced up in a spring gale. She ran in, unmanageable, north of the pier and struck on the smooth sand of the beach. Refloated and repaired she sailed Lake Ontario for another twenty years, until she too came to a fiery end at Belleville. That was where and how her "grandfather", the George Suffel, bad ended long before.

MORE PROFITABLE, probably in her short career was the full canal sized schooner Two Friends which George Suffel built or at least owned at Port Burwell, in 1874. She was 136 feet long, 23.6 feet beam and 11.1 feet deep in the hold, standard canal size for the time. She registered 336 tons and could carry over 700 tons of coal or 22,000 bushels of grain. She had six men forward and two mates, captain and cook, at first, but this crew was cut down to seven all told. She was wrecked at North Bay, Oct. 16th, 1880 — which one, I don't know, for there is a North Bay in Wisconsin, another in Michigan and another in Pelee Island, in addition to the inland Ontario city. George Suffel was an owner of the Two Brothers, built at Port Burwell in 1868, and probably of the Vienna, built there 1871 and named after his village. They were smart little vessels, and like all the other Suffel schooners except the Two Friends sailed long on Lake Ontario, outlasting their century.

One wonders, from the vessel names, whether George and W. J. Suffel were brothers, and in partnership and liked to emphasize the fact in naming their successive marine property.

So many vessels hailed from Port Burwell that perhaps you would like to hear more of the place - next week?

WHEN SHE ROLLS THE OTHER WAY!—So much comment has been received upon the photograph in a recent number, "Giants in Their Days," that perhaps you would like to see the second snapshot of the steamer W, H. Truesdale's deckload of Lake Superior in a late passage in 1936. What a beating the hatchcovers have to take! They are barely discernible under the sweeping wave. It shows how hard it is to earn a grain freight of 7 cents a bushel from the head of the lakes, even in steam. Schooner men had it worse - But some still survive to wish every one a Merry Christmas, and neither so green nor so white as the one depicted.