"Royal Tar" Had 50 Successors: Schooner Days CMXXXIII (933)

by C. H. J. Snider

PORT BURWELL on Lake Erie grew from the lumbering on the Otter River, on which many sawmills were built between 1840 and 1855. The port had been surveyed in 1830. In 1836 the village had 200 inhabitants. In 1845 shipments to Quebec were 109,650 "pipe" and 624,700 "West India" staves. Pipes were long, staves, Standards were cut 5 ft, 6 in. in length, West Indias shorter, 3 ft.-6 and less. Staves were measured by the mille, which meant 1,200 pieces. Piles of staves lined, the banks of the Otter after every winter's lumbering. They were scowed down to the port from Vienna, and the scows were poled back or hauled along the bank. That is how the beautiful white oak was used up between 1840 and 1850, and later the shorter-grained less durable red. The main trunks were adzed square for ship timbers in the bush, the limbs and smaller parts being worked into staves. The pine timber stood longer than the oak, lasting until 1872. From 200 to 400 vessel loads of it was shipped each year.

All the wheat for twenty miles around was shipped from Port Burwell or milled there. D. M. Foster had a plaster mill also, and shipped from the port.

A popular product was the yellow Flint corn grown by the early settlers on sandy Nova Scotia street, milled by the Youells, and shipped as cornmeal for Boston and Nova Scotian breakfasts.

The principal shipowners were the Youells, John McBride, W. Y. Emery, who became an excise officer in the customs at St. Thomas, D. M. Foster, Dan Freeman, and the Suffels, George Suffel and Son.

George Suffel, merchant, shipowner and miller, was born in Yorkshire in 1822, before Port Burwell saw the light. He came to Vienna, up the Big Otter, in 1850, after some years in the grocery business in Prescott. He was reeve of Vienna and county councillor for 19 years and warden for four. He removed to St. Thomas and became manager of the Southwestern Loan Co. by 1898.

PORT BURWELL'S FLEET

D. M. Foster owned or built fourteen Port Burwell vessels, and was master of many of them. Nearly all reached Lake Ontario eventually, and hailed from Oakville, Toronto, or Port Hope in their later years. Some went to Georgian Bay.

The Foster vessels were the Arabian, Ariadne, Albatross, Britannia, Anna Craig, Craftsman, Fellowcraft, Annie M. Foster, D. M. Foster, D. Freeman, Erie Belle, Eunice Ann (Elm City), Eliza White, and Maple Leaf. This was not the well-known Maple Leaf sailed so long by Capt. Richard Goldring of Whitby. She was one of the few Port Burwell vessels that never came to Lake Ontario.

Other Port Burwell-built schooners were:

The Stirling, 48 tons.

Haggard, 81.

Royal Oak, 58.

Pine, 88.

Ada, later Marcia A. Hall, 54.

Florence, 199 tons, first of the larger ones, in 1861.

Alzora, also large.

Almina, 173.

Ellen Teresa, 77.

D. Cornwall, 338, first built for the maximum dimensions of Welland Canal locks in 1863.

Homeward Bound, 106.

Lurea Emma, 40.

Sarah Jane, 174.

George Suffel, 75.

A. C. Storrs, 145.

W. Y. Emery, 154.

Lillian

W. W. Grant, 163 (went across the ocean).

Two Brothers, 137.

Leviathan, only 91.

Argo (Alice Mary), 118.

Bermuda, 140.

Vienna, 166.

Conservative.

Edward Blake, 328 (she also crossed the ocean).

Clara Youell, 269.

Lady Dufferin, 356, Port Burwell's largest.

Two Friends.

Three Friends.

Lady Macdonald, 284,

Lilly Hamilton, 320.

Mary Ann Lydon, 245.

W. J. Suffel, 238.

Grace Amelia, 199 (later Gordon Jerry, steam barge).

Annie M. Foster, 77.

Hercules, 240.

Last vessel built at Port Burwell, in schooner days was the small steamer Hazard in 1892. The first was probably the schooner Royal Tar in 1834, so named in honor of William IV, the newly crowned Sailor King. She was wrecked at Toronto early in 1857 and her sunken hull blocked the entry to the Queen's Wharf. Between 1834 and 1846 were built the five earliest Port Burwell vessels, the Royal Tar and the Amity, Chapman, Lady Colborne and Sir Robert Peel.

"Heed Not the Rolling Waves But Bend to the Oar"

HOPE REVIVED when these sturdy oarsmen appeared in their oilskins and cork jackets. They were the Oswego lifesaving crew before motor horsepower replaced manpower muscle. They loaded their boat on a four-horse wagon if the wreck was far away where a tug could not tow them; and they relied on their white-ash oars and the rocket gun for the rest. Most of the wrecks at Oswego occurred almost on the doorstep of the lifesaving station. The crew: Top row—Frank Hennessey, Eli Wood, Lloyd Obner and Mylo Donahue. Bottom row— Charles Leonard, Spencer Hobrook, Captain Anderson, Joe Goodan and Alvin Rockfellow.