Ho for the Woodshed: Schooner Days CMXLI (941)

by C. H. J. Snider

Midland Schooners and the Charlie Marshall, With Some Identifications of the Latter, and Last Spike in the Turkey Trail

CAPT. E. F. BURKE, of the Burke Towing & Salvage Company Limited, Midland, continues:

"The picture sent into you on a Christmas card by Grant Turner, showing a number of boats in Little Current harbor at the beginning of the century, is a familiar picture to me. The boats are as follows: The Ste. Iroquois is lying at Sims dock, below the bluff; the next one is the 'Minnie M.,' and at the end of the dock is the 'Str. Cariboo.' In the channel next is the 'Str. Manitou and the boat crossing their bow is the 'City of Windsor' (this boat has had three different names—the first was the 'E. P. Roberts,' then the 'City of Windsor' and then the 'Michipicoten'). She was burned somewhere near Manatowaning.

"The Sims Bros, owned the 'Str. Iroquois' and ran her as a passenger and mail boat between Cutler and Manatowaning for some years, and then she burned near Sagamuck. Then they bought the Str. Bon-Ami to take her place.

"The Tug Downie is running down the channel behind the raft, not the tug Frazer, as stated. She was a high pressure tug and the Frazer was not.

"Note what you say about the raft of logs blocking the channel. This was a common occurrence, as often the current changed while putting a raft through and we would have to wait until it changed back.

"The big blockade was in August, 1906, when we were putting a raft of 80,000 logs, owned by The Georgian Bay Lumber Co., of Waubaushene, through, when the raft was halfway through the wind changed to east and remained that way for 74 hours before we could get the raft out, and during that time a number of boats had to drop anchor above and below the raft. The captains were furious with me and sawlogs in general.

"Saw mills was the main business in most of these northern towns in those days and now very few are left; and I guess a great many people would be glad to see the saw-log days back, even to blocking the channel for a few hours.

IT'S THE LAST SPIKE THAT COUNTS

"Little Current was a flourishing town in those days, with two saw mills running night and day. Everybody looked forward to the railway coming in some day as every election year it was talked up. One year just before election, they brought in a barge partly loaded with rails and piled them on Goat Island in preparation, but they lay there until the next election, and then they got busy and laid a few feet of track and asked Mrs. B. H. Turner (Grant's mother) to drive in the first spike. But she told them she would prefer to drive in the last spike. Finally, they did get the railway in about 1912."

NOW FOR CHARLIE MARSHALL

"In another issue of your paper you had a picture of a sailing schooner which I think I can name. In the early eighties my father, Capt. David Burke, owned the tug Minnie Hall and towed a number of these sailing schooners in and out of Midland and I can remember quite a number of them such as the Oakleaf, John Kelderhouse, F. B. Maxwell, Amaretta Mosher, Lottie Wolf, Imperial and the Danforth, which was the largest that sailed in there. She carried about 40,000 bushels.

"I can remember towing in the schooner St. Louis, owned by a firm in St. Catharines. She had a load, of corn and was laid up there all winter and I think this is the schooner of your picture."

Wrong this time, captain, but in ringing down the curtain on one interesting discussion, you have rung it up on another.

RIGHT, CAPT. EWART

"The picture quiz sent in by my old friend, Capt. Walter Kirk, is the Charlie Marshall, taken in Cobourg Harbor, with the old Hargraft elevator showing in the background, which was destroyed by fire around 1935. Wishing you the very best,

Sincerely yours, Captain DAVID EWART, Albert street, Cobourg."

This goes right to the heart. It is sixty years since this compiler first saw Capt. David Ewart on the cabintop of our old sweetheart, the Ewart schooner Caroline Marsh of Port Hope. She was the second schooner we saw, the very first being the Speedwell of Picton.

RECALLS BALL GAME

"ORANGE STREET, COBOURG" also identifies the old grain elevator. The vessel, he says, we think incorrectly, "might be a vessel that Capt. Jim Dougherty of Belleville and his brother-in-law went to Chicago to buy, and he brought it to Belleville about 1902 or 3 ... I might say I went down to the docks in Belleville when the story got around about Capt. Sidley and all his crew lost on the schooner Picton, and I played on the ball team with K. Sanford, who was cook at the time and saved his life by staying ashore for the ball game to which he had been pledged, as you wrote some time ago in Schooner Days. I enjoy them every week, and have for a good many years. Thanking you for many pleasant hours of reading."

Thank you for your patience, sir. Our information is that Capt. Dougherty and Capt. Mick Meehan took the schooner Keewatin to the Gulf of Mexico in the Great War. They may have brought the schooner J. B. Newlands from Chicago vicinity to Belleville, but we understand the Charlie Marshall was brought down by Capt. Dan Rooney.

BATH, THEN WOODSHED

"Many a happy hour have I spent as a youngster, playing in this locality, sometimes in the grain elevator shown so plainly" (Hargraft's, Cobourg), "sometimes on the beach just east of the elevator, or perhaps swimming near where the willow trees show across the schooner. I was born very close to this spot and lived my early life there, so I remember it very well.

"As a youngster I helped unload a cargo of coal from the schooner shown, the Charlie Marshall, and of course went home covered with coal dust, which led to a visit to the bath tub—and the woodshed.

"Capt. Dan Rooney whom you have mentioned previously in Schooner Days was the skipper and part owner, so perhaps you will be hearing from Jas. Rooney, MP (cousin), who will no doubt recognize this photo. His father was harbormaster at the time.

"I met the son of the owner of the schooner last September, and had a nice chat with him. The father was George Plunkett, and the son, Wilfred Plunkett, who presently resides in Toronto. The schooner, as you say, did not die on the lakes but was lost attempting to carry a cargo of lumber across the ocean during the First Great War. Just a little to the south of this point and on the east side of the pier was the spot where the Jessie Drummond ran aground and broke up. I remember, although quite small at the time, seeing her battered to pieces.

"Thanking you for much enjoyable reading in Schooner Days."

—HILTON C. THOMPSON

Port Credit.

The CHARLIE MARSHALL getting new bulwarks at Cobourg.