"Captain's Dive" on Wintry Day in May: Schooner Days CMLV (955)

by C. H. J. Snider

IN a hundred-year-old chart of Lake Erie a sounding of 54 feet — 9 fathoms — is marked off Peacock Point, 11 miles easterly from Port Dover. The sounding has the notation "The Captain's Dive." Both sounding and notation are verified thus by Capt, Milledge:

"In May, 1834, I was coming up from Buffalo in the steamer Thames, Capt. Van Allen. We left the night of the 17th. All that day it had snowed and stormed in Buffalo, and when we left the decks and ropes were covered deep with snow and ice.

"Next morning was clear and keen. We went into the Grand River (on the Canada side of Lake Erie, at Port Maitland. The latter place was fortified in the War of 1812 and old warships were sunk there. It was a busy pioneer port in the development of Upper Canada).

WAR SURPLUS 100 YEARS AGO

"There being a Government sale here two days previous, one of the Dover men purchased the Government boat, a cutter-rigged clinker built thing, which they had advised me to have towed up by the Thames. There was on board of her a fire-engine and other articles, indeed she was stowed full of one kind of truck and another, and a lot of pig iron in the bottom.

"She towed very well until off Peacock Point, when a little sea got up. Capt. Allen said that he had better send one of his men to bail her. I said there was no occasion, I would go myself. So she was hauled up close astern of the steamer and I went down into her by her forestay.

"I had not been aboard more than five minutes when all at once down she went under me. She must have started some butts, or the hoodends forward, in the towing. The last I saw was the pennant at her masthead as the water closed over my own, for whether I wanted to or not I was going down with her.

"There was a rope to her from each quarter of the steamer, but they must have snapped like thread, for she went to the bottom on an even keel. So did I. I was caught somehow by my left ankle and could not get free until she touched bottom, nine fathoms below. Then somehow I was released and came up like a cork in a hurry.

"They were all confusion on board the steamer, and some time elapsed before they got the boat down. When they picked me up their boat was half full of water, having no plug in her scupper. The two men were so confused they did not take notice it till I told them. I took out my sopping wet handkerchief and stopped the hole.

"When I got on board Capt. Van Allen was very kind, also Mr. Maxwell, the mate. They had a buoy put out, and I went aft to take the bearings. Although this was past the middle of May my clothes were all covered with ice and froze on me.

"About the middle of the following July we took our schooner, The Lark, not having much to do at the time, and went down to the place in hopes to grapple up some things, or the engine.

"We were well prepared. We swept for her (dragging a line over the bottom) and got her the second time of trying and anchored our schooner and the scow on the spot. The cutter was lying on the bottom on her even keel, kept bolt upright by her own buoyance and the pig iron cargo in her bottom. When we grappled on to her, the mast, boom, sails, colors and all, came right up out of the hull.

"We got several things more up and out, including her anchor. We were making a try for the fire engine when it came on to blow and we were obliged to leave off. That fire engine is there yet, for since that time in July no one has ever tried his luck in The Captain's Dive."

Capt. McNeillage printed in Buffalo in 1848 a lively little book called "Nautical Chart of the North Shore of Lake Erie," which is full of practical pilotage information, peppered and pointed with incidents such as this, from his own experience and the adventures of others. The Public Archives of Canada have just received a welcome copy. It is rare.

ON THE CLIFFS

I hear a sound like wind in shrouds—

In a golden dream where rainbows gleam,

I am sailing today by a blue sea way.

Under an April sky, when silver clouds ride high,

Or salt winds wail for rain, I follow far with the tides again.

* * *

A storm from the sea sweeps by—

On the river a loon laughs, forlorn.

And grey gulls cry, and my heart is torn

By a sound like wind in shrouds.

There is mist on the cliffs

Where grey gulls drift.

—HELEN MERRILL EGERTON