Vienna at Needle's Eye: Schooner Days CMLXI (961)

by C. H. J. Snider

TRENTON, Ont., looks smart and modern with its brick business streets and clean concrete bridgework over the broad brown Trent, with the locks of the Trent Valley canal and the white walled airport beyond.

It was more picturesque in the old days. Then the big stone mill on the waterfront loomed amid a forest of masts like Chepstow castle on the Wye, the wharves were piled high with fresh sawn lumber, and at night the stacks of the sawmills blazed like torches under their grated hoods as the days accumulation of waste and sawdust was burned up to keep steam in the boilers. The most picturesque feature was the old red covered bridge which spanned the Trent, teeming then with rafts.

The bridge was long, and hopped from timber crib to trestle and trestle to timber crib. Some of these had twisted and settled or been lifted up by the ice and the spring freshets. The bridge was of wood, truss, span, floor, and railing. To prolong its life it was roofed over, as high as a hayload, and had side walls of sheeting laid lengthwise. Square ports were cut in these walls, high up under the roof eaves, to light the roadway, for the covered bridge was as dark inside as a sewer-pipe. It was in just such a bridge that John Sheridan Hogan, MPP, was murdered and thrown into the Don at Toronto ninety years ago. With each change in the river bed and shift of the cribs the Trenton bridge took a fresh twist, till it looked like a giant slabsided salamander, stuck in trying to follow the Kingston road. It had been painted barn red—once, and never again.

At one end a span of the bridge was pivoted so that it could be, swung, for Trenton had a big sloop and schooner trade at this time, and vessels had to go through the highway to load their cargoes of lumber, headings, bunchwood, cedar posts, wheat, oats, corn, peas, barley, rye and buckwheat, or unload the coal, feldspar, and other imports of the district.

It was always hard getting through that hole, for the gap available when it was swung completely was not much more than 25 feet, the beam of a full-sized canaller. Sailing vessels had to be hove through by the capstan, as a rule. They had to go through exactly straight, for any weaving or angling meant she would jam on both sides. One touch might be a $1,000 smash for the vessel or the bridge—and if you did any damage or even held up traffic over-long, the county would promptly tie you up until you settled for it.

The "Old Man" or captain of the schooner Vienna pondered these facts of life well, as he walked the cabin top of that smart fore-and-after, newly brought to Lake Ontario from Port Burwell, her Lake Erie birthplace. She had passed in through the Trenton bridge as the capstan-pauls measured her progress by inches, her midship fenders gently rubbing both sides. She was a beautifully modeled vessel, "all in one piece, not two ends and a middle," as sailors put it. That is, she curved like a seed instead of a cylinder. Her greatest beam was just abaft the fore rigging. From there she narrowed in a gentle curve towards the stern, accentuated by the way her quarters were tucked in by, the round of the tumblehome. Such a shape was easier to push through the water, and through a rectangular opening.

The skipper knew he could get her out of where he had got her in, but he saw what had happened to the Nellie Hunter, the vessel which had just wriggled through, outward bound. She had finished her loading when he had still four hours work to do. And she was only now heaving out to an anchorage in the Bay, clear of the bridge, where she would get her snubs, warps and running lines disentangled after all this strenuous heaving, before beginning to make sail. There was a good breeze blowing, but that had made it all the harder to get through the bridge, for not having steerage way the vessel had dragged heavily on the lee side and hung on every obstruction above and below water.

The Vienna's captain thought he could beat the Hunter to Oswego on an even start. But not with a four-hour handicap.

"Boys,"he said suddenly, "we're going to sail out."

"Sail her out?" said the mate encouragingly. "Well, she's your vessel, now 'tenny rate. Mebbe the county'll own her t'night. Er what's lefta her."

"Marsh," said the Old Man to Marshall Spafford of Point Traverse, the best wheelsman aboard: "Can you take her through that bridge under sail?"

"Yes," said Marsh, "if I'm left alone."

"We'll make sail then. Blow the horn for the bridge," said the skipper, giving his little gold earrings an extra shake to improve his eyesight.

They got everything on her but the fore gafftopsail, which as you know is better left clewed up if you have to do any shore-tacking. They took a little hitch up the basin inside the bridge, to get way on her, and put the wheel hard down.

She was a smart vessel, the Vienna, and she came about in a quarter circle with no loss of headway, and looked the bridge in the eye. The widening black slit of the bridge covering showed the span was opening. They could hear the bell ding-donging to keep the buggies back.

"Keep well up to windward" adjured the mate. "Don't let her drop down, er she'll smash the lee 'butment."

"I said I'd take her through if I was left alone," said Marsh, lining her for the opening.

"Don't let her fall to loo'ard" admonished the captain.

"You take the wheel then, and I'll go pack my bag" retorted Marsh.

"Aw, now, Marsh," begged the captain, "I didn't mean that." Then, savagely: "Shut up, everybody!

Didn't I tell you to leave Marsh alone?"

"Meaning me?" glowered the mate.

"Yes, you, if you think you are anybody."

Whoosh! she shot through that gap like a gull through a window. One glimpse of snorting horseheads and farmers whiskers to leeward, and to windward the bridge tender's eyes sticking out of his head like peeled onions. Then the red humpbacked roller coaster seemed rushing up the river, and they went under the stern of the Nellie Hunter, still getting her anchor. They were off for Oswego ahead of her.

"Give her the fore gafftopsail!" shouted the captain. "Marsh, will you come with me as mate next month?"

"I'm quittin' right now," said the mate-to-be-deposed, "so ye kin gimme my time to the end of the month. Nobody ever fired me and nobody ain't never goin' to."

"Hold your horses, mister," said Marsh. "I don't want anybody's site but my own. All I want's to be left alone when I've business to attend to."

The cook's bell broke in, and Marsh had his way. As was the custom in good weather, all went to dinner except the man at the wheel. They ate in the cabin, the captain at the head of the table, the mate at the foot. So for fifteen minutes Marsh was left alone in his glory.

The mate was the first man out from the full fast meal, and according to the same custom, he relieved Marsh. As he did so, he awkwardly tendered him an uncut plug of T&B.

"That" he remarked as to the fore gafftopsail "was the finest piece of wheelin' I ever seen."