Mystery Head of Ontario Navigation: Schooner Days CMLXVI (966)

by C. H. J. Snider

WE left off with Mr. Thyme (whom from his weed-cutting scythe, we at first took to be someone else of similar name) telling about the James Coleman being built at the head of navigation for Lake Ontario. We postponed consideration of where that would be to hear what he said about this fast old schooner which would he over a hundred years old now, if she hadn't got ashore in 1864.

"And she was a good vessel too, biggest on the lake when she was launched, a schooner of 298 tons register. I've seen that in the Customs House book. She's taken 14,000 bushels of barley out of this very basin, and hundreds of thousands staves, grampa said, and made a fortune for her owner.

"Stave bolts used to pile up here like skyscrapers all through the winter, if the sleighing was good. Millions of 'em were cut in the swamps in Beverley township. "Beverley wheat" they used to be called, for wheat was the gold mine in the Crimean war, and the James Coleman got her share of that, too.

IN THE PALMY DAYS

"What with the staves and the lumber and the tanbark and the shingles and the wheat and the barley coming down the Governor's Road, and the flour the mills here was turnin' out this place was shipping more than Toronto or Hamilton, in the palmy days. It was getting in iron ore for the foundries here, and making the biggest boilers for threshing machines and steamboats and factories, and cotton was coming in from the Southern States for the mills, and coal for the gasworks—man, dear, it kept schooners and steamers and barges and canal boats and tugs and excursions going like the pool of London.

"Who was this James Coleman?" "Poor boy from Ireland, grampa said, who peddled peanuts here first, around rebellion times."

"Riel's?"

"Mackenzie's. He went ahead like a house afire, and in ten years, 1847 that would, be, took the, plunge and got Lummaree, the traveling shipwright from Oswego, to build him the biggest vessel the canal would take."

"What canal? The Welland?"

WHAT STOPPED THE CLOCK

"No, this one here, and it was begun before the Welland by one of the town boys. The vessel was the James Coleman, called after himself, and she was a money maker. By 1850 this town was incorporated, and Coleman was its first mayor. He married well, and his children married well, and money, you know, makes money. But all the Coleman money was made honestly. The man had his downs as well as his ups. It was the railway that stopped the clock in this place—"

"Oh, I thought it might be the heat"—with memories of the four clocks of the town hall which were taking holidays when we passed by.

"Well, it stopped growin' when the iron horse pushed the stage coach and the farm teams off the Governor's Road, and everything started to flow into Hamilton. Coleman came through that all right, for his money was on the water. But the James Coleman got ashore in 1864, towards the end of the American War, and stayed there. The war cut off the cotton from the mills, and Reciprocity ending kept it from coming back afterwards.

FOUR IN FAMILY

'"All that hit the town hard. In 1865 four of the family, including his son and heir, Edwin Coleman, were drowned riding the swells of the steamer Argyle in the canal—"

"The one that was the Empress of India earlier?"

"No, this one was built before the Empress was crowned. Why, man, this place—"

"But you haven't yet told what; or where this place is."

"I know, I know," said Mr. Thyme. "I'll come to that. But if you're in a hurry, just walk up to the station and there you'll see, plain as plain. Like as not I'll be here when you get back."

He drew a purplish scythe stone from the hip pocket of his overalls and began to stroke his weapon with it, excruciatingly.

A wink is as good as a nod. we withdrew in good order to at prepared position, viz., the railway station platform, and will divulge the awful secret next week; sure for sure, if The Tely permits.

A SISTER OF THE JAMES COLEMAN?

This was the MARYSBURGH of South Bay, rebuilt in 1870, from the JAMES LESLIE of Cat Hollow, built in 1853, possibly the Coleman's model, but slightly smaller.