Luck of the Lady Mac: Schooner Days CMLXXXV (985b)

by C. H. J. Snider

BEFORE hearing more of the happy New Year of the Ella Murton—as, please God, you shall—listen if you will to what befell the Lady Macdonald.

The schooner which bore the name of the wife of the father of Confederation and founder of the national policy, the "good old Sir John A." of the nineteenth century, was built at Port Burwell in 1873 for Wm. Youell & Co.

She was a canal-sized three-master of moderate dimensions, a little shoaler and narrower than some, she measured 318 tons register. Her length was 135. ft., beam 23.2, depth 10.7

She did quite well in the Chicago-Collingwood grain trade and in lumber and timber. In the 1880s one of the Hartgrove family of South Marysburg, in Prince Edward County—either Capt. Joseph D. of the Maize, Deputy Reeve, or his brother Capt. W. H., later of the Typo—got her for the prosperous barley trade with Oswego. That was only seasonal, so she entered the growing waterborne coal trade on Ontario.

She left Toronto Saturday evening, Aug. 11, 1888 for Oswego. Half past one Sunday morning, off Oak Orchard on the south shore, she was struck by a squall, followed by a hard summer gale. Her mizzen sail, an old one, was completely blown away, the foresail was torn, and one of the jibs split. It blew hard all Sunday, with thick weather and driving rain, and the Lady Macdonald was badly buffeted about. Being light and empty of cargo she rolled wildly in the high sea, and her crew of seven all told had great difficulty in repairing damage.

Fortunately there was a new mizzen in the cabin, ready to replace the old. It was bent, the mainsail was reefed, and the foresail patched sufficiently to permit of it being hoisted partly. But the halliards were so snarled with the rolling that they rendered slowly through the blocks, or not at all. Both anchors, stowed as usual on the billboards, went adrift. To prevent them from staving in the bows, they were laboriously lashed on deck.

Limping thus in wild disorder, the schooner approached Oswego Monday afternoon with less wind but the sea still running high. The gale had backed into the north. The small amount of ill-balanced sail which the Lady Macdonald was able to set made her motion the more frightful.

COULD SHE MAKE IT?

The backwash from the new timber breakwater at Oswego seemed to doom her. Her stern was tossed so high in the turmoil that her rudder was at times out of the water. As she was light it was only half submerged at best, and frequently it had no control over her.

The back seas tossed her bows towards the east pier and the following seas smacked her quarter toward it. For a moment it looked as though she could not make the entrance at all, but would be thrown onto the great stone flat east of the harbor under the hill of Fort Ontario.

Then it seemed that she would smack the east pier stem-on, and break around the corner of it into the same deadly stone-bed.

Then she shaved the inside of the pier, and everyone expected a broadside crash.

But the back wash, suddenly sucked her away, and she was heading for the beacon light in the middle of the river.

HOW TO STOP?

Capt. Hartgrove counted on the river current checking his vessel's way, if he could ever get her into the river's mouth. No current was there at the critical moment. Once out of the toss of the raging billows at the entrance and into smooth water the Lady Macdonald rushed up the river like a steamboat, her crew fighting madly to lower the sails or get an anchor over the bows to check her.

But the halliards were still fouled with the heavy rolling and would not run, and both anchors were so shored and lashed to the deck that they could not be budged.

The tug M. J. Cummings, afraid to venture out past the beacon light, got a line on the Lady Macdonald inside. She dragged the tug along with her until the water got so shoal that the tug, drawing eight feet, bumped the bottom, and threw off the line to save herself from capsizing.

If the schooner's centreboard had been down it would have struck the bottom too, and checked her, even if it was crushed. But it had been hove up in the box lest it be lost in the rolling, and in the box it stayed, jammed.

Being light she was only drawing four feet of water, and she hurled herself at the lower bridge like Lars Porsena at Horatius. The crowd watching the battle from the bridge rail ran screaming right and left but they were still on the bridge deck when they heard and felt the crash. The stout hickory jibboom, tougher than a tournament lance, and ten times as heavy, hit the bridge square, snapped off at the cap, and did $2,500 damage in less than 25 seconds. Timbers cracked, planks flew, cast iron supports broke, and railings curled up like wire. The bridge was out of commission for days. Repairs took a month to complete.

"If I'm liable for this accident," said Capt. Hartgrove bitterly, "the city of Oswego can take my vessel, just as quick as they like. I've been sailing since I was twelve, and never had a harder gale than it was on Sunday, and never harder luck than I have today. She's my lifetime savings."

The Sheriff seized her for a $2,500 damage claim. She was supposed to be worth $6,000. Cost three times that to build, fifteen years before.

BAD LUCK STICKS

Capt. John Ewart, Sr., of Cobourg, bought the Lady Macdonald. His youngest son, David, still living in Cobourg, sailed her. The Ewart boys, John, James and David, were good sailors, and the firm owned four schooners—but Dave had no luck with the Lady Macdonald. He lost his mizzen mast the first year, in a squall. They re-rigged her with a long mainboom and large mainsail, and sailed her as a fore-and-after for the rest of the season.

That winter, at the old Waterworks wharf in Toronto, they put in a new mizzen and fitted her out fine with her original rig. Next summer, through a series of trivial accidents, she took the entrance to Fair Haven harbor oh the wrong side, and wrecked herself completely against the west pier. It was horrible. You could hear her groan like a human being whose ribs were fractured as she cracked up on the timber cribs.

Schooner S. H. Dunn making a stormy entrance into Fairhaven in 1904.