When Locomotive Was New as a Jet Plane: Schooner Days CMXCII (992)

by C. H. J. Snider

STRANGE but true, there are active sailors of 1951 who recall first yachts of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club and men who sailed in them. Yet the club will next year celebrate its centennial, and has already been in existence as a sailing society for 101 years.

MODERN 100 YEARS AGO

The first fleet included J. Ewart's Undine, clinker-built, with "marconi" mainsail, then called a leg-o'-mutton or Bermuda sail, and so not at all modern. She is probably the yacht in the foreground, in the left of the picture. The one to the right, which looks to be in trouble but isn't, is probably the famous iron cutter Rivet. She is only "scandalizing" her mainsail, lowering the peak and tricing up the tack, in preparation for a change of course, a "gybe" which will bring the wind on the other quarter. That was standard practice with the old loose-footed mainsails. Their area could be cut in two, temporarily, by those two simple moves, and it could be restored as simply, by hauling the peak up and the tack down.

AND NOT YET 100.

We knew the Rivet Well, under sail, and her earliest skippers.

Rivet was built in the old country for Judge Hamilton of Kingston and brought out to Montreal on the deck of a liner in 1851. She was of iron, not steel, and lasted like the lake itself, for she lived to be turned back into pig iron in the Great War.

She was a typical English cutter of before the plank-on-edgers, about 40 feet waterline, 10 feet beam, 8 ft. draught, and 17 tons measurement. Early yachts were classified by tonnage, first class over 10 tons, second under 10, third 5 and less. Her bowsprit was half as long as her keel, her stem plumb, her after overhang short, and her stern square at the deck, like the scandalized cutter in the picture. She had a long topmast with a jackyard topsail, not a club, for it had no lady yard to extend it beyond the peak of the gaff. We speak of her cutter rig, the only one we saw, but she also had a schooner rig, baldheaded, and a Bermuda sloop rig.

Rivet was the first winner of the Prince of Wales Cup, for which the yacht club has been racing annually for ninety years. She won it at the regatta held here in 1860 to welcome "Albert Edward Prince of Wales" of the old prayer book. The race was to Mimico and back in a gale of wind, and Rivet won by 15 minutes against twelve other starters. Few stayed the course.

THE BLAKES

She was sailed in this race by her then owners "E. and S. Blake." They were then undergraduates at law school. The former Hon. Edward, had not yet gone to Parliament in Ottawa or Westminster. The Hon. Sam, who eschewed profanity, thus described the epoch-marking race: "All I can tell you about it, my boy, was that it was wet, damp wet—now see that you spell it correctly in your paper, and no evasions about typographical errors."

Wm. Armstrong, CE, who often sailed the Rivet, said he once tossed away a sandwich in the heat of a race, when rounding the mark at close quarters. The wind blew it into the bunt of the mainsail, and there it lay till they turned the next mark an hour later, and came on the other tack, for the Rivet was notorious for her great angle of heel, and once she lay down she never straightened up, unless the course was changed. All her ballast was inside.

Armstrong was an excellent water-color artist, and left many contemporary portraits, of yachts, which should be among the club's most precious possessions.

THE HOW OF IT

He was one of the founders, when, in 1850 a dozen gentlemen interested in sport began talking in Capt. Fellows' commission warehouse on Melinda street, near the site of The Telegram. Seated on flour barrels they discussed forming an aquatic club. Finding the flour barrels hard and the dust thirst provoking they adjourned to an emporium across the way on King street near the present University avenue, where John Steel had a long counter against which they could lean, with a brass rail below to rest their feet, one at a time.

Thus refreshed they agreed upon Toronto Boat Club as a tentative title. In 1852 they decided it would be the Toronto Yacht Club, drew up bylaws, and appointed officers, navy-style. Thos. J. Robertson to be captain; J. J. Arnold, first lieutenant; Wm. Copeland, second lieutenant; Capt. W. H. Fellows, honorary secretary, That rating should have been hon purser or captain's clerk.

Among the "founders" were Dr. Hodder, then owner of the Cherokee and long commodore; Major T. W. Magrath of the Garrison, sailor and horseman, owning the racer Norah Creina and a yacht named the same; S. B. Harman, city treasurer; John Arnold, owner of the Challenge, a topsail sloop with a trunk cabin; Wm. Armstrong, with a mackinaw named the III A's to include his sons; Thomas Shortiss, Charles Heath—all Toronto business or professional men.

HEALTHFUL SPORT

Mr. Armstrong became honorary secretary in 1859, and was a member of the club for 60 years. His home was The Priory, on Esther street in old Toronto, where he died in 1913, at the age of 98, comparatively young, of course, for a yachtsman. So much fresh air and fresh water keeps us evergreen.

It was Queen Victoria's happy inspiration that gave the club the name Royal Canadian Yacht Club in 1854.

They were great lads in Canada's life a hundred years ago, and they are great lads today. Service has always been their unproclaimed motto. One has only to scan the names on the Memorial Capstan on the club lawn to realize how by the thousand, they have lived up to that motto whenever Canada and the Empire have called. Five hundred served in the navy, army and air force the last time the call came.

(From Gleason's Pictorial, Boston, July 30, 1853)

"WE have been favored by a marine artist from "Toronto, in the neighboring provinces, with a representation of a few of the boats of the Toronto Club coming into the harbor from a cruise on the lake. They are passing the Queen's Wharf, which forms the boundary, of a narrow channel into the harbor, and the only entrance. On the end of the wharf is a lighthouse, This, is a regularly established yacht club, and consists of about 20 vessels of various sizes, of from three to 20 tons. The scene on the bay—always a busy one, with steamers, propellers and merchant vessels—is much enhanced by these beautiful little vessels, with their lofty masts, and always under, a press of canvas, so that one is alarmed for their safety. Yet no accidents occur as they are skillfully and well handled, though chiefly by landsmen. Their fairy forms and white sails may at all times distinguish them from others. They have regular regattas, prizes of considerable value in silver cups, etc. On the bank, at the foot of the Queen's Wharf, may be seen a first class locomotive, built in Toronto at Good's Foundry, and it does him great credit. The Toronto, and Huron Railroad runs along the bank in front of the town. There will shortly be railroads running into Toronto in every direction, and it is destined to be ere long a city of first magnitude. Part of the garrison may also be seen, and the lunatic asylum, in the distance."

"TORONTO BOAT CLUB COMING INTO HARBOR 98 YEARS AGO"