Fur Trader Out of Toronto: Schooner Days MXXIII (1023 a)

by C. H. J. Snider

Life-Log of the "Ann Brown"—I

HONEST JOHN BROWN, more than a hundred years ago, had a cottage on the bank of the bay where the Royal York now stands. Front street, of course, runs along the top of the original harbor shore in Toronto. On the beach below Front st. Honest John built in his "spare time"—labor then enjoyed a 60-hour week—a little schooner like Fisty Masterson's smuggler Christina. Only she wasn't a smuggler, her rudder, was not hung outdoors like the Christina's, she was painted black, not white, and he called her Ann Brown, after his wife or daughter.

Last week was mentioned a glimpse of the Ann Brown at a Sunday School picnic. That would be at least sixty years after she had been pushed into the bay at the foot of York st. The Ann Brown was not registered before 1845, as far as we can learn, but she was then getting into her second childhood. She was launched when Toronto was York.

She was as exploratory as a kitten as soon as it gets its eyes open. One early voyage was off to the Upper Lakes to take a hand in the fur trading then going on with the Indians — a round trip of over 1,200 miles for a little thing no bigger than a liner's lifeboat. She would only stretch half way across a city street and she had no power but the wind in her sails.

This Ann Brown was a standing-keeler, 36 feet over all, 11 feet beam, 6 feet deep in the hold, and drawing that much water when fully loaded. Having no centreboard she required some ballast when she was light to give her a grip on the water, and keep her bottom from floating up with its own buoyancy. When empty of cargo she drew less than three feet. As ballast pays no freight it was used sparingly and thrown overboard as soon as paying cargo could take its space.

Like the kitten aforesaid the Ann Brown probably wriggled through the Welland Canal after those pioneers of the opening in 1829, the Annie and Jane of York and the R. H. Boughton of Youngstown, and like them was towed by oxen down the Chippewa Creek and up the Niagara River to get to Lake Erie. The earliest canal was not cut through to Port Colborne. Anyway, over the Niagara escarpment climbed the little Ann Brown, possibly with Honest John at the oaken tiller and watching the snubline. And so on up Lake Erie, through the Straits of Detroit, and up Lake Huron, and into Georgian Bay, and perhaps through the St. Mary's river and up to the Soo. She couldn't get into Lake Superior, for at this time the only Soo canal was the 30-inch canoe lock still shown to tourists, dug by the Northwest Company in 1798.

Off Manitoulin Island one night during her trading she was struck by a squall and went over on her beam-ends. Her crew of three cut the tackles of the tiny yawlboat that hung across her stern, and escaped in their shirts. It was raining pitchforks and black as a wolf's throat, after the first flash of lightning. They paddled ashore, believing they had lost their little ship and all in her, including the $500 they had collected and stowed in a cookie jar in the cabin locker.. She may have been dealing with the Astor company, which had a depot at the Soo.

The sun rose clear next morning — and there in deep water but not far from shore, was the Ann Brown, floating bottom up, on the reserve buoyancy of her timbers. Her anchor had dripped clear of the cathead when she went over. The paul of her little log windlass, with holes for handspikes, had floated and let the chain run down, so she had not drifted on the rocks. The lucky trio towed her into shallow water, righted her, pumped her out, and recovered the $500. They completed their voyage rejoicing.

A lot more happened to the Ana Brown before some juniors in the Royal Canadian Yacht Club got her in 1903. But this, and that, is another story.