Passing Hails of 'Fifty-One: Schooner Days MXXVII (1027)

by C. H. J. Snider

BEST hail so far is the autographed copy of "Lure of the Sea" from a shipmate in the Bluenose thirty yeas ago, when she won the championship of the North Atlantic - Wallace Mac Askill.

"Lure of the Sea" was a particularly happy Anchor's A-weigh gift from the city of Halifax to the sailor Duke of Edinburgh. It was a work of art which only Halifax could produce - and did produce.

Wallace Mac Askill, great amateur and, therefore, great professional, has conferred distinction upon Nova Scotia by evolving such a selection of seventy-five pictures in a lifetime of patient endeavor in Halifax. Eastern Photo Engravers of Halifax have printed them - and worthily. This is one of the finest things a Nova Scotian has done for Nova Scotia since W. J. Roue designed the Blunose.

Mac Askill, in his hours of ease (if any) skipper of Highlander and other good little ships, and commodore of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron, laid this perfect garland at the feet of his wife, in a dedication "to her whose love for the sea is as great as my own." Halifax had the good sense and he good taste to give the gallant Philip this men-to-man goodbye gift, a permanent delight.

One might choose the lone gull cloud and billow on the pebbled container in which the book is boxed, as the best picture - or revised the opinion in favor of the blue-grey breaking billows, hungry, heaving and unhurried, of the final end-papers. Others would be just as right in pinning first prize on the pictures of racing fishermen, or gathering storm, or the cat-like dolphins, or sealers and icebergs, or one old brigantine, or a score of other square-riggers, or Glooskap's Finger, or the sea-orchids, a million gull-wings around a banker dressing her catch. My own oldest favorite is reproduced, the well-known "Starboard Watch" with the loaded fisherman driving home, the lookout in oil-skins under the lee of the jumbo, the night wind singing in the hollow sails above the diapason of straining shrouds.

Lucky Philip! These things, like other Mac Askill albums, should be in the National Gallery of Canada.

HECH!

All the stonehooker men had pet names or nicknames. One which puzzled us from boyhood was "Fod" or "Faud" McCraney's, of the Defiance. His brother's and shipmate's "Bose" McCraney was understandable. That is the regular sailor's appellative for the boatswain, always pronounced bos'n. Fred Kirk, who bought the Defiance from Faud, was told by Faud himself that the name was, according to his mother, the Gaelic or Erse equivalent of the English Fred.

We are always learning something, but it takes a long time.

THE WRECK AT WINEVA

"You were inquiring about a wreck at Wineva avenue. About 1900 or 1901 an ice barge went ashore and broke up. One side was covered with sand, the other came from Woodbine Beach. Int was towed into Asbridge's Bay. The planking was hard pine, with round plugs, as you described in this wreck, to cover the bolt heads, also the iron bolts or rods through the planking edgeways.

FRED KIRK, of the

late Defiance

Thanks twice, Defiance man. And also to Hugh McKanday and Kew Williams, who took pains to inform us of the wreck this summer, and to two Parks Department employees who took the trouble to mark the spot where the sand again covered it.

MORE YET ON ANN BROWN

"I was reading in Schooner Days about the Ann Brown (wee Butts). I sailed in her two seasons sixty years ago with Tom Block (Garbett, another stonehooker nickname). Then Fred Block and I bought the Zebra and after Abe Block and Johnny Miller rebuilt her from the Merrimac. Just thought I would let you know there are some old timers around yet.

"BILL MUIR,

1088A Avenue rd."

Glad there are, William, and that you are among them.

We have also been supplied with full details of the vanished Belmont Yacht Club, ultimate owners of the Ann Brown, and hope to have a story about it which should interest all.

BOUND FOR 90-PORT

AlEX TAYLOR, Chuckery Hill above the Long Reach, Picton to Toronto, one of Prince Edward County's oldest sailors, passed the 89th birthday buoy last month. A fair wind for him through the next twelve! His full name is Alexander Cameron Taylor.