Little Lady of 55 Years Ago: Schooner Days MXXXIII (1033)

by C. H. J. Snider

DO you recall," asked R. W. Johnson, of St. Thomas, a while back, "a trim fore-and-after, called the Loretta Rooney?"

His question was prompted by mention of the recent death in Toronto of Miss Loretta Rooney, a beloved teacher in Loretta College, a near relative of Jas. H. Rooney, M.P. for St. Paul's. The answer, though long delayed, is an emphatic indeed I do.

The Loretta Rooney of Kingston was a white two-masted schooner with green trim at rail and coveringboard, a red beading in her bulwarks and lead color paint below her load water line.

She was, as Mr. Johnson says, a trim fore-and-after but she was trimmed pretty close. She was on the old canal model, blunt and straight sided. This enabled her to carry a big load on light draught for her inches, but her inches were few. She measured 156 tons and was 91 feet 7 inches from stem to sternpost, 23 feet 7 inches beam, 8, feet 3 inches depth, of hold.

We got 300 tons of soft coal for Garden Island into her by piling two heaps of it on deck over the hatches. This put her down half a foot by the head, that is, 6 inches out of the horizontal plane, so that she rooted, or steered like a truck with a flat tire.

We didn't know how such a truck would steer, in 1896, when I joined her, for rubber-tired self-propelling trucks were then in the future, but we got a good preview. Nevertheless we sailed her to Kingston and Garden Island and took her to Oswego afterwards without hitting either side of the lake, or, indeed, using a tug. Ninety six was an economy year on the lakes. Not that I ever knew any other kind.

This voyage was memorable because it unrolled for me the great scenic beauty of Ontario sailing. I had sailed before, between city ports, but this introduced the charm of the islands and the rivers. We sailed up the Genesee for three miles to the loading trestles. My heart was in my mouth with the beauty of the river gorge and the terror of getting her around the bends without spearing the railroad bridge or the melon patches. It was my trick at the wheel. The Genesee has some fine falls hidden behind factories in Rochester, if you know where to look for them.

Another great delight was viewing the Upper Gap and the islands studding the bosom of Lake Ontario between the Bay of Quinte and the River St. Lawrence—the outiers, indeed, of the Thousand Islands.

We came in between the False Ducks and Timber Island, with the Main Ducks and the Galloos looming mysteriously in the enchanted air, and Amhurst [Amherst] Island, Simcoe Island, Wolfe Island, the Brothers, Salmon, Snake, Whiskey, Cedar and so forth sparkling in green and gold. All were then plumy with trees, even Salmon, which is now as bare as a gnawed bone. Our destination also introduced me to Garden Island, the great rafting centre, the suzerainty of Hiram Calvin, M.P., then known as the King of the Island, as had been his father before him. The great man came down to the wharf and kindly invited us to divine service in the community church which served his colony of French and Irish timber men, ship carpenters, drogher crews and tugmen and their families.

The Loretta Rooney had been built in Kingston in 1866, thirty years before this voyage. She was christened the Mary Taylor and became the property of Capt. George Sherwood of Brighton. Some time after 1880 she passed into the hands of the Rooneys of Cobourg. They piled great loads of lumber on her for the box factory at Oswego. Once she had so much that her stern was pressed down on her rudder and locked it fast so that she could not be steered. Leaking like a sieve under the strain, she floated and drifted across the lake, held up by the buoyancy of the cargo within her. The wind being fair, she drifted within sight of her destination, Oswego, and was towed in by the harbor tug. Unloaded, her rudder again functioned and she steered home to Cobourg.

Here she was so thoroughly overhauled and rebuilt that she was entitled to a new name—and Loretta Rooney was the name given, after pretty little Miss Loretta, who had arrived not long before.

The renamed vessel was later bought by Deseronto lumber shippers. She was damaged by fire the year after I was in her and became tow barge.

All the Rooney schooners are gone now. Captain Hugh and Captain Big Dan, in one generation, followed by Captain Little Dan in the next, had among them the three-masters Jessie Drummond, Sophia Minch and Charlie Marshall; the two-masters Annandale, Picton, Annie Falconer, this Loretta Rooney, the Wilfrid Plunkett, and the steam barge Frank Campbell. Captain "Little Dan" Rooney, praise the powers, still flourishes in the Senate at the town hall and in his Perry street home above the lake, in Corktown, in Cobourg, of which he may well be proud. He cast his vote in the municipal election this month—and he will be ninety next Monday, the last day of old 1951.

A fair wind and smooth water to him and to R. W. Johnson, who prompted such pleasant recollections, and to all other sailors, for

1952

AND MANY

HAPPY NEW YEARS

Sealing Fleet at St. John's, Newfoundland, Fitting Out for the Ice About This Time of Year.

90 AS YEAR ENDS

Congratulations to Capt. Dan Rooney, Cobourg's grand old master mariner.