Luck of the Lake for February Birds: Schooner Days MXXXVII (1037)

by C. H. J. Snider

ONE ship drives east, and one drives west,

On the selfsame winds that blow . . ."

THE SPEEDWELL did not go back to Whitby for more of that crystal-blue ice for the Rochester breweries which made such a profitable venture for Capt. John Williams, her owner and master, in February, 1890. Instead, she steered North by East. Presqu'Ile, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, was nearer Rochester than Whitby, and besides, that was where he had been asked to load in the first place, and he knew John Corson in the W. J. Suffel might be along any day with a Presqu'Ile load and might spoil his market. The west wind, too, was fair for Presqu'Ile, but it would swing as he went up the lake, and might even head him off from Whitby if he had tried for that place.

So he bent his gafftopsails, which he had brought along of course, and made a daylight run for Presqu'Ile, and got well into the Bay by dark, just in time to make out that there were still miles of ice in it, and the Suffel appeared to be partly loaded but not fitted out.

Morning light the next day showed him half a dozen schooners lying stripped in the Cove, and behind the Calf Pasture and Salt Point—among them the Fleet Wing and the Kate and the Ballou and the Eugenie and the British Queen and the old Paragon, which had been rebuilt and remasted and renamed the Keewatin.

NO SNOW IN LAKE

Everything looked all the wintrier after a day in the lake, bitter cold but with no snow except in the clouds. The Suffel seemed about half loaded, and to be waiting to complete her cargo before bending her sails. The ice was being teamed to her in sleighs from farther in the bay. John warped the Speedwell in to where the ice was thick enough and clear enough to cut and went to work with his own saws. Some of the Presqu'Ile fishermen who did not seem to be doing too well with their fishing from their shacks, through holes in the ice, joined in, and he had another 400 tons cut and stowed in the hold by the time the Suffel was loaded. She was a faster vessel, and much easier on the helm, but the Speedwell got away in the dark before the Suffel had finished fitting out, and so beat her to Charlotte on this second trip.

Capt. Williams had replenished the jar at Brighton. He was a temperate man himself and would not have liquor aboard if he could prevent it. This, however, was considered a special case, as our own conscience sometimes sneeringly admits. At any rate, the second jar was delivered, full to the neck, with the cork untouched, as a return compliment for the silk hat, which still reposed in the hatbox in the captain's stateroom. As had been promised, the brewery paid a bonus of 10 cents a ton for the second cargo. This came in very handy, for the Presqu'ile ice did not weigh as heavily as had the Whitby ice, so the second cheque, while still a fat one, did not quite touch the first. But freight on a load of coal for Toronto added another $100 to the profits of early-birding. The Speedwell had earned $1,000 before normal lake navigation had opened that year.

Capt. Williams got home to Toronto early in March. He had hopes of winning another harbormaster's hat here with his coal cargo, hoping it would be the first in, but the little stonehooker White Oak—not to be confused with the larger schooner of the same name—edged him out by arriving laden on March 4th.

This White Oak was a small square-ended scow schooner, sailed by Capt. Al Peer of Port Credit. For some reason he was known as "Dally"--but he did no dallying to get into Toronto with three toise of stone by the fourth of March, and carry off the harbormaster's hat or the $3 which represented it. The hat itself, a "stove pipe" from Abraham Lincoln's time, is still treasured in the harbormaster's office.

LUCK OF THE SUFFEL

Johnny Williams had no more thought of marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade than he had of wearing wings or a halo. He took his precious tile up to Dineen's, then a leading Yonge street hatter's near Richmond street, with a big gold top-hat hanging over the sidewalk for a sign.

Here he exchanged the best headgear in Rochester for two dressy shore-going hats and a cloth schooner cap. These schooner caps had straight-sided flat-topped crowns, almost straight peaks, and a cloth band around the after half which could be turned down and covered the ears and neck. They were grand things to wear in the lake, far superior to the present yachting caps, gob hats, or the flat tops the navy boys wear.

Capt. Corson, on the other hand, had slow dispatch with his second load of ice for Charlotte, and then had to wait for a cargo of coal for Hamilton, which looked like a profitable venture. Early in April the Suffel got under way with her coal cargo, with every prospect of a good run at last. Alackaday! The easterly breeze developed into a wild spring gale, with snow and sleet. She could only run before it, her sails so filled with snow and ice that they could not be handled, even if their gear had not been iced to five times its proper diameter, so that it could not run through the frozen blocks. She had so much ice on her hull that her decks were awash. In this shape she wove back and forth before the wind towards the piers at the entrance to Burlington Bay. It looked as though she might make it. The bridges began to swing for her. At the last moment she took a sheer, just missed destruction on the east end of the north pier, and drove in beside it, fetching up on the soft sand of Burlington Beach, Her crew were taken off her, half dead with exposure. It was weeks before she could be refloated, and she never was as good a vessel afterwards.

Sometimes the early bird gets very tough worms.

"THE HAT ME FATHER WORE"

LEFT (in the illustration and also in the harbormaster's office) is the ancient tile still presented annually by the harbor commissioners to the first arrival of the season. As no vesselman would be found dead under such a halo, the winner usually settles for $10 and buys his own chapeau.

Sixty years ago $3 was sufficient ransom. It went up to $7 by the time Thomas Langton Church, K.C., M.P., became mayor and unofficial harbor commissioner. Capt. Winnie Corson won it that year with the MACASSA as the first arrival. The ubiquitous "Tommy" was the first to congratulate him.

When the mayor, who was a nifty dresser himself, saw the cheque for $7 in lieu of a hat he said to the harbormaster: "Why, man, Capt. Corson wouldn't think of wearing a $7 hat. Here's $5 to the Harbor Board, and give him a cheque for $12!"

Seven times in succession, while "Tommy" Church was mayor, Winnie Corson won the hat for the season, and seven times in succession he walked away with $12. "Tommy" was a popular mayor, on the waterfront and everywhere.

The picture, an old one, shows Harbormaster Snelgrove in a snap-brim of 1945, placing the ancient symbol on the head of Capt. Barney J. Zink of the tanker Britamolube. This was the last year of the war, and Capt. Zink dropped his endorsed cheque into the hat of a Telegram reporter for the British War Victims' Fund before he left the harbormaster's office.