'Remember the Maine' at the Exhibition ?: Schooner Days MXLVIII (1048)

by C. H. J. Snider

Idyll of a Sewer Slip—II.

"ANSWER NEXT WEEK," we said, with the fate of the Paddy Young of Port Dover trembling above the brink of the Jarvis street sewer slip in 1898.

Well, now it's next week, but no matter how keen the reader's curiosity (if any) has been, the interval has not seemed as long as did to Capt. Jim, the Paddy's owner, the time that elapsed between the offer of $100 for her tottering carcass, and his clutching the real rhino in his stone-calloused fist.

But the angel of the pool, with the red moustache and the nifty suit came across promptly.

MEANWHILE—

The Paddy had seen different and better days. She never was a beauty. She had been rebuilt with a shovel nosed spoon bow and round bilges, leaving a square box stern, with a high sloping sided cabin and raised quarterdeck, and even an enclosed "necessary;" a luxury found only in the best of the larger lake schooners. Being but 71 tons register; and 73 feet long she was small for the barley, lumber and coal trades. She was able to carry at the utmost 5,000 bushels or 150 tons dead weight. In her prime she qualified for these paying freights.

MONEY MAKER

Hustling Johnny Williams had done well with her in '83 and '84, clearing $1,200 in one season for old M. C Robinson of Toronto. The latter gave him a fine gold watch at Christmas-still in the family—and encouraged him to study all winter for a captain's certificate. "Papers" were then just becoming necessary. Johnny went on to greater things, three-masted schooners and 10,000 ton steamers, but he always felt a pride in his first "real-vessel" command. He kept her painted white, with green rails and trim and a red bottom; full-rigged with seven pieces of canvas; a proper yawlboat on her stern, and her decks so tight that he made her earn dividends when laid up in the winter by holding storage cargoes of grain till the Gooderham mill required them. Charlie Gibbons, the tug engineer, made the picture of her above, as Johnny had kept her.

No one else ever made more than a living out of the Paddy, and in 1898 she couldn't even keep herself alive by stonehooking, the last refuge of the infirm.

The hardworking Naish boys of Port Credit had tried their best with her. Their only stroke of luck was dismasting her against the railway bridge in the Burlington Canal. The railway had to pay for a new outfit. She got ashore at Winona and cracked her keel, and leaked hopelessly ever after. Again and again Capt. Jim Blow of the equally hardworking Blow family, had her on drydock for repairs. She sheered up beautifully on the keel blocks, but despite all the carpentry and caulking she drooped her tail again as soon as relaunched. With the first toise of stone or scowload of gravel aboard she would resume her leaking.

The day after the angel with the red moustache appeared to Capt. Jim the Paddy was towed to the then deserted Northern Docks in the western waterfront, past the Waterworks. Capt. Jim was not aboard. He had gone to Port Credit to buy another hooker which he could work with a one-man crew, if his rheumatics permitted.

RETURN

When he came back to Toronto it was Exhibition time. The Spanish-American War was the inspiration for the fireworks. That war followed the blowing up of the U.S. battleship Maine of the great White Fleet in Havana harbor, while Cuba was still a Spanish possession. Twice a week a representation of the Maine was to be seen at anchor in the lake in front of the Grand Stand. Four times during the fair the Maine was blown sky high amid a rain of fireworks. Four ships were thus used up. The public never noticed the difference, though they got smaller and smaller each time.

The second Maine was waiting her fiery fate when Capt. Jim came through by train from the Credit. He got a good glimpse of her, gleaming white, with dummy black guns and white barbettes, and yellow funnels and military mast and conning tower.

These were the days before dreary battleship gray or intriguing camouflage, and yet the camouflaging here was pretty good. Capt. Jim's glimpse was not long enough to recognize a spoon bow disguised by a fake ram profile. But he said aloud when he reached the Union Station: "Gosh all fish hooks! I knowed I knowed that there hump in her back under all the whitewash! I oughta. I've pumped fee whole-a Lake Ontario through the crack that made that hump. Dang if I don't go out to see her blowed up tonight, if it does cost a quarter!"

H. J. Hill was the manager of the Exhibition in 1898. He had a reddish moustache, always dressed well, and was a good showman. But he never in his life set up to be an angel.

U.S. BATTLESHIP MAINE, BLOWN UP IN HAVANA HARBOR, FEB. 26, 1898