Ho for Holidays in Blue-And-Gold Mary: Schooner Days MLVI (1056)

by C. H. J. Snider

Old Warior's Young Cruise - II.

WHEN R.M.C. broke up for the summer holidays in 1891 seven of us cadets decided on a yachting trip round Lake Ontario, just like that, (This is not quite the way Major J. J. B. Farley, now of Endebess, Kenya, begins his story, but the story is his).

The only sailing craft the college boasted were a safe old tub of lugger, reserved for the recruits - first year men - and a sharp light clinker-built craft we called the Mackinaw, said to have been built on the the lines of a Lake Superior fishing boat. After a season in the mackinaw one felt an accomplished yachtsman, but there was no chance of the college letting us have either of them for our venture.

Cadet Gibbs, a real live wire, had noticed a. little cutter-rigged yacht in Kingston harbor which had only recently taken the water. He found that she had just been built by two retired lake captains, brothers, Nick and George Henderson. Her paint was hardly dry, and she had not yet had even a trial trip.

Two finer characters than the Hendersons I would never hope to meet. Neither, was much over 40. Nick had received instructions in freehand drawing add painting from Prof. Foreshaw Day, and I was later to see a beautiful work of his at the World's Fair in Chicago, depicting shipping in a harbor. It compared favorably with a perfect little gem by Prof. Day, of a hamlet nestling in a valley in the Rockies, in midwinter.

(Nick Henderson became a noteworthy lake marine painter, his work included a very fine portrait of the great four-masted Canadian lake schooner Minnedosa of Kingston.)

George Henderson was the essence of good nature. I don't think either of them ever drank. We had not a drop of alcoholic liquor on board all the time we were with them. For, joy of joys, they, out of pure goodness of heart, agreed to take all seven of us on the break-in cruise of their new yacht at the nominal price of $7 a head!

INTRODUCING MISS MARY

Mary, the yacht was called. She was, between 30 and 40, over all and measured, somewhere around 10 tons. Her lines were beautiful.

Her hull was painted a royal blue, with a gold stripe running round her. She was a perfect picture, with everything new and shining, like a bride on her wedding day.

For a time I wondered whether we should ever get off. Col. McGill, the staff adjutant, was fussing about like a wet hen on hot bricks trying to make up his mind whether it was right to allow seven potential field marshals to set forth on so perilous an enterprise. But at length, late on a lucky Friday evening, we did get started, and sailed forth into the deep.

It was very different from afternoon sailing in Kingston harbor and the St. Lawrence River. "Outside," as we learned the lake was called, the wind got up, and in the dark some of our rigging carried away, one thing being the port topping lift, and our dinghy would not tow.

She was more under water than over it, and sometimes we could not see her at all. Then she would come shooting up from the depths, on one side, looking in the darkness like a breaching whale. Then she would go under again and shoot across to the other side and pop her nose out once more like a re-appearing ghost.

We managed to reef down and haul the obstreperous dinghy on board, where she left us little room, but gave no more trouble. The thwarts had been practically wrenched out of her.

TIGHTFIT FOR TEN

We were pretty tightly packed in the Mary, both on deck and below, for the Captain Hendersons had brought with them a young fellow named Billy Bates, to help them in case we cadets should prove broken reeds. As there was only room in the cabin for about five at a time, and there were seven of us, it meant that five had to be on deck or sleeping or anything else. We seven cadets were Osler, Beattie, Gibbs, Gordon, Harris, Pousette, and Farley, myself.

But we were confident in our captains, and scorned discomfort, and by morning the good though somewhat battered ship Mary came to anchor in the lee of some wooded islands, which they told us were the False Ducks, forty miles or so from Kingston. We lay there to repair some of the damage and put the dinghy to rights. Some of us went ashore and found a little post office and a general store, where we were able to purchase a few things we had forgotten.

(This might have been at Cooper's Wharf at Port Milford In South Bay, or at Case's Mill at Point Traverse.)

Where we lay was a general anchorage greatly patronized by trading schooners. We kept anchor-watches. I took over watch from Pousette a little before dawn. After daybreak a yawlboat from a schooner anchored a couple of furlongs away scuttled alongside us, towing our dinghy. It had gone adrift during Pousette's watch, but its absence was unnoticed. After an early breakfast, we made sail and ventured across Lake Ontario at its widest part. Crossing to Oswego shore towards Rochester where we did have a time."

MAJOR J. J. B. FARLEY