Tales of Tails- Tigress and Scorpions: Schooner Days MCXX (1120)

by C. H. J. Snider

HOW the Tigress and Scorpion came to Penetanguishene as British warships goes back to the War of 1812, thus—

In the midnight September blackness four rowboats with padded rowlocks noiselessly surrounded a schooner lying at anchor in the Detour Passage to "The Soo." The long striped pendant which blew from her masthead, distinguishable in the night against the faint light of the stars, marked her as an American man-of-war; but no high-triced boarding nettings were up. Her crew felt secure in the Canadian wilderness.

Muffled oars brought the boats within ten yards of the doomed craft ere the sentries' challenge roused the crew. Her great 24-pounder swivel gun roared blindly. Its flash showed two boats on either side, and a swarm of Canadian voyageurs, British bluejackets, Royal Newfoundlanders, Glengarry Fencibles, pouring over port and starboard bulwarks.

The surprised defenders fought with desperation, back to back. The dead were hurled overboard as they fell, and wounded were only saved from following by being pinned to rail and planking by bayonets.

Around the great gun amidships the fight was fiercest. A Negro giant crammed the cannon with a bag of slugs, and swung the piece around to clear the deck at a blast. Flash of a pistol showed him pulling the lanyard. With the leap of a mountain cat, Alexander Mackintosh, sailing master of the Nancy, which this very vessel had helped destroy, sprang from the rail, whirling his cutlass as he came. Swish—and the gunner's head spun bubbling overside.

"Follow yir heid, mon!" roared Mackintosh, and hurled the huge body over into the crimsoned water.

The schooner's commander was cut down, two other officers fell, and her seamen were driven into the hold. They killed one of the borders by firing through the bulkheads. But fearing to be bullet-riddled they surrendered. The British took twenty prisoners. Three bluejackets had been killed, six soldiers, an artilleryman and a lieutenant had been wounded on their side. They found three men dead on deck and four wounded living. Four others perished by being hurled overboard.

The vessel was the U.S.S. Tigress, one of the American fleet in the Battle of Put-In Bay, fought on Lake Erie the year before. She was now commanded by Sailing Master Stephen Champlin, U.S.N. He was one of the wounded, not fatally.

The captor was Lieut. Miller Worsley, R.N., who had been beaten put of H.M. schooner Nancy three weeks before by an American squadron to which the Tigress belonged. Four vessels of this squadron had sailed back to Detroit, after failing to re-take Mackinac from the British. They had, however, taken the schooner Perseverance at "the Soo," the schooner Mink below it, the British post at St. Josephs, and sunk the Nancy, upon which the Mackinac garrison was dependent for daily bread. Flour was now at famine rates of $60 a barrel there.

To starve Mackinac out, this Tigress and her still more destructive consort the U.S.S. Scorpion, had been left to blockade the Nottawasaga River. Supplies came up there from York county mills. The cargo of the Nancy had been teamed and portaged thither from Toronto.

Lieut. Worsley had lost his vessel—-but he never lost hope. He eluded the blockade and supplied the Mackinac garrison. He now turned to further square accounts.

For two days the striped U.S. pendant at the Tigress' masthead continued to Wave a fatal welcome, while her anchor gripped the bottom. Worsley knew the Tigress' mate would rejoin her.

The consort could not have heard the firing, for when she did come in sight at sunset she anchored unconcernedly two miles away without exchanging flag signals or firing a gun. After destroying the Nancy, instead of maintaining the blockade, these vessels had been prowling for a convoy of fur canoes with a $20,000 freight. They did not wish to flutter their prey. The stranger left her colors flying. So did the Tigress.

With the dawn wind the captured Tigress stood down towards her former consort under easy sail, the blue jackets and red or green tunics and white crossbelts of her British crew concealed under greatcoats. All but the helmsman lay flat on deck.

The anchor watch of the stranger were washing down the decks, as the sun peeped over the islands.

"Pass the word Tigress standing down!" called the gunner.

Lieutenant-commander Daniel Turner, in his beauty-sleep below, slept on.

"Sheer off, or you'll foul us, you lubbers!" hailed the gunner as the Tigress drew near.

But the Tigress, suddenly hauling down her American colors, as suddenly fired her swivel gun point blank into her partner, and ran her aboard. Greatcoats on deck came to life like a boiling cauldron and the Nancy's old crew seethed over the consort in a flood, bayoneting the barefooted swabbers and penning thirty sailors and soldiers, including the slug-abed commander, under the hatches.

Before the sun of Sept. 6, 1814 was his own breadth above the horizon the meteor flag of England was up to greet him at the mastheads of both vessels, where had flown the Stars and Stripes.

This prize was the USS Scorpion. Champlin had commanded her the year before in the Battle of Lake Erie, when she fired the first gun in the fight at the British flagship Detroit, and the last of all at the little Chippeway vainly trying to escape.

The Scorpion was a faster vessel than the Tigress, and more heavily armed. She had been lengthened ten feet in building, and carried one 32-pounder gun and one twelve. She had been particularly obnoxious in the attack on the Nancy, and in the looting of St. Joseph's and St. Mary's. Lieut. Turner had worked a poor captured drayhorse all day there, without drink or rest, loading looted goods, and shut him in the stable and set the stable on fire. His own men revolted at this cruelty. Many articles of private property, plunder stolen from St. Joseph's and the Soo, were found in the Scorpion's hold.

The Nancy's commander took these two vessels, which had all but annihilated British power in the northwest, and forthwith made of them a fresh British fleet. The Tigress became His Majesty's schooner Surprise, appropriately and the Scorpion was renamed His Majesty's schooner Confiance. The two prizes were sent to the river mouth of the Nottawasaga, with their original crews in their holds as prisoners of war. On their return trip to Mackinac they brought enough supplies for a twelvemonth; and so the Gibraltar of the north was held for Britain as long as the warflags flew. Later attached to the new British naval establishment at Penetang, after the Rush-Bagot disarmament agreement they were sunk at their moorings.

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Raise Sunken U.S. Ship

Penetang, Aug. 29—(Staff Special)—Living relic of the last time British and American warships met in battle, the HMS Confiance—formerly the U.S.S. Scorpion—will be raised from the waters of Colbourne Basin today.

The Scorpion will be taken to Memorial Park here and mounted beside her consort, the U.S.S. Tigress. Both ships were captured from the United States in the War of 1812.

Sponsored by the Penetang Chamber of Commerce, Simcoe County Council and the University of Western Ontario, the ship-raising will be an official ceremony, with Premier Frost or his representative expected to attend.

IDENTIFIED BY PLANKS

Val Carson, a diver from Midland, has been exploring the old hulk, now 16 feet below surface, for several weeks.

Planks brought to the surface show the ship is definitely the Scorpion of 1813-1814 and the Confiance of 1814-1833.

After the war, the Rush-Bagot disarmament treaty kept five men of war in Penetang harbor. They were put up for sale in 1832, but there were no buyers, and the ships were allowed to sink at their moorings.

CHIEF SPONSORS

Chief sponsors of the reclamation have been E. C. Drury, sheriff of Simcoe County; W. H. Morrison, chairman of the museum board; Simcoe Reeve Alf Cage; Deputy-Reeve Archie Verrier; George Kerr, mayor of Penetang; Professor W. W. Jury, of Western University; and John McGuide, a local historian.

Russell Construction Co. and Grew Boat Co. are supplying equipment to raise the Scorpion. The Midland City, oldest passenger boat on the Great Lakes, will stand by during operations.

In his column Schooner Days, C. H. J. Snider today tells the story of the capture of the Scorpion and the Tigress.

Salvaged timbers of a once-great ship, after long underwater.