Fine Packet Ship - but Whose?: Schooner Days MCXXXIV (1134)

by C. H. J. Snider

LET'S go square-rigged for "just one more," in honor of that most efficient director of historic sites and exponent of visual history, Ronald L. Way, M.A., castellan of Fort George at Niagara and Fort Henry at Kingston.

All is history that comes to Way's net, and he is building up a marine museum in the great stonewalled spaces of Fort Henry which will eventually bring the world to the Watergate of that historic pile.

His latest acquisition is a fine square-rigged model for which he would like further identification. We would like very much to help him. The donor could only tell him that the model had been made with great skill and care by an old sailor long ago, and was supposed to represent an early packet ship.

Sailing packet ships were the "ocean liners" up to 1815-1850, when they began to be superseded by clipper ships and improved steamers. The packets carried the mails, passengers, bullion, official dispatches and express freight. They were more reliable than the early steamers. There were nine or ten packet ship lines out of New York, for Liverpool, London, Havre and New Orleans. The Black Ball liners sailed on the 1st and 16th of each month, rain or shine, and for decades these were European mail days on this continent.

The Canada, 400-ton Black Baller, went to Liverpool from New York once in 15 days 18 hours, and averaged 19 days outward, 36 home, for ten years. The Independence twice went to Liverpool in 14 days.

"These ships," said Capt. Arthur H. Clarke in his Clipper ship Era, "were flush deck, with a caboose or galley and the housed-over longboat between the fore and main masts. The longboat carried the livestock pens for sheep and pigs in the bottom, ducks and geese on a deck laid across the gunwales, and on top of all, hens and chickens. The cow house was lashed over the main hatch. A companion aft led to the comfortable well-appointed cabins, which were lighted by deck skylights, candles and whale oil lamps. The steerage passengers lived in and between decks amidships.

"The hulls were painted black from the waterline up, with bright scraped bends, which were varnished, and the inner side of the bulwarks, rails, hatch-houses, and boats were painted green. Gradually the flush deck gave place to house and poop-deck cabins. The fashion of painting also changed, and most, if not all, the packets carried painted ports, while the inside green was replaced by white or light shades.

As will be seen from the photograph, the model has been made with great attention to detail. It looks like the ship City of Toronto, built at Jacques and Hayes factory wharf at the foot of vanished Lorne street in 1855. She was 168 feet long and 1000 tons burthen. She was intended for the Quebec-Liverpool timber trade, and was handsomely finished and furnished. Her first voyage was with passengers and Canadian walnut for Liverpool. She had the same deep "single" topsails as the model. They began to go out of fashion in the 1860s, as did the studdingsail booms which the model shows.

The full ship rig, square sails on three masts, was out of place on the lakes. It was two or three times much more expensive than the schooner rig, because of the greater number of sails, spars and pieces of standing and running rigging. It was clumsy for beating about in small compass, and it took twice as many men.

We have been able to find records of only four full rigged ships on the lakes, apart from the warships of 1812. These were:

(1) The Superior, registered in Buffalo as "built in Michigan," 1837, with one deck, three masts, and a figurehead; 358 tons burthen, 128 ft. length, 29 ft. beam, 10 ft. 8 depth of hold. Wrecked October, 1843, at Michigan City.

Another Superior, registered as built at Buffalo, 1822, was so close in dimensions—346 tons, 126 ft. length, 28.9 beam, 10.6 depth—that she might be the same vessel at; an earlier date. The register describes her as a "steam-brig" and a side wheeler.

(2) The Milwaukee, a full rigged ship on Lake Michigan, which ended her career before 1850.

(3) The Julia Palmer converted into a steamer ip the 1830s.

(4) Buffalo Museum had a model of a full rigged ship with the name "Lucille" on it, said to have been built or owned in Buffalo, about 1860.

Ship-rigged and barque-rigged vessels were, however, built on Lake Ontario for the ocean, besides the City of Toronto already mentioned and Mr. Way may find that his model represents one of these, built within gun-shot of Fort Henry.

In 1854 Mayor J. Counter of Kingston, partner for a time in the Calvin timber firm, built the barque Cataraqui, square rigged on two of her three masts, and sent her down to sea for England. She was 146 feet long and measured 842 tons, and an old woodcut shows her running the Calop [Galop] rapids in tow of a sidewheel tug, such as the Calvins used. She wears the white ensign of the Royal Navy during the operation. Why?

E. W. Berry, another Kingston builder, built two ships for the ocean and sent them down the river to be rigged at Quebec in 1865, the Kenilworth, 860 tons, and the Sparkenhoe, 1,223 tons. Ip 1879 he built also at Kingston the ship Quorn, 1,220 tons, for English purchasers. These vessels were under 180 feet in length, in order to pass them through the St. Lawrence canals. The Calvin firm built a saltwater barque, the Garden Island, in 1877.

Mr. Way's acquisition might be the model of one of the Berry ships made by an admirer, but it is not known that any of the vessels mentioned were packets.