More Finds at Cataraqui: Schooner Days MCXLI[I] (1142)

by C. H. J. Snider

WHAT, O shellbacks, experts, and. sailors-of-the-sail, make ye of this 3-by-4 button of hardwood, perhaps a burl of lignum-vitae or of ironwood?

This is part of the treasure recently revealed by the steam-shovel at Kingston. It seems more than likely that it is an item of equipment of the three French men-of-war and their English prizes, burned there where Col. John Bradstreet destroyed the French port, post and fort in 1758. It is hand wrought, not turned, and of ancient pattern. It might be called a dead-eye, bullet-block, or heart —but which is it? And when did it go out of use? We have never seen anything quite like it. It looks 18th century.

Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine, 1769, has pictures of both hearts and deadeyes, but this looks little like either of those shown. The deadeyes with which we are acquainted (excepting Richard of that name) are all, like Falconer's, perforated with three holes, arranged in a triangle. Half a dozen such were found when the wreck of HMS Tecumseth was raised at Penetang, and we have examined hundreds in the lake schooners and Banks fishermen in which we have sailed. The three holes, with grooved approaches, are for the lanyards, and the lanyards pass through the deadeyes in a six-part purchase, to set the shrouds taut.

This "button" could not be used in the same way, for there is only one opening, a crescent shape with three grooves worked in the shorter arc. That inclines to the belief that this is an ancient heart, a sort of deadeye used only in setting up stays with lanyards riding through the grooves in the crescent or archway. The heart shown by Falconer is shaped more like the back of a harp or a fiddle, with a sawlike line of teeth separating the turns of the lanyard.

ALL sorts of interesting things are being turned up by the steam shovel excavating for piers for the great Defense College near the site of ancient Fort Frontenac or Cataraqui.

There was the narrow strand of black plush or velvet ribbon, which seemed so impossible to connect with Bradstreet's sack of Cataraqui in 1758—-until we read the inventory of the cargo of spoils shared with the Jersey Blues, Rhode Islanders, Yorkers and other provincials on the way home. There among the 178 French hats and fancy goods and yards and yards of gold silver lace was the item "400 Pieces of Ribband, 445 Pieces of Gartering," so the black velvet fitted in like a spokeshaved treenail.

RECOGNIZE A PARREL?

BEDDED in the frozen side of one of the excavations for concrete was found a wooden ball about 1 1/2 inches in diameter and rather elliptical than circular. It was a parrel, a wooden bead strung on a necklace to form a jawrope, to hold a gaff or yard to the mast. While trying to clear the hole bored through it the warmth of our bare fingers softened the frozen wood and it disintegrated. It seemed from the grain to have beep white ash, whittled or rasped into the round after the boring. It might have been under water or buried in the fill for two centuries.

This is what often happens to buried wood which appears well preserved, once it is exposed to warm air. Accumulated moisture, unable to evaporate, has destroyed the cellular structure. On drying, the remaining shell cracks or falls to dust.

Ronald Way, director of Fort Henry, who is zealously collecting all the material salvaged from the old Cataraqui harbor, treats wood with hot linseed oil or other preservative immediately to prevent its disintegration. Even so, it is impossible to avoid a certain amount of shrinkage and checking. The other day's promising find, the heart or deadeye, was treated with crankcase oil by the finder who had nothing else immediately available., Checks promptly developed, although the wood was exceedingly hard and close-grained.

Again—what do you make of it?

BRADSTREET'S BURNING IN 1758

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