Seventeen Died at Harbor Gate, April 8, 1831: Schooner Days MCCVI (1206)

by C. H. J. Snider

ONE tale of the Queen's Wharf willow. It happened within sight and hearing of where his old stump now stands, but probably before he was rooted.

The schooner Prescott, owned by Barnhart of Streetsville, was a large vessel for her time, perhaps 100 tons. She carried both passengers and freight. She loaded a hundred barrels or so of flour in York and took on several passengers for her nameport, Prescott, on the St. Lawrence. This was in April, 1831, before York became Toronto.

After starting down the lake she encountered a raw easterly headwind, and had to run back. She anchored "two cables south of the buoy" which then marked the tail of the western sandbar. There was then no cribwork whatever defining the western channel which was the only entrance. The Queen's Wharf, which later formed the north side, had not yet been named or built.

Here she lay in relative comfort while the east gale continued, for the bar sheltered her, but when the wind shifted to the west and blew harder she was caught in the same predicament as the steam barge Resolute seventy-seven years later. She should have one up and run into the channel and through into her harbor. But she could not get sail on, nor her anchor up, all her gear being heavily iced with sleet and spray.

Helpless, she hung on to her anchor until driven onto the bar. She foundered at 2 o'clock in the morning.

One man drowned in the flooded forecastle. Another froze to death in her jib in which he had wrapped himself. The captain, five of the crew, and four or five passengers took to the rigging, to get above the freezing spray. And there they perished from the cold.

Boats from the side wheel steamer Canada, or one of Capt. Hugh Richardson's early commands, got alongside by daylight of April 8th, but seventeen victims were beyond rescue.

FROM AN OLD FRIEND

Sir,

As a regular reader of your Schooner Days, I was particularly interested in your account of the foundering of the Resolute.

My brother and I were gill netting out of Port Dalhousie at that time and were putting up at the Austin House kept by Jack Harrigan. There was at the same time a young man named P. G. White who was awaiting the coming down the canal of this same Resolute. He was quite a musical fellow and used to entertain us by playing the piano and singing, his favorite song being "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen." We left Port for home one afternoon, and the Resolute came down that same night and was joined there by White. Imagine our dismay when we learned that White was drowned in the disaster to the Resolute.

I thought it might interest you to hear of that incident.

J. E. MASTERS

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

"Oh, I will take you back, Kathleen,

To where your heart shall feel no pain."