Steam and Sail in Winter Gale: Schooner Days MCCXIII (1213)

by C. H. J. Snider

WHEN Amos McDonald, warden of Prince Edward County and warder of Wicked Point Light, went to turn out the red light for which he was responsible, on the morning of December 14, 1902, he saw four vessels at anchor close in with the lighthouse at Point Peter, farther down the shore. The lake was full of frost-vapor, like a steaming pot, and they had "come in on the horn," from Charlotte across the lake, trusting to the sound of the Point Peter fog signal for their land-fall and anchoring in five or six fathoms, to wait for a clearing. All the rest of their voyage would be land-bound, so they would have to have visibility—down the shore of Prince Edward to Point Traverse, in through the Upper Gap to the Bay of Quinte, up to Indian Point, around it and up the Adolphus Reach, then up the high-shored Long Reach to Captian John's Island, and so into Deseronto.

Deseronto's teeth were chattering for coal for this was at the end of the long bitter U.S. strike of 1902. A thousand lake sailors were risking their lives and their ships to relieve the resultant famine by winter navigation. Some lost both. The Jessie Drummond had already been wrecked at Cobourg. Some of her cargo was lost but lifesavers took off all the crew.

These four vessels had 2,000 tons of the precious dusky diamonds under their hatches or piled on deck. There was the veteran Bay of Quinte steambarge Resolute, Deseronto-built, with a stranger American-built schooner in tow, the Abbie L. Andrews of Toledo. She was full rigged, but her three topmasts had been struck for 10 feet below the cross-trees, indicating that her mast-heads needed stiffening.

Close to this pair lay the Oswego steamer John E. Hall, with her tow, the cut-down schooner John R. Noyes. Both of these were owned by Capt. Timothy Donovan, and largely manned by the Donovan family.

Amos McDonald, long lightkeeper and vessel owner himself, knew most of the ships on the lake and kept careful track of their movements. When he heard the donkey-engines in these four vessels panting as they all hove up their anchors for the day's voyage the wind was coming from the northeast and he smelt snow.

Amos was right. Before the convoy had got out of sight from Point Peter it began to snow. And blow, blow, blow.

At the very best, in smooth water, the laden steamers could not tow their laden barges faster than seven miles an hour. With a 40-mile gale in their teeth, to driving huge waves against them through blinding drifts of snow, they could not even hold their own.

The Resolute was the first to turn. Capt. Jno. Gowan knew what she could take and what she couldn't. The Andrews had sails. Capt. Jimmy Oliver, old "Sassy Jack" (nicknamed after a little scow sloop he once sailed) would take care of her, for they were well clear of Point Peter.

Gowan blew the "Cast off!" signal, heard an acknowledgment through the snow from the invisible Andrews donkey whistle, blew a starboard helm call, and let the Andrews go. That was the last he saw of her.

Even free of the tow the Resolute could could not make the Upper Gap entrance to the Bay of Quinte in the smother. Not a chance of it. Rolling dementedly, mantled in ice, her deck full of snowdrifts, slush and freezing water, she ran a hundred miles up the lake and staggered into Port Dalhousie next morning like a corpse escaping from a coffin. Half her wheelhouse was gone, though it was twenty feet above the water. But—she was afloat and she eventually got her cargo to Kingston, for the Bay of Quinte was frozen up.

And the Andrews? A staunch old schooner, only at this time in her 30th season of lake-faring. She before it, right up the middle of Lake Ontario, seeing nothing of either shore. She got a pretty bad washing, for she was loaded deep, but what wouldn't run off through the scuppers had to go through the knocked-out bulwarks.

When the snow let go, Burlington Beach was right under her bows. Luckily both bridges were open, the railway bridge and the highway bridge for the radial railway. Pop! she plunged through Burlington piers — for she couldn't stop — and then she was safe in the bay. Her 600 or 700 tons of coal would certainly be welcome in Hamilton.

Our recollection is that she wintered there. Anyway she lived to keep the home fires burning in Toronto for fifteen more winters.

Of the others, next week