St. George and Merry - the Other Place: Schooner Days MCCXVIII (1218)

by C. H. J. Snider

LONG way astern (in fact 12 months ago when Schooner Days was in the Ramore Head but the signal has only now been relayed) Clayton Gray, 761 Querbes ave., Montreal radared:

"Any information re the barque St. George, built at Chatham, C.W., (Ontario) last century would be appreciated. I know she was a 300-ton sailing vessel operating in Montreal in 1858. I would like to know further details as to her port of registry, crew, etc. Would the shipbuilding port of Chatham have kept records of same, date vessel built and so on, and are they available?"

Schooner Days' knowledge of this particular St. George (there were two or three others) is confined to an entry naming her as a barquentine (three-masted, square rigged on the foremast), built by Jenkins at Chatham, 1854, owned in Kingston, 307 tons register, and in 1864 insurable for $7,000.

GALE SMASHED TWENTY

In 1860 the Toronto Leader reported from Kingston, Nov. 27, twenty vessels in distress at the foot of Lake Ontario in the November gales, among them "the barque St. George, owned by Hon. Malcolm Cameron; ashore and breaking up."

Capt. Nelson Palmateer, though only six years old at the time, had vivid recollections of this wreck. He told Schooner Days seventy years later:

"Father's farm on Point Traverse in Prince Edward ran from the lake right across to South Bay. That night late in November it was freezing cold, and snow and sleet was driving in from the lake. A howling gale was shaking the house, and as we sat in the kitchen before the big stove after supper father said mother it would be a terrible night for any sailors unlucky enough to be caught out in it. He took the lantern to go to the stable. He was gone only a few minutes when he dashed in all covered with snow.

" 'Ma,' he said, 'boil all the water you can, and get warm food ready, there's something aground a quarter of a mile away, with the sea washing over her, and we've got to get the crew off her. Come on, boys!'

"Albert and Ephraim, my bigger brothers, got the horses out of the stable and hitched up the wagon, and we all went to the cove where our fishboat lay. We loaded her on to the wagon, and drove around to the lake beach. All the neighbors had turned out too, and had lighted a bonfire. Its flames showed a terrific sea bursting and disappearing and bursting again, and we could see the three masts of a vessel, and sailors huddled up on her gaffs, lashed there, drowning or freezing to death. Father picked his crew with no trouble, all on the Point were sailors, and he drove the boat into the surf fifty yards, till she floated off the wagon.

"Oars were out ready, and away they pulled for the wreck. When they got alongside father told the men he could only take off three at a time, but would stay with it until everybody was saved.

"Some of them were so numb they had to be hauled aboard, through the bursting seas, a weighted line being tossed to the boat, but in three trips all ten on board were got ashore.

"As fast as they came they were picked up and carried to our house, stripped, rubbed and put between the blankets and given hot drinks and food. Some were so frostbitten they could not get on their feet for days. But one young fellow named Jack Wilson was so overjoyed when he found himself safe and warm that he jumped on the kitchen table and danced a hornpipe until he burst his seaboots.

"That same night the Red Rover of Oakville got ashore two miles farther east. Others got that crew off alive, but the vessel broke up where she stranded. I remember, too, them telling about a big deep-laden 3-master being aground between the False Ducks and Timber Island, flying distress signals, all sails blown out and her boat washed off the davits.

SAVED BY THE ICE

"It turned very cold after this and the St. George was frozen in solid, the ice forming heavily at around her. That saved her life. Father was given the contract of salvaging the cargo of wheat she carried. He got 5,000 bushels out of her, over the ice, and sold it for the insurance company to the farmers around. It was dry and undamaged. In the spring the St. George was hauled off then towed to Kingston with her remaining cargo. She was a well built vessel, and had not been damaged greatly. I think Capt. Gaskin of Kingston bought her."

Other vessels stranded in that gale were:

Brig Mayflower of Ogdensburg.

Schooners Wild Rover and Welland, ashore in South Bay.

Schooners Game Cock and Minnehaha in American channel of the St. Lawrence.

Gooderham and Worts schooner Omar Pacha, valued with cargo $30,000, completely wrecked on Stoney Point, one man perishing in snowdrifts.

Schooner Enterprise, with oats from Hamilton and Toronto, ashore near Point Peter lighthouse.

Propeller Coaster. smashed to pieces at Stone Mills of Glenora.

Schooner Tornado, lost with all hands.