Upsidedown Cake: Schooner Days MCCXX (1220)

by C. H. J. Snider

WELL NAMED was the gallant stonehooker Rover. Moses Niblock built her in 1860 on the river bank, east side, below the old, old hotel in Port Credit, on the Lake Shore road, where the post office now stands. The government blockhouse and inn for travelers, was erected there in the 18th century, by Governor Simcoe's direction.

Robert Lynn, grandfather of the present Rev. Garnet Lynn, kept the old hotel at one time, but gave up the business for conscience sake, and small blame to him. It was for him that Moses Niblock built the Rover, at a total cost under $300. As she was 50 feet long, 15 or 16 feet wide and five feet deep, Mr. Lyon got value for his money.

She resembled a packing case as closely as does much higher priced architecture of this atomic era. Her sides were almost parallel, her deck a long rectangle, her ends, square across, sloped to her flat bottom in steep segments of a circle.

That bottom Moses laid like a plank sidewalk, but upside down. On a foundation of sound oak bilge stringers and sister keelsons, placed far enough apart to provide a slot for the centreboard, he spiked 16-foot planks of good white pine, two inches thick and a foot wide. After trimming off the ends where the planks were too long he caulked this seeming "platform." Then he turned the whole thing over, and went on with the job of putting on the sides, ends and the rest of the vessel.

This was rank heresy in ship carpentry up to 1860. Bottoms were always laid right side up and planked lengthwise, fore-and-aft, like a deck; even in scows, though that was one of the things which made scow-building difficult. The planks had to be carried under the hull and held in place by clamps while they were spiked to the frames and floor timbers. Just try swinging a 16-lb. spike-maul upwards while crouched on your heels or lying on your back beside the keel-blocks and you will appreciate Moses' revolutionary experiment.

When the Rover was planked and caulked she was run down long skidways from the top of the bank and shot into the river. She was a good carrier. She could pack 20 cords of wood or four toise of stone, and the equivalent of either in gravel, sand, staves, shingles, lumber, barrels of flour or bags of potatoes. That was more than many finer lined craft of her dimensions could attempt, and all that was expected of her.

NO CLIPPER

But she couldn't sail for sour apples against a headwind.

Once I took my sister out for a sail in our little Frou Frou, a 20 foot centreboarder. While getting ready at the old National Yacht Club moorings, in the timber basin west of Bathurst St., behind the Queen's Wharf, we saw the Rover standing up the bay on a stiff gusty nor'wester. She was within 100 yards of the Queen's Wharf channel, the old Western Gap, when we cast off. Being too far to leeward to make the channel mouth she turned and tried to make the 100 yards of northing required.

We ran down to the entrance, hauled up sharp at the corner, and stood out into the lake on one tack easily. We held that tack up to the Exhibition Grounds, and past the old wharf then at the foot of Dufferin st. We jilled back and forth a little, for the Exhibition was on, and then came ramping back with a fair wind behind us, for we were hungry for supper.

The Rover was still beating back and forth inside the Toronto bay unable yet to get into the channel on her way out. Everything was against her--the puffy northwest wind, the current running into the bay from the lake, and the narrowness of the channel entrance--400 feet. And most of all her own blunt ends and flat sides and bottom!

When we were going home to dinner--we lived on Robinson st. then--we saw her, by a herculean effort and great luck catch the east end of the south pier of the western channel, and lower her sails in preparation for the laborious effort of hauling through for half a mile to the lake beyond. That proved too much for the two-man crew. They lay in the piers all night.

THE OPTIMISTS

But a find wind always comes if you wait long enough. Johnny Miller and Abe Block of Port Credit, in their lifelong partnership, were in the Rover in their youth. They could not afford a chain cable, but they had one good big long all-purposes line. They never took the Rover "off soundings." If the wind came ahead they let go the ancor and rode like a gull at the end of the long line. If it "came on bad" they would heave up and run for the nearest shelter.

"Never knew it to fail," said Capt. Miller, "if the wind was ahead when we turned in at night we'd have a fair slant by morning. Or vice versa. Sailors have to sleep when they can, anyway. The Rover gave us plenty of sleep."

Young Ted Smidley of Port Credit, smart member of the 10th Royal Grenadiers in the Fenian Raid of '66, and John Grantfield of Toronto, equally smart, bought the Rover from Mr. Lynn and put topmasts in her and rigged a square topsail forward, and called her "The Brig Rover." That was painted on her stern.

One square topsail doesn't make a brig, but this one made the Rover a little faster and a little easier to turn around. The square topsail could be braced aback to boxhaul her if she hung in stays.

The topsail was given up when the Rover toddled off to Kingston to try her luck on what was called the Rideau route, inland sailing between Kingston and Ottawa. For this she needed no topmasts, but had to have tabernacled masts that could be lowered, to let her under the fixed bridges.

There was a good trade in lumber and cordwood on the Rideau for a while. When it petered out the Rover came back to our end of the lake, and got back her long topmasts and gaff-topsails. But not the square one, though she still had BRIG ROVER on her stern. Dave Ford, with an Oakville fruit farm, did well with the Rover. She ended her days at Bronte 50 years ago.