Little Wood Box: Schooner Days MCCXXII (1222)

by C. H. J. Snider

NEXT MORNING, the very first after little Johnny Williams' waggon drive home from Port Credit on the famous 24th of May, 1866, the Rover herself appeared at the Williams' front gate, so to speak. Their old home at Kew Beach ran down to the edge of Lake Ontario.

There she lay at anchor, large as life and twice as natural to Johnny. To him she was a queen, though her sails were patched and her bottom was a sidewalk, and her little cabin was no bigger than a packing case. Father and Joe Jr. and Tommy had finished fitting her out in the Credit after Johnny had left with Old Sam between the shafts, and had sailed her down through the night. Father had moored her close to the beach. Johnny could see her through the trees from the front window of their log house north of Queen street.

Joseph Williams Sr. was practical. He had not bought the Rover (for $75) for a plaything. His 21 acres were covered with standing and fallen timber. Growing Toronto had an insatiable appetite at this time for cordwood — as fuel—for cookstoves and fireplaces, for factory boilers and steamers' fire-holds, and for wood-burning locomotives. There was no other fuel then. Joseph Williams had bought the Rover to clear his 21 acres of tanglewood—at a profit.

Fallen trees had already been cut and split into four-ft. lengths and piled on the beach and in the clearings of "the Kew." Father and sons that same morning began loading the wood into their big, open scow, built like the Rover on a smaller scale and without a deck. The wood-scow was pushed by poles and by a sculling oar, worked in a notch in the stern.

Loading routine was for two to "cut and pile" ashore, and two to "ferry and stow" on board. This was varied according to circumstances. When the first scow-load had been ferried out to the Rover, snorting at her anchor as the day's breeze made, Tommy and Johnny, aged 11 and nine respectively, stayed aboard. They had to stow the wood in the hold once it had been tossed on deck. Joe and their father went back for more. When 20 cords of wood had been piled in the hold and on deck, up came the anchor and off they all went to market.

In Toronto their objective was either Brown's wharf at the foot of Scott street, where railway and steamer fuel was stacked high all the time, or Taylor's wharf at the foot of George street. This latter was handy to the wood-market-up on Front street beside the red brick City Hall. Both slips were often crowded with little coasters bringing their cargoes from a few miles away. They wriggled through the breach in the Island shore which later became the Eastern gap, if they came from the east. Those from "up the shore," towards the head of the lake, used the Western gap of course. The Eastern was then undredged and unlighted.

The Rover was so shoal and flat that she could be loaded directly from the beach sometimes in smooth weather, the four of them carrying the cordwood up planks to the deck.

But this had disadvantages. She, might get bedded into the sand, and have to he freed with shovels, and it might mean a day's work to kedge her off. If caught by bad weather in such a pickle she might break up.

The sandy bottom off the Kew was poor holding ground with the wind on-shore, and the two left on board to stow the hold had strict orders to "cut and run" if the wind came in too fresh. Although they were only children, they soon knew how to do that. When her anchor would not hold they would get her under weigh, and try to keep her dodging until those ashore could scull out to her in the punt or wood-scow. Whether they could or not, and whether empty or loaded, they would run the Rover up to Toronto for shelter, or down to Highland Creek, the Rouge, or Frenchman's Bay.

Two dollars a cord was "good money" for wood in those days, and $40 a load was the most the Rover ever made in this trade. That might be for one day's work. Taking into account weather delays and the time spent cutting and hauling the wood and loading and unloading it, Joseph Williams and his three boys did well to make $40 a week through the season. But - father was clearing his tangled acres into the likeness of Kew Gardens which he had ever in his mind's eye.

"I often think of my parents,"said the once youthful Johnny to Schooner Days, when he was nearing ninety. "They worked hard, and had a hard time raising a large family. But it was a happy time."

Yes, a happy time. In four years of hard work Joseph Williams greatly improved the Kew, made first class-sailors of his three boys, and put by $400 to buy a much larger vessel.