False Alarm: Schooner Days MCCXXIV (1224)

by C. H. J. Snider

WHEN the Williamses got the little Rover into the wood trade, father and the boys sailed her up to Toronto from the Kew with a whopping big cargo of cordwood—all they had cut ready for market from their demesne. They were into market early, but too many were ahead of them, waiting to unload, for them to do anything that day. They did their own stevedoring loading and unloading without wasting tier scanty profits on dockwallopers.

So father and Joe Jr. and Tommy the next boy, thriftily "hooked" a ride on an east bound farm waggon at the Market and went back home to "cut and pile" for the next cargo, and not lose the day, utterly. Little Johnny, aged nine and official cook of the Rover, was left to keep ship. These duties were not onerous. She was safely moored on the west side of the slip from Turner's wood wharf at "the foot of George Street, handy for hauling across when her turn came.

Some half-soused half-wit came aboard that evening and owlishly looked down through the opening kept in the deckload over the centreboard box, and saw the water shining in the centre-board slot below.

The board for the uninitiated, was pivoted in a trunk and case rising as high as the deck. The slot through the Rover's bottom permitted the board to be hoisted or lowered, and the trunk kept the water from entering the hold.

Smart Aleck solemnly marched up to the bar in Charlie Goldring's hotel on the Esplanade with the news that the Rover was full of water and sinking. She was decks-to already and barely-hiccup-afloat, when he left her.

The whole waterfront knew that a ship couldn't sink with a cargo of cordwood, but more experienced customers at the bar knew that she might burst with the wood packed tightly in the hold swelling if it got wet. So all the crowd turned out to do Capt. Joseph Williams a good turn. They ignored little Johnny's insistence that there was no water in her. She had two pump-wells, one in each bilge, and he was keeping ship, and had watched them and couldn't get a suck out of either of them. But it was dark, and someone said the pumps much be choked, and someone else said better make sure, in case.

Like firemen smashing all the doors and windows first and then looking for the fire, they hurled every stick of the deckload out on to the dock, and then every stick out of the hold. They found the Rover bone dry, as Johnny has insisted.

Well, the deed was done and they all went back to the bar, very thirsty and not well pleased. They looked for the Old Soak, but he had not been one of the working party and remained invisible. They consoled themselves with the hope that Capt. Joseph Williams would appreciate thier good intentions and be sufficiently grateful for having his little vessel unloaded free, gratis and for nothing to buy the beer for the volunteers when he arrived.

But when Capt. William and Joe. Jr. and Tommy appeared the thirst remained unquenched, and the salvagers remained unappreciated.

Capt. Williams was, indeed not pleased but angry. The dogooders had piled the Rover's cargo out on to the wrong wharf. The Rover crew had to pile all 20 cords on board again, with a cranky wharfinger clamoring for wharfage dues. Then they had to haul her across to the other side of the slip, wait their turn again, and unload the much handled wood in the proper place.

Thereby they lost another day and so had still less appreciation of the nitwit who had proclaimed the imminent demise of the good ship Rover.