Long Way Round for Honest $$$: Schooner Days MCCXXXIII (1233)

by C. H. J. Snider

TIMES being slack on Lake Ontario in the 1870's, while "Sir John A." was brewing his National Policy remedy, and Capt. Wyatt Welbanks being a hustler, the latter took the then new schooner Acacia over to Oswego, and there got a load of 300 tons of coal for Port Colborne.

Coal was at this time a freight only worth carrying if otherwise you would have to go light, that is, empty-holded. The rate was low, compared with grain or lumber. Capt. Welbanks was looking for freights "Up Above" and took the coal on his way.

The Acacia climbed the 26 wooden locks of the old Welland Canal, towed by horses. The coal paid the canal tolls and better. Cleanswept after the dusty job, the schooner sailed empty up Lake Erie to Port Stanley. Here Capt. Welbanks loaded cordwood. It was for Detroit, and at least met expenses thither. From Detroit the Acacia sailed and towed up the Straits into Lake Huron.

There hoisting all sail-she had eight pieces - she winged her way to the salt blocks at Goderich. Salt though a dead, heavy difficult cargo, was more profitable than an empty hold. Its delivery in Owen Sound put some more dollars into the pickle jar which served as the captain's safe.

Next chance that offered was a load of lumber for Sarnia - a real payload, the catch being to get it aboard and get it delivered.

The lumber was a hundred miles away, somewhere at an unknown harbor called Muskosh or Musquosh Mills, on one of the island of the north shore of Georgian Bay. Where the rock popped up from deep water like the tops of drowned trees.

The Acacia was smart and handy, but 103 feet long, and drew 4 feet even when light and with her centreboard up. Capt. Welbanks navigated her safely through the 3,000,000 islands or more of Georgian Bay to within some miles of where the place ought to be, and then let go an anchor, and sent three men in the yawlboat to find Musquosh and bring it back dead or alive.

CAPTURED

They did.

After raising their quota of blisters and backaches in the long pull, the explorers sighted the settlement and sawmills and learned which one was waiting for the Acacia. The mill company had one of their lumber tugs free, and Capt. Welbanks ambassadors rested on their oars all the way back, for the tug towed their boat.

Better than that, the tug towed the Acacia in through winding channels, until she reached "about the strangest dock that ever a vessel tied up to."

The description is Marshal Hobson's of Black River Bridge in Prince Edward, one of the crew, as he gave it to S. A. Clark long afterwards.

"The dock consisted of a large ledge of rock with perpendicular sides, dropping straight down in the crystal clear water of Georgian Bay for a hundred feet or more.

"The ledge rose far enough out of the water to form an excellent loading platform, before rising again straight up for another hundred feet. On the top of this second ledge was a house quite close to the edge. When we were loading and I had to go aloft on the main crosstrees to overhaul the gasket of the main gafftop sail. I found myself on a level with the front door step of this house, and so close that if I couldn't make it in one jump I could certainly have made it in two."

They topped up their booms ten feet above the deck, and took on a full load of lumber, both in the hold and piled high over the hatches; several hundred thousand feet. It took a long while to stow, the crew working with the mill hands, and when it was all chained and toggled down the tug towed the Acacia out again into the clear.

It was a long 200 mile run back to Sarnia, with the lumber-reefed foresail and mainsail waving aloft like lowered topsails. The Acacia was a rather crank vessel, and didn't want too much wind, with that rig and the big deckload. But she got just what she needed, made Sarnia, unloaded, crammed more money in the pickle jar, and got her booms down on the saddles again.

GRAIN BY GRAIN

Then she stared out to pick up a cargo of wheat in the small dogholes along the Lambton Country shore, handloading from bags, barrows and baskets sometimes a tedious job. The wheat was carried to Chatham, up the Thames River.

Next they went "to Fishing Island, and loaded ties for Sydenham" the ties may have been for the M.C.R. or G.T.R. both of which crossed the Sydenham river. Unloaded there, the Acacia sailed, light to Wallaceburg. Here the hardworked crew-they had to be lumber-shovers, grain shovellers, navvies and stevedores, as well as sailors—got their horny fists full of slivers, bruises and blisters all over again. They had to load long, thick, heavy hardwood plank. It might have been called sawn timber, extremely awkward to stow, both in the hold and on deck.

This "Jonah load" as they called it, was for Buffalo N.Y. and paid a better freight than the short hauls between Chatham and Wallaceburg. But all hands and Capt. Welbanks were heartily sick of it. "Going down Lake Erie the thick hardwood of the deck load, wet with rain and spray, made the Acacia topheavey. Twice they had to pile the long, heavy, splintery stuff over on to the weather side, to keep her from going down on her beam ends.

But - they unloaded in Buffalo, and fled back up Lake Erie to Detroit on the wings of a "fair wind." In Detroit, though it was late in November, they loaded 10,000 bushels of wheat for Kingston.

Other fair winds brought them down again. They shouldered their way down the crowded old Welland Canal ahead of the freeze-up, came boiling down Lake Ontario to Kingston and were home, on Dec. 8, exactly three months after starting.

So wound up a wake, with all its ins and outs since starting in September over 3,000 miles. A lot of hardships, no mishaps. The boys pockets were full of money. The saving ones had as much as $100. Sailors made $20 and $25. a month then, and sometimes twice that in the fall. And the pickle jar was heavy with bills and bullion, for the Americans had to pay in gold for a long time after the civil war.