Stern-Chase of a GRIFFON: Schooner Days MCCXXXIV (1234)

by C. H. J. Snider

WHAT a homecoming!

Torn from, examining 17th century French models (not the kind you think) in the Paris Musee de la Marine, and an Irish contemporary with wickerwork hull covered with cowhide, a tree with the bark on for a mast and a green bush for a burgee a cross on the port quarter-rail for piety and a longhorned bull's head decorating the prow ... Whisked from this, to cover 500 miles of Ontario highway before getting into bed, to share that sight for sore eyes, LaSalle's Griffon!

LUCKY LANDING

That was Schooner Days' great good fortune this week, and profoundly grateful am I to God above for it, and to zealous friends below.

Particularly to The Telegram, for the opportunity, and to Rowley W. Murphy, ARCA, OSA, co-adjutor in many such a quest. And to another artist, both with typewrter and camera, John MacLean, Telegram, Copyright, 1955. And to Orrie Vale and his family, fifth generation of Vales in Tobermory.

Mr. Vale I call the best exponent of marine historical research yet encountered. In this Griffon business he had studied something which lay at hand all his life, and his father's and back to his great-grandfather, for that matter. He carefully secured all the evidence and and placed it in safekeeping, beyond the possibility of disturbance or destruction, noting and numbering the original position of every one of a thousand items. Having built his own commercial fishing boats, he could, identify the scattered and shattered members of his recovery and their functions, and reassemble all in proper position, losing nothing and adding nothing. After doing this, without any blowing of trumpets, he asked some who might know more of the subject than himself, to look at what he had discovered and guarded day and night and give an opinion on its pre-history.

END OF LONG TRAIL

After sailing 2,246 miles of lake in a sternchase of the Griffon and "researching" on her every year since 1913, it would have been hard indeed not to have been in on this New Discovery of 1955, just because the Atlantic Ocean happened to intervene.

Father Hennepin's New Discovery of 1698 has an almost contemporary picture of the Griffon, when she was being built in 1679, near the present town of La Salle, on the Niagara River.

Hennepin's illustrator was skilled delineator, and knew what a 17th century "barque" of from 45 to 60 tons burden looked like just as he knew the cut of La Salle's coat. Also he had Father Hennepin to course and correct him if he departed in any detail from the likeness of the Griffon. The accuracy of his nautical portrayal has never been questioned, whatever may be said of the palm tree in his Niagara background. This primal picture of the Griffon is the most informative in 250 years and the best until Rowley Murphy's drawing of the Griffon under full sail, used in the Wedgwood series of historical Canadian vessels in dinner plates.

ALL SPELLS GRIFFON

This is mentioned because every detail of the Tobermory recovery Schooner Days has examined - and in this case he has literally "seen everything" — corresponds exactly to the Hennepin portrait of the Griffon.

The remains correspond to Hennepin's tonnage. measurements loosely given as these seem - 45 tons in one edition, 60 in a late one. Sailors will understand how a vessel of 45 tons measurement could have 60 tons cargo capacity. Others will have to take our word for it.

A "barque" of 1679-1698 of 40 ft. keel length, 15-ft. extreme beam, and 7-ft. depth of hold, would measure 44.68 tons, carpenter's measurement, and could carry 60 tons deadweight easily.

These must have been the Griffon's approximate measurements. They are also the Tobermory recovery's. She is 40 ft. on the keel, her beam judging from what is left of her ribs (one half of her has disappeared) was about 15 feet, and she would be 7 ft. deep in the hold amidships. Both bow and stern would be much higher. The measurement for computation was not there.

So, on measurements and contemporary portraiture, we can accept the Tobermory recovery as the Griffon. The size and weight of the timbers and fastenings are what would be required for a small vessel dependent upon man-power and wind-power. Other wreckage offered as that of the Griffon hitherto has been discounted because it was heavy enough for a ship 10 times as large.

TOUGHER PROBLEM

How the Griffon got to whee this recovery was made is a much harder nut to crack. That though, is John MacLean's story, and as he has been in correspondence with the late Sieur de La Salle only this week, as you have read in The Telegram, he may have all the answers.

The port half of his split vessel has lain for a very long time in a tiny cove, off the second section of a double cove inside a small island, one of the 30,000 of the Georgian Bay, 160 miles in a straight line from the point of Mackinac Island in the Straits of Mackinaw where torn and tarry breeches, an ensign staff truck, a hatch, a door, and some rope ends and bales of heaver skins came ashore 276 years ago. It is only fair to add that the port half is not now in the tiny cove mentioned, but we have seen it and examined it in detail, and consider it a most important Canadian discovery.