Seven Masts - Any Sea Horses?: Schooner Days MCCXL (1240)

by C. H. J. Snider

BIG O.C. Vail of Tobermory, to whom Ontario owes much for the careful recovery of all that may be left of the intrepid La Salle's barque Griffin, hails:

"Now what do you know about the schooner Sea Horse? She collected salt fish from Manitoulin Island and Tobermory and also from Cove Island a long, long time ago. In the very early days she haunted the south shores of Manitoulin. She was not a fishing boat like those that worked the nets, but a carrier, collecting fish that had been salted, cured or dried for marketing. What became of her after she was stolen and then recovered later on with with the salt fish still on board?

Come again, Mr. Vail. Sounds like a story as good as the Explorer's, or the Neeche's, which has yet to be told. None of the registers in our possession show the Sea Horse, but she may have been renamed.

Prof. Donald B. Shutt, bacteriologist, OAC, Guelph, writes:

"It gave me great pleasure to learn that you had recently examined the wreckage of a boat found by my friend Orrie Vail of Tobermory, and had identified it as the Griffon." ... (Not so fast, Prof. Shore. Identification of the Tobermory wreck has still to be completely confirmed, but nothing so far discovered contradicts the possibility that this wreck really was La Salle's long lost ship. Pray continue.)

"Some ten years ago I was doing some archaeological work at Tobermory and Orrie told me of his find. I sent off examples of the wood to the only expert I knew at the time, and to date I have never had a report.

"Then in 1948 Orrie gave me a bolt and two portions of wood from the bow and stern. These I sent to my friend Kenneth Kidd of Roma. On Sept. 28, 1948, you looked them over and Ken wrote to me you identified the wood as white oak and the bolt as nandwrought iron of probable date of 1860 or 1880. You also thought the boat would be about 100 feet long."

(Interrupting again. Small iron and wood suitable for the Griffon would also be suitable for schooners up to 100 feet which were built between 1860 and 1880, but having no recollection at all of this incident now, Schooner Days can only ask the professor to continue.)

"In your wisdom at the time you gave an honest opinion, and I am not now criticizing your judgement. Seven years have since passed, and you have doubtless examined thousands of samples, and have been to France to study old ship construction. You have had the opportunity to view the whole of the wreckage, and not just a couple of scraps of wood and one bolt, and you have given your opinion. I want to congratulate you, particularly because you have continued to study your subject, so much so that you have now identified it. Orrie also has had his ambition fulfilled. He is a keen observer and I admire him greatly.

So does Schooner Days, professor, and also your fairness. Identification at the moment goes this far: dimensions and recovered correspond to the known and most probable dimensions to the Griffon both as recorded and as deducible from the only contemporary picture of her hull. The wood and iron, subject to further analysis are exactly what one would expect to find in a vessel of 45 to tons built in the wilderness 276 years ago.

"What is this?" Sings out Leon C. Julien from Owen Sound after a long silence. "Another hail from your old landlubber sailor?" After weathering years of extremely stormy physical weather we've reached shelter - or at least a temporary one - efficiently long to dry our sails and attempt a fresh start.

"We want to tell how happy we are to find Schooner Days still at the wheel with his entertaining, informative and historical articles pertaining to sailing. Due to illness we've missed some of the articles. If the lot had been published in book form while we have been hove to, we would like two copies, one to present to the Carnegie Library here in Owen Sound, the other for ourself, so we can make up our leeway.

"There are yet some schooners in the Far and Near East, as your scribe had the pleasure of seeing when on a trip, for there riding in the harbor at Alexandria, Egypt, lay several of those grand old windjammers. One was a five-master. Oh what a nautical poem if we had seen her sailing and under full canvas!

"We would like to know if there ever was one carrying more than five masts she we appeal to Schooner Days with his apparently limitless storehouse of information."

We congratulate Owen Sound on your recovery old friend.

About Schooner days in book form. Not yet, but soon, next year, we hope. As for 5-masters, the David Dows was the only one we knew on the lakes. She was a topsail schooner 265 feet long, square-rigged forward but with fore-and-aft sails on all masts, nineteen working sails in all.