"Stormy Nights We Did Endure": Schooner Day MCCXLIV (1244)

by C. H. J. Snider

THAT Malta mentioned last week was not a schooner but a barquentine, "barque" for short on the lakes. She had three square sails spread by yards on the foremast, and was fore-and-aft rigged like the schooners otherwise.

Poor rig for windward work it was, but excellent if the wind came free. One year the Malta made the run from Chicago to Collingwood, 560 miles in 50 hours, good time for a steamboat, amazing for a heavy laden sailing vessel. But next year she took 25 days for the same trip. It was just about this time of year. Her experience is a good sample of what the schooner had to put up with in weather like we have had this month.

The Malta left Chicago with 20,000 bushels of grain for Collingwood under her tarpaulined hatches, in pleasant weather on Oct. 10. She had nothing but calms, raid, fog and headwinds for the next two weeks. She baffled back and forth across Lake Michigan and the Straits of Mackinac until her crew of 12 had "eaten her out." She had to put into hilly little Round Island in the straits for provisions.

Emerging refreshed into Lake Huron on Oct. 24, she beat as far as Cockburn Island at the west end of Manitoulin, tacking back and forth all day in a hard breeze.

UNDER GOOSEWINGS

At night the sea was running so high that she could not even fetch back in her tacks, so they hove her to, heading offshore with all Lake Huron to drift in.

Two o'clock in the morning the foretopmast staysail went to pieces. So did the mainsail. As these two areas of canvas were essential to keep her hove to, shouldering the sea, there was no recourse left but to run Her off. Otherwise she would have rolled her spars out in the trough.

So they squared her away with the goosewings of the fore topsail, back for the Straits of Mackinac, and anchored again with the best bower when the picked up the shelter of "Bob Low" near the Round Island again. Goosewings are the lower corners or cleft of a square sail furled in the middle.

All of the 26th they spent at anchor drying their sodden sails and sewing at their split ones. Next day in the afternoon, they again started and at length got into Georgian Bay and headed for Collingwood.

On the 28th, passing Owen Sound in heavy squall from west-southwest, they split their mizzen, and had to take that sail in. By dark they were up to Nottawasaga Island, and could see the lights of Collingwood.

But not the pier lamps. It was too dark and squally to risk going it blind for the harbor entrance, with the mizzen in rags and the mainsail in patches. So the Malta came to under Nottawasaga Island, with the best bower down in thirteen fathoms of water.

Here a few miles from port -- so close that the house lights winked over the wave tops -- the weary watches, port and starboard, might have expected repose. Not so. She dragged. She went from thirteen fathoms to fifteen, from fifteen to twenty. The sea got rougher with every foot she edged from the shelter of the land.

Ping! went a link of cable-leaving the best bower and early three hundred feet of chain at the bottom of Georgian Bay.

In the screaming dark they loosed the square foresail, canted her head round, and drove out to sea again, turning their backs on the teasing lights of Collingwood and the sheltering shore

The foresail split in ribbons. Under the reefed foretopsail and the patched mainsail, also reefed down, they kept her dodging. They had to wear, this in turn before the wind, every time to get around. The sea ran to high she could not tack.

Towards daylight the wind moderated. Just soon enough to save the vessel from blowing on to the lee shore on the north east side of Nottawasaga Bay.

All day the Malta, minus her mizzen and foresail beat back towards Collingwood. By night she was again in sight of the place.

A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

Then once more the wind whooped up to gale strength from west-southwest with heavy squalls. Hour after hour in the dark she stood off and on under shortened sail. At the end of the middle watch, 4 a.m., the patched mainsail went out of her, followed by the jib and foretopsail.

Collingwood was hopelessly to windward and the Christian Islands were desperately on the lee. For them the Malta swung, under her flying jib and remnants of canvas. Just clearing the Lighthouse Point she rounded up under its shelter and let go all the ground tackle she had left - her second anchor, with seventy-five fathoms of chain, and a kedge, to which was bent a six-inch rope warp.

Only two days were now left in the month and not two effective sails in the ship. For the 30th and 31st of October and the 1st of November the Malta lay under the lee of Lighthouse Point. All hands wearily stitched on the frozen rags of canvas till the sail twine gave out. Then they used the string from the grocery packages. Gales blew ceaselessly from Collingwood and the west-southwest.

On Nov. 2nd the wind went round to the north. The anchorage now began to be exposed but the breeze was light. The Malta spread her tattered winds and hove up the kedge and the anchor, and began to creep through the freezing fog which the north wind had brought down.

At 11 a.m. on Nov. 3rd, 25 days after leaving Chicago, she arrived in Collingwood harbor

"Without further disaster."

The moral of this is how much hand power, sailpower and willpower accomplished in the brave days of old. Capt. Wm. Carradice took 25 days, but he brought the Malta in "through billows and through gales" without the help of steam, or the coastguards, or the lifesavers-or the newspapers.