'Stunsls' of the Lakes: Schooner Days MCCLV (1245)

by C. H. J. Snider

NEVER saw the "barque" Malta, no not I, for she was wrecked before Schooner Days was launched, but Capt. Dave Reynolds, commodore of the RCYC transport many years ago, told much about her. He sailed her as a boy.

"She had stunsls," said he. "Only lake vessel I was ever in that had them, through they used to be common enough."

"Did they make for much work? Were they hard to handle?"

"Yes and no. The Malta was a barquentine, square rigged forward,, and she chaired 12 of a crew where a three-'n-aft schooner of her size only had seven. There were eight men in the forecastle and two boys, two mates and the captain in the cabin. Plenty of hands. Had to be.

"When the wind came fair old Capt. Carradice would sing out 'Yard-arm them stunsls, Mister!' and Davy Hunter, the first mate, wold chase the boys up the fore rigging.

"The stunsls, spelled s-t-u-d-d-i-n-g-s-a-i-l-s by them that spell but can't box the compass, were square-shaped sails, wider at the foot than at the head. The head was laced to a ten-foot yard, the rest of the sail was free. We kept the sails in gaskets in the foretop. This was a half-round platform on the crosstrees at the head of the foremast.

"The Malta had a foreyard 65 feet long, half as long as her keel and a topsail yard 55 feet long, and t'gallant yard 40 feet. On the top side of this foreyard were two rings or boom irons on each half of the yard, one at the yardarm, one at the quarters, half way in to the mast. Two poles about 20 feet long lay on the top of the foreyard. These were the stuns booms. They had to be shoved out through the boom-irons till they stuck out 10 feet past the ends of the yards.

"Next we'd yell 'On deck! Sheet home starboard stunsl!' and the men below would haul on the sheet of the sail. It led through the boom-end, and so hauled the foot out. Then "H'ist away starboard stunsl!' and the headyard of the sail would be swayed up to the starboard topsail yardarm. The topsail yard was 100 feet above the deck.

"Same thing, of course for the port topmast stunsl. That was all you'd have to do. It was harder taking those sails in, sometimes, but the whole thing was simple."

"As simple," was the comment, "as setting two yacht's spinnakers a hundred feet above your head."

"Yes," said Capt. Reynolds, impervious to irony. Each stuns was just a spinnaker rigged out beyond the leach of a mainsail Boys-O-boys how she would push the lake ahead of her when she had both stunsls set and her canvas stretched near a hundred feet, square across the wind!"

It must have been that way when the Malta made the record passage, in July, 1856, from Chicago to Collingwood in 50 hours, an average of 11 knots for the course was 560 miles.

The Malta was one of Louis Shickluna's early and earnest efforts at completely filling a Welland Canal lock. He called her after the Mediterranean island where he was born, and where he served his apprenticeship, in the Royal Naval dockyard. Black with white stripes, plumb-stemmed, bluff in the bows, square in the stern and flat in the bottom, the Malta was no beauty, but she was a grand carrier. She was 137 feet 6 on deck, 23 ft 6 beam, 10 ft 9 deep in the hold and registered 321 tons. She was a tight fit for old lock 3 on the second Welland Canal. She was launched in 1853. Henry A. Berriman, Chatham timber merchant, and Capt. Wm. Carradice were her first owners.