Golden Bells Recall Great Feat: Schooner Days MCCXLVI (1246)

by C. H. J. Snider

HOW time flies. How trite that is—-and how true. It seems no time since Harry Mitchell of Oakville was an up-and-coming mariner on the Toronto waterfront. And now Schooner Days is happy to chronicle the golden wedding anniversary of Capt. and Mrs. T. H. Mitchell, of Kapuskasing, Ont., 50 years married on the first of this month!

Thirty-three years ago this coming 4th of December the schooner Katie Eccles left Oswego, N.Y., with 300 tons of coal for Belleville. Capt. Harry Mitchell, married and with an upgrowing family, then owned her—had for 15 years, and had done well with her.

Six miles out her rudder - 45 years old - dropped off. By manipulating his sails Capt. Mitchell got his vessel turned around and headed in the general direction of Oswego again. She couldn't point for the place exactly, with the wind southwest, but she headed for Mexico Bay, below it, wide open sandy bight, with no holding ground.

There were no tugs left in Oswego so low had the trade fallen. The early darkness was settling in. It was after 5 o'clock.

Again easing and hauling in sheets by turns and hoisting and lowering the right sails, Capt. Mitchell got her twisted again and headed for Canada. Now northwest, now northeast she pointed as she came up or fell off.

After a while the bright flashing light on the False Ducks, at the southeast corner of Prince Edward County, showed over a horizon. If she fetched east of that—safety, or at least anchorage in South Bay. If she went west of it, she "went west" indeed, for the coast was deadly limestone rock for miles and miles, and no anchor would hold on it.

At ten o'clock snow shut out the light, but after a while it cleared, and the light shone bright, first in one bow, then on the other. She was weaving back and forth before the wind, her mainsail set with the sheet broad off, her jibs sometimes hoisted, sometimes lowered.

She kept them guessing to the last moment, and so did the snow, for it thickened and cleared, cleared and thickened, and they never knew which side the light would be on when it shone again. But at last, eight hours after starting across the lake, they felt the water smoothing, and in the next clearing they had the light safely on their port quarter, and could see the dark mass of Timber Island ahead.

At 2 o'clock in the morning they rounded up under Timber Island by hauling aft the mainsheet and downhauling the jibs and let go their best bower, with lots of chain, in the lee the island made. They were in the Upper Gap, a long way from Belleville, but within reach of assistance. By daylight they could row ashore and call for a tug from Kingston or Belleville. It was a great feat of navigation.

But in the morning it was blowing great guns from the west, the island gave no shelter, and there was no getting ashore. The nearest house was five miles away.

It blew and it blew, and the Katie Eccles reared and pranced and horsed around at her anchors until she tore her iron hawsepipes out and began cutting her throat.

In spite of all exertions the great links of the chain cable sawed down nearer and nearer to the water level through the tough oak of her bows.

To cut the cable and run - without a rudder - would mean destruction on either the Main Ducks, Amherst Island, or some of the other island perils to leeward.

Capt. Mitchell had to abandon ship while she floated. He got all hands into the yawl boat. He himself was the last to jump from the rail. With great difficulty they landed on uninhabited Timber Island, which has rocky shores, twelve feet high. And, there, on Dec. 6th, 1922, he watched his life's investment sink in water so deep only the tip of her maintopmast marked where she had gone.

You may sink a ship, but you can't keep a good man down. Capt. Mitchell's first command was the 30-foot fruit schooner Minnie of St Kitts, when he was 17. He began life afresh at 42. He went north and built fishing boats and prospered, becoming one of the most respected citizens of Kapuskasing, Ont.

A long continued life of happiness to him and his gracious helpmeet.