Little Band of Blue Had Its Own Meaning: Schooner Days MCCXLVII (1247)

by C. H. J. Snider

HARD to keep from feeling envious when the "wild geese spread their wings to the sea" and the swallows fly south. Early this month Schooner Days watched the launching of Moonstruck II of Midland at Kingswood House, an old Taylor mansion on Broadview ave. On a truck. She is taking the Owl Penners, Ken and Lucy Wells, or rather they are taking her, to New Orleans via the Ohio and Mississippi, on a 3,000 mile round trip. First stop Cincinnati. This week Larry Cond came back from Norfolk Va., where he had left our old ship Kingarvie, all well on board, bound for the south seas, or at any rate Florida and the Carribean.

If any of us looked askance at Kingarvie in the RCYC lagoon with her once bright varnished teak rail painted with a thin stripe of cobalt blue and criticized it as "unyatchty looking" we were displaying ignorance of an old world custom.

Schooner Days has never seen it outside the British Isles, but there it is the not-invariable usage if the head or partner of a shipowning firm dies to paint a narrow blue stripe above the boot-topping of the ships of he line for that season.

Capt. Wm. Larmour, Kingarvie's present owner, is a descendant of the Huguenot Larmouiers who settled in Ireland after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. He had been a master in steam for twenty years in the Old Country, and is, of course familiar with the custom mentioned.

The blue line around the Kingarvie was not a yachting solecism. It was crepe on the ship's sleeve. It was an eloquent if silent tribute to Mrs Grace Larmour, who had sailed continuously with her husband in Kingarvie since 1949, and who died last May when the good ship was fitting out for the season.

"She could always smile, no matter how tough the going" was her husband's tribute. She was with him in the St. Pierre voyage and the attempt for Bermuda which was frustrated by the swish of the tail of a hurricane in 1953.

This is Kingarvie's third dip into salt water. She was built for the late G. Herrick Duggan at Port Hawkesbury N. S.,and he sailed her to the Bay of Chaleur and brought her up to the lakes. Capt. Larmour took her to St. Pierre, Miquelon, two years ago. She pushed of on Oct. 18 this year shorn of all her glory of masts and sail, for she was going under power through the Oswego canal and the Erie to New York.

All her spars and gear were lashed on deck. She spent the first night out in Whitby, and reached Oswego the next night, rolling heavily in the sea that was making from the northwest. She began canalling at Oswego on the 20th and reached Schenectady on the 26th. By Saturday Oct 30, she had her spars all aloft again and her sails bent, so she "steamed" down to New York by Nov. 2, and after calling at Atlantic City reached Norfolk by last week end.

Neither Moonstruck II nor Kingarvie lack company in their southern flights, though a thousand miles apart on their divergent courses. Each finds the inland waterways crowded with American power craft- and some Canadians-big and little, scurrying for fly-fish latitudes before the snowflakes drift their decks. It's a great way to spend the winter.

We used to have 3,500 vessels sail and steam on the lakes. These are all of 3,500 put-putters now put-putting south on the two great inland waterways of the U. S. A.