First Topsail?: Schooner Days MCCLIII (1253)

by C. H. J. Snider

WOT'S this? A quiz so early in the year?

From Pointe au Baril, Ont., Bert Campton, engineer in Oriole III 1911-12 fires this broadside:

"Many thanks to the column. It's nice to look back and think about the old lads in the yacht fleet—Bill Fisher, Davy Reynolds, Charlie Burrell, Dyke Mercer, and old Angus Munro—and the Crouchers who still carry on. But was the old S.S. Chicora (Niagara River Line) a blockade runner years ago on Lake Ontario during the Civil War, or what vessels did work like that?

"Was Hodson's boathouse at the foot of Brock street built on top of the old schooner Erie Belle?"

Ans. - No in both cases. Hodson's boathouse was built on the hull of the schooner Annie Mulvey, burned in the great Esplanade fire of 1885. The Erie Belle was not in that fire, but was burned at Frenchman's Creek 20 years later. Her hull was afloat as a tool scow in 1917.

The Chicora had been a blocked runner in about 1863, and so was the Southern Belle. There were no blockade runners on Lake Ontario in the American Civil War. These vessels mentioned came to the lakes after the war was over. They had been built on the Clyde in Scotland, to run the blockade the navy of the Northern States put on the ports of the South, bringing in some arms and munitions and general cargo needed by the South, and, getting out with passengers and what cotton they could find for the Lancashire spinners. The Chicora was one of three, the Let Her Be (or Letter B), Let Her Go and Let Her Rip. Don't know the Southern Belle's original name. She was the Rothesay Castle when she came to the lakes in 1867.

WHITE Christmas it was for Schooner Days, for cards and calls showered down like those thick flakes we sometimes get in March. Two hundred and thirteen and not all bills, either.

Standfast Julien of Owen Sound sent a charming verbal bouquet and a negative of a Spanish brigantine he snapped n the Mediterranean. Much higher sheered than our lake vessels, but her rig almost the same as our Oakville brigantine Sea Gull, that went to South Africa 90 years ago. The loftiest canvas on the foremast of this Spanish brigantine, however was a pair of raffees. Those sails must have originated with the ancient Greeks, perhaps the world's first topsail. Old sculptures show these triangles above the square mainsail which was the principal driving power of the Alexandrian corn ships and ships of burden laden with amphoras of wine.—No, thanks. We must drive.

"AN Old Mate and Third Hand" (getting back to those red-sailed barges on the Thames) hails from Malton:

"Being a reader of the Tely I am so interested in Schooner Days that last summer I took my holidays down east at Picton because I had read so much about the place and Prince Edward county in your column. After reading your 'Kitchener Rides Again' I must tell you I come from Sittingbourne and Milton in England, and there were as many sailing barges from there as any two other places.

I have seen 25 or 30 shoot the bridge at Kings Ferry, homeward bound and out, a most wonderful sight, and those up-bound to London all working the slack water. Just before dark up would come the red and green sailing lights. Out where the tide is stronger the topsailers would be beating the stumpies, as we called those without topmasts.

"I have known some of them to sail to Tower Bridge and then lower their masts and do the rest all the way to Battersea rowing, the water being too high for sailing under the bridges.

"The Giralda was the fastest barge of her day, 1899-1901, and there was the Sirdar and Dreadnought and Westmoreland, and the Victoria, that capsized rounding the Mouse light, skipper and his wife drowned. Please write and let's. have some more."

"P. S.: Skippers on both sides of the family, to my great-grandfathers."

Thanks, Mr. Willson. Send in all you have about the barges and it will be returned to you. Thanks again. And a Happy 1956 to you, and to all readers of

SCHOONER DAYS