Pretty Piece O' Work: Schooner Days MCCLXI (1261)

by C. H. J. Snider

The Schooner Nancy, Hon. John Richardson's entry for the fur trade, was launched on Nov. 24, 1789, after five months' work by seven shipwrights. Even the critical ex-privateersman was satisfied.

"Our new schooner," he wrote to his old privateering friend John Porteous in several letters, "is a most beautiful and substantial vessel, a perfect masterpiece of workmanship and beauty, and very durable though a great expense.

"Her floor timbers, keel, keelson, stem, and lower futlocks, are oak. The transom, sternpost, upper part of stem, upper futtocks, top timbers, stern timbers beams and knees, are all red cedar. She will carry 350 barrels...

"The master carpenter turns out perfectly, to my mind, and is very ambitious to distinguish himself. He is very anxious to get a (figure) head for the vessel, and I wish it much also."

After much correspondence he secured the figure of "a lady dressed in the present fashion (crinolines, panniers, etc.) with a hat and feathers." It was made to order by Skelling a noted head-carver of New York, who may have made the figurehead for the Vengeance privateer in which Richardson was supercargo in the American revolution. The wooden carving, nearly four feet long, had to be packed over wilderness trails and awful turnpikes for a thousand miles, before reaching Detroit.

The lady's complexion was carefully laid on and her costume was blue and white, with touches of red ribbons and ornamentation. Her hair was brown. The details are not from Richardson but the description given by the late Waverly Smith, a Tay township farmer, to schooner Days 20 odd years ago.

Waverly Smith's maternal grandfather, William Wilson fought at Trafalgar and was drafted to the Nancy as carpenter in 1814 when Lieut. Miller Worsley took over for the Royal Navy. Wilson recovered the figurehead after the Nancy was sunk, and Waverly Smith as a child of eight saw it among his grandfathers treasures.

This figurehead, reproduced carefully from his description and the Hon. John Richardson's information, is shown in the large scale model of the Nancy which has adorned one of the City Hall corridors for some years and is on view in the Provincial Marine room in Old Fort York in season.

It was intended to represent either Mrs. Anne Richardson the owner's lady, or their daughter, who was also named Anne. That is why the vessel was christened Nancy, a pet name of Anne, when she was launched. She never bore any other.

"She is spoken of her in such a high strain of encomium, as to beauty, stowage and sailing that she almost exceeds my expectation." the satisfied owner concluded, and his predilection was endorsed by all who had anything to do with the Nancy -- even Royal Navy men, who are not as a rule partial to merchant shipping.

The Nancy was really the best piece of work built on the Great Lakes in the 18th century. The King's ships began to rot in their third season and their average life was less than ten years. The Nancy was sound as a bell after 23 years in the fur trade. Three more years of hard war service following left her "fit and in all respects ready for sea" to the day when she was burned in battle.