In the Baltic in March: Schooner Days MCCLXIII (1263)

by C. H. J. Snider

SUNDAY'S million dollar gale recalled Capt. Dave Reynold's story of the schooner Baltic one March long ago. Let him tell it:

"Spring of '78 I think it was I was mate with Capt. John Andrew of Oakville - Three-fingered Jack, they called him - in the fore-n-after Baltic of Wellington Square.

Old Capt. Bob Wilson had taken her across the ocean to Liverpool with flour from Col. Chisholm's Oakville mill in 1854, I've heard, but that would be before I was born. We'd fitted out early this year, and made five trips to Oswego before March was out.

Half way down the lake on the sixth trip we had a string of squalls, each harder than the last. We couldn't carry a stitch of canvas. In fact we got both foresail and mainsail torn before we had gaskets on them.

Showing no sail we couldn't heave her to. To keep her out of the trough we let go both anchors, with a good scope of chain. Being in mid lake, with a hundred fathoms under us, we found no bottom, but the anchors down made her tail off from the wind and ride head to, instead of rolling her spars out.

It was bitter cold. One man on deck only for anchor watch, and him relieved every half hour.

It was cosy in the forecastle over the red-hot pot-bellied stove, and the cook kept a good fire in the galley, with the kettle on all the time. We had lots of chain out, and knew we would hear from the bottom long before we would sight the shore.

About midnight the windlass began to creek and growl, and through the Baltic you could feel a shaking grinding.

"She's smelling the bottom!" roared the Old Man down the forescuttle. "Rouse out two more shots of chain from the lockers and give her more on both anchors!"

Overhauling that much chain and easing it out by hand and chain hook made everybody sweat in the blustery blowy blackness. The lake was as dark as a preacher's hat. A red glare coming and going to the southeast spelled the foundry furnaces of Charlotte at the Genesee. Braddock's Point light came and went as through clouds of flying spray.

Jack Andrew stamped along the short quarterdeck, peeking into the binnacle every five minutes to see if the bearings of the two lights changed. Our anchors were just catching the high spots of the ridges on the lake bottom, checking our drift, but not stopping it. The south shore is poor holding ground unless you catch the clay or boulders. The water is sometimes shoal two miles out.

"Dave!" roarded the Old Man, "Get that squaresail ready for spreading in nothing flat! When those hooks tak'a-holt in soundings ye'll see fireworks. If the chains part, give her the squaretail without waiting to be told. I'll want to pile her onto the beach with so much headway that she'll land uptown in Rochester."

We had a brand new square-sail, that set by hauling out to the yardarms, and brailed in to the mast. The head traveled on rings on the yard. We pounded the brails and the headrings and the canvas itself free of frozen spray, and cleared the blocks of ice. We knew our lives depended on shoving the Baltic so far up the beach if she did strike that we could jump ashore before the breakers would smash her up and drag us smile into the lake with the backwash and undertow.

Daylight came. We were two miles out. Our anchors were holding, though drawing inch by inch through the yielding sand. The chain cables struck sparks even in daylight from the iron-rimmed hawsepipes, as she reared and plunged, and they sawed and ground.

The beach was a lather of bursting seas, unable to run back to the wild lake before a new battalion burst.

No tug could or would come out from port for us, lifesavers could not get off the beach. Besides, we didn't want either - while our chains held.

We watched the wood smoke, from the Charley Noble and the galley chimney. It was whirling lakeward, not landward. The wind was beginning to come offshore! The cook had a hot breakfast for us - bacon and eggs and fried potatoes and coffee.

It was nightfall before we dare heave up our anchors. Every fathom of cable came in over the windlass barrel shining like a silver watch chain. Both anchors too were polished like ploughshares, through miles of rubbing by the yielding sand.

We had sewed up our torn foresail and mainsail, and set them and went on rejoicing."