How They Lived in the Roundhouse: Schooner Days MCCLXVI (1266)

by C. H. J. Snider

THE NANCY pictured by the log entries of Alexander Mackintosh, who sailed her in the War of 1812 when she was 25 years old, conforms to the enthusiastic admiration of the experienced seaman and merchant, the Hon. John Richardson of Montreal who embarked his fortune in her in 1789.

She was a gay little thing with a saucy sheer, shining sides of glistening ochre, picked out with contrasting bands of black, and perhaps a white boot-topping at the waterline, where her bottom was treated with the customary mixture of tallow and lime or sulphur against fouling.

Her portlids were probably treated outside with the same mixture of ochre and turpentine and resin used to preserve her planking. Inside they might be painted red, like the inside of the bulwarks. The era of black ports chequering white band was still to come when she was launched. Her coloring may have blistered and faded with the seasons, but it would be renewed. The Mackintoshes were not people to let the North-West Company's property run down through parsimony while they were responsible for it.

The rake of the stern beyond its square tuck, and the graceful projection of her cutwater-knee and the rails supporting her brightly painted figurehead full bosomed, full skirted, with hat and feather - increased the impression of dash and spirit given by her silhouette. So, too, did the sharp rake of her mast, especially the mainmast. Privateersmen believed this was for speed.

SWEET AND JAUNTY

She was low in the waist, but held her head and her tail high, like the thoroughbred she was. The strong curve in her sheer made her a good seaboat, and one more easily defended against attacking canoes. There was a stout open rail around her short raised quarterdeck. Beneath this was her cabin, exciting admiring comment even from military and naval officers and the passengers who at times crowded it.

There was a "necessary" or toilet, and a cast-iron stove, both luxuries. The cabin was lighted and ventilated by a skylight above, deadlights in either quarter, possibly quarter-badges and small shuttered ports, and two windows in the stern, secured by solid shutters. The sleeping rooms were double berths in tiers, curtained from the great cabin or central apartment and there were two small staterooms and lockers in the transom.

The captain, mate, and six or eight passengers shared this "roundhouse" as the cabin was called, when it extended from side to side of the vessel under the deck-head formed the half-deck. Six sailors and the cook berthed in the forecastle, bulk-headed off from the hold.

HOW THEY FARED

The food was spartan at times, but not the "hard tack and harness cask" of salt water. The "bread" was usually, but not always, biscuits, and was supplemented by rice, peas and beans and potatoes. "Soft bread" was baked on board and there was flour for puddings, Salt pork and salt beef were the standby, varied by fresh fish, then plentiful on the lakes, and fresh mutton and game. Each man had a gill or quarter pint of rum or whisky a day, and all the lake water he could drink. No mention of tea, coffee, wine or butter. Passengers brought these and such other comforts as they could. There were "two iron cast tea kettles, one broke" in the Nancy's inventory of Dec. 15, 1912, so perhaps they served tea after all. She had three pewter soup basins, so soup must have been on the menu at times.