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A Contrast—A HE first steamers on any of the Great Lakes went into commis- sion on Lake Ontario in 1817, and this year, 1917, the centennial anni- versary of the first appearance of these ‘small crude forerunners of the mighty Lake fleets of today seems a_ specially appropriate time for a short story deal- ing chiefly with the steamers, conditions and events of the first 15 years of steam navigation on the lakes. The pioneers of 1817 were FRONTENAC, under the British flag, and Onrario, under the American. FRONTENAC was built at Finkle’s Point, 18 miles up the Bay of Quinte from Kingston, and Ontario at Sackett’s Harbor, N. Y. The Canadian ship was first under con- struction and first in the' water. She was launched Sept. 7, 1816, and immediately “proceeded to Kingston to lay up”. The Kingston Gagette of June 7, 1817, says, “The FrontenAc left this port on Thurs- day, the 5th inst., on her first trip to the head of the lake.” Construction was started on ONTARIO in August, 1816, and, very early in April, 1817, she started from Sackett’s Harbor for the first real tty-out of steam propulsion on the long run through the open lake to the Niagara river at its western end. In making this try-out, she was apparently about ‘two months ahead of FRonTeNac, al- though the latter was launched early in the preceding autumn “with engines aboard”. : Rude Lessons from the Wind: On this trip, OnrAario met with fair weather and a quiet sea until she was getting away from the Genesee river, when a northeast wind set her rolling, and her people learned for the first time that paddle-wheel shafts must be fastened at the outer bearings. ONTARIO is said to have been the first steamer operated in a heavy enough sea to dem- onstrate this point. At any rate, her shafts lifted and tore things to pieces, By Frank R. Rosseel Illustrated by Original, Copyrighted Drawings by the Author and she put back; thereafter wheel shafts were made fast in their bear- ings. Ontario was 110 feet long on deck and 24 feet beam, with 8% feet depth of hold and 237 tons burden; she had a low pressure beam engine with: a 34-inch cylinder, 4-foot stroke. She had two masts and full fore-and- aft rig. FRontENAc was 170 feet long on deck and 32 feet beam with a registered tonnage about 700. The cir- cumference of her paddle wheels was about 40 feet. She had three masts with fore-and-aft sails throughout. Ogdensburg, N. Y., and ‘ Prescott, Ontario, 70 miles down the St. Law- rence and a few milé§ ‘above the first rapids in that. river, were the natural eastern terminals for the first Lake Ontario steamboats, there being then no canals on the river. ONTARIO, on ac- count of her light draft, found no diffi- ulty in navigating the treacherous and uncharted Thousand Islands, and ran regularly between Lewiston on _ the # THE AUTHOR From a photograph taken at Cross Over Island Light, St. Lawrence River 135 river Niagara FRONTENAC, drawing 10 feet, picked up a shoal on her first trip to Prescott and thereafter kept out of the river, making Kingston her eastern terminal and Ogdensburg; but point. Her run was from Kingston to York (now Toronto) and across the Lake to Niagara, and her schedule called for three round trips per month. No Speed to Brag About The old Lake Captain to whose writ- ings and pictures I refer at length later on, said Onrario’s speed was about seven miles per hour. This was, no doubt, her best. Another historian says she seldom made over five miles per hour. I have found no record of FRONTENAC’S speed, but I doubt if she made much better time than Onrario. FRONTENAC was burned in 1827 in the Niagara river, and Onrarto was hauled out and broken up at Oswego in 1832. The opening of the service of these pioneer steamers was a greater event in its day along the shores of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence than the opening of regular service with aero- planes would be today or would have been five years ago. The era of startling inventions was just beginning. Since the beginnings of civilization the means of travel by land or by water had changed but little, and along the north- ern frontier a hundred years ago land journeys were made on foot, on horse- back, or behind plodding ox teams, over rough roads, and those who went by water found passage, in canoes, Durham boats, arks, or small schooners. The railroad was still far in the future. I can well understand the wonder and awe with which the inhabitants gathered in each little lake port to see “the steamboat”, greeting her arrival with firing of cannon and ringing of bells. Today a thousand papers and _peri- odicals present to the public reliable reproductions of photographs of new ships, on the stocks, being launched,