Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2017 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== Old Shipping Days in Oswego by J. Leo Finn, 1972 This book furnished with the cooperation of The Oswego County Board of Supervisors -232- WOODEN SHIPS AND IRON MEN The schooners "Lady MacDonald and the "Ella Murton" have been household words around Oswego, and especially the waterfront, for many years. The Lady MacDonald because she hit the lower bridge and the Ella Murton because of her mid-winter arrival. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -233- The Lady MacDonald, commonly known as the Lady Mac, was built at Port Burwill in 1873 for William Youell and Co. She was a canal size three-master of moderate dimensions, a little shoaler and narrower than some, she measured 318 tons register. Hen length was 135 ft., beam 23.2, depth 10.7. She did quite well in the Chicago-Collingwood grain trade and in lumber and timber. In the 1880's one of the Hargrove family of South Marysburg, in Prince Edward County, either Capt. Joseph D. of the Maize, Deputy Reeve, or his brother Capt. W. H. later of the Typo, got her for the prosperous trade with Oswego. That was only seasonal, so she entered the growing waterborne coal trade on Ontario. She left Toronto on August 11, 1888 for Oswego. Half past one Sunday morning, off Oak Orchard on the south shore she was struck by a squall followed by a hard summer gale. Her mizzen sail, an old one, was completely blown away, the foresail was torn and one of the jibs split. It blew hard all Sunday, with thick weather and driving rain, and the Lady MacDonald was badly buffeted about. Being light and empty of cargo she rolled wildly in the high sea and her crew of seven all told had great difficulty repairing the damage. Fortunately there was a new mizzen in the cabin, ready to re- place the old. It was bent, the mainsail reefed, and the foresail patched sufficiently to permit of it being hoisted partly. But the halliards were so snarled with the rolling that they rendered slowly through the blocks or not at all. Both anchors, stowed as usual on the billboards, went adrift. To prevent them from staving in the bows, they were laborously lashed on deck. Limping thus in wild disorder, the schooner approached Oswego Monday afternoon with less wind but the sea still running high, -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -234- the gale had backed into the north. The small amount of ill- balanced sail which the Lady MacDonald was able to set, made her motion the more frightful. The question now was, could she make it. The backwash from the new timber breakwater at Oswego seemed to doom her. Her stern was tossed so high in the turmoil that her rudder was at times, out of water. As she was light, it was only half submerged at best, and frequently it had no control of her. The back seas tossed her bow towards the east pier and the following seas smacked her quarter toward it. For a moment it looked as though she could not make the entrance at all, but would be thrown onto the great stone flat east of the harbor under the hill of Fort Ontario. Then it seemed that she would hit the pier stem on, and break around the corner of it into the same deadly stone bed. Then she shaved the inside of the pier and everyone expected a broad side crash. But the back wash suddenly sucked her away, and she was headed for the beacon light in the middle of the river. Captain Hargrove's problem now was, "how to stop her". He counted on the river's current to stop his vessels way, if he could ever get her into the river's mouth. No current was there at the critical moment. Once out of the toss of the raging billows at the entrance and into smooth waters the Lady MacDonald rushed up the river like a steamboat, her crew fighting madly to lower her sails or get an anchor over the bow to check her. But the halliards were still fouled with the heavy rolling and would not run, and both anchors were so shored and lashed to the deck that they could not be budged. The tug M. J. Cummings, afraid to venture out past the beacon light, got a line on the Lady MacDonald inside. She dragged the tug -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -235- along with her until the water got so shoal that the tug drawing eight feet, bumped the bottom, and threw off the line to save her- self from capsizing. If the schooners centreboard had been down it would have struck the bottom too, and checked her, even if it was crushed. But it had been hove up in the box lest it be lost in the rolling, and in the box it stayed, jammed. Being light, she was only drawing four feet of water, and she hurled herself at the lower bridge like Lars Porsena or Horatius. The crowd watching the battle from the bridge ran screaming right and left but they were still on the bridge deck when they heard and felt the crash. The stout hicklry jibboom, tougher than a tourna- ment lance, and ten times as heavy, hit the bridge square, snapped off at the cap and did $2,500 damage in less than 25 seconds. Tim- bers cracked, planks flew, cast iron supports broke, and railings curled up like wire. The bridge was out of commission for days. Repairs took a month to complete. "If I am liable for this accident," said Capt. Hargrove bitter- ly, the City of Oswego can take my vessel, just as quick as they like. I have been sailing since I was twelve and never had a harder gale than it was on Sunday, and never harder luck than I have had today. She is my lifetime savings. The Sheriff seized her for $2,500 damage claim. She was supposed to be worth $6,000. Cost three times that to build fifteen years before. Bad luck stuck to the Lady MacDonald. Capt. John Ewart, Sr., of Cobourg, bought the Lady MacDonald. His youngest son, David, still living in Cobourg, sailed her. The Ewart boys, John, James and David, were good sailors, and the firm owned four schooners, but -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -236- David had no luck with the Lady MacDonald. He lost her mizzen mast the first year in a squall. They rerigged her with a long main boom and large mainsail, and sailed her as a fore-and-after for the rest of the season. That winter, they put in a new mizzen while tied up at the water works wharf in Toronto, and fitted her out fine with her original rig. Next summer, through a series of trivial acci- dents, she took Fair Haven harbor on the wrong side, and wrecked herself completely against the west pier. It was horrible. You could hear her groan like a human being whose ribs were fractured as she cracked up on the timber cribs. Captain Tom Donnelly, head of the Donnelly Wrecking Co. and Captain John Saunders, master mariner, jointly owned the white schooner "Ella Murton" in Kingston. They had a problem on their knarled and knotted hands. In the last days of 1889, there was a glut of grain for export. It couldn't all be gotten out before the freeze up. Saunders and Donnelly were offered a charter of four cents a bushel for a schooner load of barley from Kingston to Oswego. That was only a daylight run, even on the shortest day of the year, with a fair wind, and the "Murton" was a stepper that could carry 17,000 bushels. The $680 freight offered was more than the "Murton" had netted for the whole season's work. It was good wages for a captain for a year, in those hungry '80's. They tried Insurance Co. after Insurance Co. and not one would take the risk, on either vessel or cargo. All other vessels had stripped and laid up, and Kingston Harbor was skimming over with ice. Captain Saunders appealed to Captain Joe Parsons, of the schooner "Queen of the Lakes", one of the winter-berthed fleet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -237- "Gimme your charter," said Captain Joe, and I'll fit the "Queen" out again and deliver the barley, if you will make it worth my while". This however was paying something for not getting $680. "I don't mind saying that I would have more confidence in you taking the Murton out than if I did it myself" said Captain John. "You go as Captain in her and we will pay you well, and I will go as mate". "All right", said Captain Joe. "Five dollars a day or $25.00 for the run, so that you won't think that I am holding back if we have to wait for weather". They did have to wait until the new year had run eighteen days before Joe got the weather that satisfied him. That morning, bit- ter cold, with the late rising sun low in the sky, they cast off the Murton's frozen mooring lines and mastheaded her two lower sails and four jibs to a gentle wind from the northwest. Southerly winds had held her windbound since the bargain and by the jabble of sea they had kept up had prevented the harbor from freezing. But all the islands in Kingston Harbor were rimmed with ice and white with snow. The tinkle and crackle of skim ice atop the smooth harbor water was replaced by the deep diapason of the roaring bow wave mounting up to the level of the "horsepipes" as she drew clear of the shel- ter of the land. It spurted in through those eye-holes and the scuppers, and made little rivers along the deck, and began spitting and splashing over the weather rail. All the halliard coils and other gear was triced up as high and half barrels of rock salt were lashed under the pinracks. "Keep that salt flying" was Captain Parson's standing order and every -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -238- splash that came overboard was "salted" to keep ice from forming. Before they had passed the Main Ducks and Yorkshire Island it began to snow, and it was really blowing hard. There was no turning back. It snowed so hard that the deck started to drift with it. The crew of four men, at $2,50 a day, "extravagant" wages for 1889 battled the snow with brooms and shovels. They were helped and hindered by the seas, now running high in the open lake. When the Murton would roll to windward and one of those grey beards poured aboard, a snow bank as big as a yawlboat would launch itself to leeward as she rolled back. Some of it would go overboard, some of it frozen slush, would choke the scuppers. With the splashing and the rolling and snow-showers the deck was filled with frozen slush eight inches deep. Neither salt nor brooms or shovels would get rid of it. Every rope, ring and spar was coated. Snow piled in drifts in the belly of the mainsail. The reef-points, lengths of half inch that look like little strings when the sail is set, became blobs of ice as thick as your arm. Frozen spray iced the sails as hard as hollowed granite as high as the highest reef-points. The cook, undaunted, ran the handbell for dinner, sharp at twelve. "Go below, mister, watch and watch and don't linger" said Captain Joe grimly to Mate John and the two men of his watch. "Don't we need all hands" began Captain Saunders, and stopped, suddenly remembering he was then only second fiddle in his own orchestra. It took only ten minutes for the three of them to bolt their hot meat and potatoes, bread and butter, pie and scalding coffee and get their pipes going and their overcoats and mufflers and schooner-caps pulled on and so out into the wind and snow again. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -239- "Maybe she has too much muslin on her", Captain Parsons ex- plained to the owner-mate as the latter took over the wheel. "More canvas, less ice, for we will be that much shorter on passage. We'll be in Oswego in two hours more the way she is going - that is, if we can see the place when we get there. Keep the boys pound- ing the gear and the anchor chains, and go heavy on the salt." "Making any water?" "Don't think so but both pumps are frozen solid." Down the companion way Captain Parsons and his watch dove to wold their food. Out again in ten minutes. In the interval, Capt. Saunders, with a red hot poker had penetrated the covering of the after pump and got the sounding rod down, well coated with ashes. It came up dry. Hurrah! And the snow began to thin. Another Hurrah! And the land loomed up ahead, all mantled with snow. They saw the smoke of Oswego. The elevators that then crowded the east side showed up. The seas were spouting against the river current, and smashing high up the bank under the Fort. The breakwater light, iced to its very windvane, looked like a steamer ploughing towards them, they were coming so fast. Joe Parsons kept the canvas on her until the last minute, and passed it. He was not going to be caught in the backwash of the nor'wester and the outset of the river current, and tossed help- less on the flat stone beach under the Fort. There were no tugs to help - all laid up. The Ella Murton was as much on her own as the Caravel of Columbus. Whoosh! She passed the breakwater. Whoosh! She escaped the dead- ly east pier where so many schooners smashed like egg shells. "Let go your halliards, throat and peak! Let go your jibs! Downhaul everything by the run! sang out Joe. But the sails loaded with snow and ice, were no more manageable than so much corrugated iron sheeting. On every wharf and vessel that the Murton passed the boys tried to get the bite of a line on spile or timberhead, but some missed and others slipped through the mitts of eager hands, and twice lines that held parted. She was going up the river at eight miles an hour against the current, and the crowd lining the first bridge, and cheering the brave arrival, began to scatter east and west - and fast. The year before the Lady MacDonald crashed through that bridge and ruined her owner. With the Murton's icy jibboom-end knocking sparks and icicles from the iron bridge rail, Parsons swung the Murton hard on to the shoal just below the middle bridge pier. She fetched up on the mud and easily warped off and hove over to the elevator. The port Collector, who had libelled the Lady MacDonald for $2,500 on behalf of the City of Oswego, came bustling aboard the Ella Murton with papers all made out. Captains Saunders and Parsons shrank from him like drivers getting a ticket. "No damage to the bridge that a pot of paint won't cover, Captains," said the Col- lector, cheerily. "Here is a free clearance for the Murton whenever ye want to take her home. And here is a box of cigars apiece for ye, and an order for the two best hats money can buy in Oswego, for the first arrival of the season. And so we wish you in Canadaway a "HAPPY NEW YEAR." ==========================================================================