Susan Peterson Gateley

Ariadne's Death Tragedy And Heroism
On Lake Ontario

An old salt once told me “it’s mean lake.” Today most people who sail upon Ontario’s waters do so for pleasure. We rarely see its mean side. When winds roar and shake the trees and dirty brown waves crash onto the beach we sit onshore watching the spindrift blow like snow across the wave crests or jetties and say “I’m glad I’m not out there!” If you haven’t experienced a gale afloat, the violence of wind driven water is difficult to imagine.

Old accounts tell of ships pounded to pieces in a few hours. These were wooden vessels of massive construction and strength. Picture a barn with four inch thick siding bolted and spiked every few inches onto twelve by twelve inch frames spaced perhaps six inches apart with a second layer of four inch siding on the inside of the frames. The main back bone on a big lakes schooner often consisted of not one but two or even three white oak timbers drifted together with iron. The lake was quite capable of tearing such ships apart in a day.

Sometimes it even tore their crews apart. After the Belle Sheridan died on the wave swept stone shore of Prince Edward County a human heart and lungs were picked up from the beach.

Nineteenth century accounts of wrecks often use the verb “founder” when describing a sinking. I had always associated this word with the stumble and collapse of a horse, lamed by improper care. But the dictionary gives among other meanings “the utter failure” of something. When your ship goes out from under your feet that’s a failure all right-akin to watching the space shuttle disintegrate before your eyes.

In reading about the days of sail on the lake, it impresses me how often ships and crews made it safely into port under appalling conditions with equipment that we consider primitive and inadequate today. Their canvas sails were less durable than today’s synthetics. Nor did crews enjoy the reliability of modern navigational aids. More powerful harbor lights, and many more buoys mark shoals and hazards than in the days of kerosene lamps and manned light houses. In snow squalls with zero visibility the schooner crews found their way into port by steering their compass course and timing their route and course changes often estimating speed by the old eyeball method. Sometimes they knew where they were by the look and feel of the water and wave action. They had no radar, radio, auto helm with interface to a chart plotter, sum log or GPS. They had to pay attention back then. A little slip up or a brief lapse could mean a quick end to ship and crew. And when things did go wrong all they had to rely on was their yawl boat and their own strength. Canopied rafts, enclosed life boats, EPIRBS, and survival suits were items of a distant future.

Nowdays North Americans are increasingly isolated from the natural world in general and from the sea in particular. While waterfront property commands premium prices and people scramble to build condos and mini mansions with a view of lake or bay there is less interaction and intimacy with the lake or the sea than ever before in our history. It’s not easy to go to sea these days unless you are in the military or have a yacht. So we must be content now to view the big water as passive spectators. Even those of us who sail on it, are likely to do so with private pleasure boats only in the summer. Ours is a far different and more superficial relationship with the lake than that of the men and women of 1900 who lived and worked upon it for eight months of the year.

Perhaps it is partly our modern isolation from nature along with the historical remoteness that makes for the popularity of shipwrecks....

Shipwrecks are now big business on the Great Lakes with divers spending over 100 million dollars in the US and Canada on wreck excursions. The following is an excerpt from a new book coming out in March 06 “Ariadne’s Death Tales of Heroism And Tragedy On Lake Ontario. (96 pages paperback $9.95) History buffs can go to www.silverwaters.com to learn more about wrecks and rescues from 1830 to 2003 on Lake Ontario.

A Close Call for the schooner Rathbun

After the Civil War, busy Oswego was home port to several steam tugs that assisted sailing ships in and out of the harbor. While most of the time their towing jobs were routine, occasionally the lake tested the courage and ship handling of the tug crews to the utmost. For the most part they responded gallantly, though as we have seen, their battles against the lake did not always come to a happy conclusion. One skirmish with the forces of wind and wave that did end well was the rescue of the Rathbun.

The Canadian two master E.W. Rathbun had set out from Toronto with a cargo of last year’s wheat bound for Oswego at the start of the 1874 navigation season. But after mild March weather had thawed ice locked harbors and waterways, winter made a last stand. On April 4 the temperature dropped to 20 degrees and those few early vessels that did make it into Oswego that day arrived with glazed decks and ice coated rigging. The wind came up strong from the northwest, reaching nearly gale force and driving heavy snow before it. It was a miserable day for the winter weary citizens and sailors of Oswego alike. That afternoon a rumor of a ship in trouble on the lake made the rounds of the foc’s’l and shore side business alike.

Perhaps an idler at Parson’s ship chandlery who claimed the ‘second sight” helped fuel it with his account of a vision he had experienced- that of a disabled vessel driven down the lake, its sails in tatters as it wallowed ice covered among the iron gray seas. Then early that evening word of trouble went around the waterfront. Passengers on the evening train just arrived from Rome NY, had seen a ship below Nine Mile Point anchored on a lee shore and flying signals of distress. The ice banks and mountains along that shore were still high, and if she dragged onto them her men would have little chance to reach land.

When the news reached Oswego’s harbormaster he hurried to the dock where captain James Pappa’s tug the Morey lay. Pappa, was a veteran of many a lake blow. Though only 34 at the time, he was an old hand on the lakes. He had sailed aboard both schooners and steamers for years before acquiring a half interest in and command of the tug C. P. Morey and he knew exactly how serious the Rathbun’s situation was. He immediately volunteered to go the schooner’s aid. The harbor master then rounded up more volunteers including Captain Colwell of the schooner Caroline Marsh and several of his crew who offered to go. Around midnight the tug set out with a lifeboat and the additional volunteer life savers.

Though the wind had dropped a bit and veered southwest it was still strong and bitter cold, too, and the waves were “mountainous” as a contemporary news account puts it. It took the Morey a little over an hour to run down the lake to Nine Mile Point where the Rathbun lay at anchor plunging and rolling with waves washing clean over her bows. The tremendous strain and chafe on the ground tackle and on the ship itself threatened to carry away the chain at anytime. In such a situation more than one wooden ship was literally sawed open after the metal hawse pipes through which the chain passes tore out exposing bare oak planks to the iron links.

Maneuvering as closely to the Rathbun as he dared in the darkness the tug captain launched the lifeboat and the volunteers scrambled aboard and pulled for the ship. Once aboard the schooner they turned to and helped the half frozen crew take a hawser aboard and then retrieve the two anchors. Then the Morey got underway reaching Oswego early Sunday morning with her tow.

Once ashore, the Rathbun’s captain explained that on Saturday afternoon he had sighted Oswego and had trimmed his sails to travel on a reach inshore when the hardware of his foresail sheet block attachment failed. The loose boom swung out and struck the lee rigging so hard it broke one shroud as well as the wooden boom jaws holding it to the mast. The crew struggled to get the foresail down but had a hard time because of the iced up halyards. As the ship luffed up lurching and rolling about, the mainsheet block shackle also failed. (One is tempted to speculate, could these failures have had anything to do with the recent start of navigation? Is it possible someone failed to fish or otherwise secure a key bit of hardware properly?)

With nothing but headsails left to the ship, entering Oswego was impossible in such a wind and sea, so the Rathbun ran down into Mexico Bay. When her captain sighted shore under his bow he let go both anchors on the run, paying out sixty fathoms of chain. And there Captain Pappas had found them, helpless, iced up, frost bitten, and on an icebound lee shore.

Oak Orchard Boat Festival
 

These days wooden boats are a vanishing breed. When we take our old sailboat out it’s not unusual to hear a boater ask "Is that whole thing actually made of wood?" Yet old woodies do have an undeniable charm.

That appeal has prompted folks to organize a number of wooden boat shows and festivals around the country. I’ve attended wooden boat gatherings in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Canada, the Adirondacks and among the Thousand Islands and most recently one in Orleans County on Oak Orchard Creek ( a pretty nice cruising destination even if you aren't going to a boat fest).

The Orleans County festival only started up about five years ago but it has grown quickly and this past August attracted the greatest number and variety of boats yet.  It's held at the county marina park on the creek's east side, a splendid facility.  A few trips up and down the stairs to the docks a few times will take some pounds off though.

Boats ranging from 8 to 51 feet in length attended. Some were new and recently built. Some were a hundred years old. There were canoes, rowboats, schooners, and power cruisers. There was also lots of music, lots of good food and much laughter and good times. The boat parade on Saturday afternoon went off without a hitch- no one collided or sank and the bagpiper playing aboard the fifty year old Nova Scotia built schooner was a big hit.

The Oak Orchard Wooden Boat Festival got started when Ray Leonard, owner of a veritable fleet of woodies, decided along with some friends and family to get all the boats together. The first festival was modest but great fun. Leonard and associates never looked back, and every year since has been bigger and better with more music, more shows and more boats.

This year the festival organizers made a special effort to broaden the gathering’s variety by attracting more sailboats. They succeeded in snagging not one but two old gaff rigged schooners, one a seventy one year old yacht from Wilson NY, the other a slightly younger gaffer from Fair Haven ( Sara B whose website is at www.sarab.brownroad.com). Both vessels were similarly sized, about fifty feet overall, and both had been recently rescued by new owners from very close encounters with the compost pile.

In sharp contrast to these two elderly wooden "ladies", another sailboat was the Nina S. Benjamin, an utterly enchanting little 18 foot yawl, built of mahogany by her owner. I’ve rarely seen a more careful and skillful job of amateur construction. With her gleaming bright work and graceful curves, she was a work of art and a tribute to the skill and patience of her creator.

Dozens of old runabouts and launches were pulled out of barns and garages, hosed off and cleaned up and brought to the festival. Dick Ameigh and his wife Bev brought their delightful little 1957 fourteen foot Baracuda, the "Tinkerbelle" to the festival. Like Nina S this too, was an amateur built boat. "Tinkerbelle" was a kit boat, sold in pre cut pieces for do-it-yourselfers to assemble at a time when tens of thousands of back yard built boats were being created on weekends and evenings by self taught shipwrights and tinkerers. The Ameigh’s trailered "Tinkerbelle" to the show on a 1957 boat trailer behind a fully restored 1957 Convertible. The rig was parked and "manned" by several department store manikins dressed in the latest fashion of their day, while the car radio played period pop tunes.

The local chapter of the Heritage Canoe Association put in an appearance with several sleek gleaming restored canoes. A craftsman worked on a battered shell of a canoe under a tent so festival goers could watch ribs being steam bent and thin cedar planking being fitted.

Not all the boats displayed were old. A miniature tug boat and an eight foot dinghy were among the recently built exhibits. And nearly all the restored boats had been rescued from the scrap heap by their owners. Non- boaters found diversions at the festival with the juggling pirate who tossed real knives in the air and with fishing demos and musical offerings ranging from gospel to blue grass and blues.

The homegrown informal aspect of this gathering is in sharp contrast to some of the more polished and upscale boat shows I’ve attended. There were no professional judges here and no competition or subjective standards for exhibitors to deal with. The only prizes awarded were for categories such as People’s Choice or Furthest Traveled. The purpose of the Orleans County Wooden Boat Festival was to celebrate and perhaps do a bit of educating about wooden boats. Old friends and acquaintances who hadn’t seen each other in years met here and new friends and connections were made, too, as people shared their common affection for old boats and wooden boats. Owners swapped restoration tips and rot stories. Information on where to find parts for a 1930 Graymarine or the best caulking method for leaky decks was exchanged along with website and email addresses and boat owners vowed to keep in touch after the festival.

When it was all over and the fleet of old timers had dispersed by land and sea, a number of crews vowed to return next year to what is shaping up to be a great little gathering and festival. Join them next summer at the Orleans County Marine Park, east side of Oak Orchard Creek just above the bridge. Mark your calendar for August 11 and 12th 2007 and visit the festival on the web at:
http://www.woodenboatfest.com.