Susan Peterson Gateley - Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2012 by Susan Peterson Gateley

All rights reserved

Cover painting by Peter Rindlisbacher.

First published 2012

e-book edition 2012

ISBN 978.1.61423.605.4

print ISBN 978.1.60949.684.5

Library of Congress CIP data applied for.

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

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A Young Boys Prayer,

by Sally Hendee

When he was but a boy, he stood upon the great seas shore.

He said a prayer that he would, one day, share the vast realms lore.

Be careful what you ask old fisherman once said.

Too many have been called by himnow neath him they lay dead.

Many young a noble hearts were stilled in dark and deep

Unfinished lives whose bones shift with the tide but never sleep.

The young boy neer spoke those words againat least not said aloud.

But silently the wish went ona quiet one he vowed.

He thought the old man foolish for his words about the sea

Perhaps his age had taken all the dreams that set him free.

Take me, Take me young man said, to some great distant shore.

Id rather be out in the sea, than landed evermore.

He visited that changing beach until he was a man,

shouting mutely at the tides, he is still, restless, boy demands.

Then came the day he thought dreams had come to pass

freeing him of grounded dutieseven his faire lass.

Old man who warned him long ago had gone since that first vow.

The young man knew the time to venture seaward would be now.

He fit his life into a bag that he hung over his shoulder,

finally took steps he would have years ago if bolder.

He turned, looked back with his last few steps from land.

With left arm holding all he owned, he waved with his right hand.

On the pier stood a lovely girl with her endless, salt tears flowing,

who could not stop the man she loved so very much from going.

Did he remember the parting scene as ship pulled from all he knew?

Was that fleeting feeling worth his life that now was through?

For almost as soon as ship had cleared all sight of land,

a great storm shivered every timber, till it rested in sea floor sand.

No more longing of boys prayers run in his years.

No more would he see his sweet girls mournful tears.

He finally got his life long wish to be part of sailors lore

for now he rests, his bones unmarked, on deep, dark ocean floor.

CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Shipwrecks are part of Lake Ontarios history. But so are innovation, wealth building, heroism and bungling on a grand scale. Youll find examples of each of these actions in this collection of historic incidents and personalities who once worked on and by the waters of this Great Lake between 1728 and the present.

Ive never been involved personally with a real shipwreck. But many years ago, nature gave me a hint of what it feels like. My small sailboat and I were running for shelter, trying to beat an oncoming thunderstorm. I was about one hundred yards from the bay shore on a sultry summer evening when the squall struck. I had taken my sails down and had the throttle wide open on my three-horse outboard as I scurried toward the shelter of the land when the first gust slammed us. It immediately shoved the bow of my boat off course and turned me broadside. My boat heeled sharply under bare poles as the windage of her rigging and mast acted as a sail. The wind then got under the boats bottom, flipped her over and dumped me in the drink. My little outboard was still running when it and I hit the water.

As I paddled around the capsized boat in the warm bay (in an uncharacteristic fit of foresight, I had put my life jacket on previously), I kept saying out loud, I dont believe this! Things had gone out of control in a moment. I found it difficult to swim against the wind and six-inch chop. Unnerved, I grabbed the stern and hung on. Within minutes, I was rescued and my swamped boat taken in tow by a sympathetic cottager with an outboard skiff who had watched the whole fiasco. I was told afterward that a nearby anemometer registered a seventy-mile-per-hour gust.

My shipwreck was short-lived. The only damage was to my ego, and the only loss was that of my boats rudder. Since then, Ive ducked other summer squalls as Ive tried to avoid trouble on the big lake. Others have been less successful. A couple of years ago, a fellow drowned in seven feet of water in Sodus Bay. He had gone overboard on a fine sunny spring day on purpose to free a fouled prop and underestimated how cold the water still was.

Ive never found a victims body either, though I know people who have. I am a summer sailor, and most of the shipwrecks Ive seen would more properly be termed mishaps. I once saw an upside-down helicopter that was kept up by its landing pontoons. The crew had all been rescued hours before. I walked around a friends beached twenty-two-foot sailboat near Pultneyville that had drifted ashore after the rudder broke and have observed derelict wrecks abandoned on the shores of a couple of Caribbean islands. Accidents do happenusually very quickly.

The subject of shipwrecks depresses most sailors, who try hard to keep the side of the boat with the sticks on it pointing up. But shipwrecks make for compelling literature, and the events before, during and after a wreck can be educational. Shipwrecks, unlike plane and car crashes, are also often fairly drawn-out affairs. The Titanic, whose end still fascinates us one hundred years later, took two hours to sink. This allows ample time for all sorts of intense human action and interaction. We are still fascinated by the story of the Titanics end and that of her passengers and crew. Lake Ontario, thankfully, never lost a large passenger steamer like the Titanic in open water. But smaller disasters just as gruesome occurred here. The end of the steamer Ocean Wave that burned off Prince Edward County on a cold April night in 1853 comes to mind. About seventeen of the twenty-three passengers died in the fire fueled by the wooden hull and the melted butter cargo that ran in flaming torrents off the ships sides.

I believe we should preserve historic shipwreck literature for the lessons it teaches about the lake and our relationship to it. The lake is often overlooked by non-boating residents and policy makers in the region, yet it still matters. Its still important, and not just to south shore fruit farmers or town tax assessors. Once, thousands of people with transportation industry jobs made a good lake-related living here. Today, lakeshore real estate development and energy production continue to produce profits. So why write a book about nineteenth-century shipwrecks? They are grim reminders of the limits of technology. Though we no longer move cargo around the lake with engineless schooners, todays transportation and energy production systems can still fail. Lake Ontario, with its shoreline fleet of aging nuclear reactors, could be the scene of the next Fukushima nuclear meltdown. We are blessed with some of the oldest commercial nukes in North America here on the lake.