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For Want of a Lighthouse
Building the Lighthouses of Eastern Lake Ontario 1828â"1914
By Marc Seguin Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Marc Seguin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-5673-8
CHAPTER 1
Lake Ontario
Everywhere beset with ducks and drakes.
(Sir Richard Bonnycastle, 1846)
Long before any lighthouses were built on the Great Lakes, the first commercial trading vessels on these inland seas were undoubtedly the canoes of the First Nations peoples. The first European sailing ship on Lake Ontario appeared in the late 17th Century when the French launched the Frontenac at Cataraqui (now Kingston) in 1678. By the mid-18th Century, both the French navy and Britain's Royal Navy had small fleets of bateaux, sloops and schooners built to support the fur trade around Lake Ontario. Until 1788, only government-owned ships, mostly naval vessels, were allowed on the Great Lakes. With the increase in population on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario due to the settlement of Loyalists displaced after the American War for Independence, the first privately owned sailing ships were permitted to sail the Great Lakes for purely commercial purposes:
An Ordinance, For promoting the Inland Navigation.
Whereas present circumstances do not require that the transport of merchandize and peltries over the upper lakes should be carried on solely by vessels belonging to His Majesty, and the thriving situation of the new settlements of loyalists in the Western-country [west of Montreal, in what is now the Province of Ontario], makes it expedient under certain restrictions, to facilitate the transport of a variety of other articles across those Lakes, which will tend to increase the exports of this Province, and consequently to augment its commerce, be it therefore enacted ... that it shall and may be lawful for all his Majesty's good and liege subjects trading to the Western-country by the way of the great Lakes, who shall have taken out the usual pass conformable to the law, to cause such their effects and merchandize as shall be specified in the said pass, to be waterborne in any kind of vessel under the burthen of ninety tons, if the same be built and launched in any part or place within his Majesty's government, and all the owners of the bottom and cargo, and the captain, conductor, crew and navigators shall (since the first of May, 1783.) have taken the oath of allegiance to his Majesty. ...
And be it also enacted by the same authority, that nothing in this Act shall be construed to affect any small vessels under the burthen of five tons, found navigating the river St. Lawrence and the bay of Quinty [Quinte], on the North-eastern side of Lake Ontario, for the convenience of the loyalists and others in their settlements. ...
This law recognized the economic reality that where there are settlements there is commerce and trade, and that trade was highly dependent on the efficient transportation of goods. With the absence of passable roads, it was the lakes and rivers of the interior of the country, especially the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, that were the most practical transportation routes available.
When the old province of Quebec was divided to form Upper Canada and Lower Canada in 1791, only bateaux and a few British government ships could be found sailing Lake Ontario. The first commercial merchant ship, the York, was launched in 1793.
Three years later, a traveler from Dublin, Ireland, Isaac Weld, observed that:
Several decked merchant vessels, schooners, and sloops, of from fifty to two hundred tons each, and also numberless large sailing bateaux, are kept employed on Lake Ontario. No vessels are deemed proper for the navigation of these lakes but complete sea boats, or else flat bottomed vessels, such as canoes and bateaux, that can safely run ashore on an emergency. At present the people of the United States have no other vessels than bateaux on the lake. ...
The same year that Weld was travelling through Upper Canada, Jay's Treaty, the "Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation", between the United States and Great Britain, came into effect and the handful of commercial vessels plying the Great Lakes were then able, for the first time since the end of the American War for Independence, to openly transport goods across the international boundary to and from ports on both sides of Lake Ontario:
Article III
It is agreed that it shall at all times be free to his majesty's subjects, and to the citizens of the United States, and also to the Indians dwelling on either side of the said boundary line, freely to pass and repass by land or inland navigation, into the respective territories and countries of the two parties, on the continent of America ... and to navigate all the lakes, rivers, and waters thereof, and freely to carry on trade and commerce with each other.
Not only did Jay's Treaty open opportunities for trade between the American Great Lakes states and Upper Canada — the first American ship on Lake Ontario being launched in 1797 — but the treaty stipulated the removal of the British garrisons from the forts at Michilimackinac, Detroit, Niagara, and Oswego, and this lead to an influx of American settlers into Michigan, Ohio and western New York state. By 1800, this region of the United States had a population of more than 100,000 people.
While the population of Upper Canada was slower to increase, steady arrivals of immigrants from Britain and Ireland as well as from the United States continued to add to the number of settlers on the Canadian side the Great Lakes. Weld commented that,
Already are there extensive settlements on the British side of Lake Ontario, at Niagara, at Toronto, at the Bay of Canti [Bay of Quinte], and at Kingston, which contain nearly twenty thousand inhabitants; and on the opposite shore, the people of the states are pushing forward their settlements with the utmost vigour.
By 1806, the population of Upper Canada was estimated at more than 70,000.
Commerce kept pace with this population growth and more ships — the link vital to sustain the growth of this young economy — were built on the Great Lakes to satisfy the demand for the transportation of goods and people, especially on Lake Ontario near whose shores most of Upper Canada's population lived. In 1800, the number of sails that could be counted on Lake Ontario was only a few dozen, and many of those were naval vessels; but by the 1820's, there were virtually no naval vessels on the lake due to the Rush-Bagot Treaty, and the number of commercial vessels exceeded one hundred, including a number of steamboats. By the 1830's, as a result of the construction of the Welland Canal to bypass the Niagara Falls and allow ships to sail between lakes Erie and Ontario, several hundred ships had access to Lake Ontario and were transporting cargoes to Kingston and other Lake Ontario ports from as far away as Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, large ships from Britain and Europe regularly crossed the Atlantic Ocean carrying imported goods and immigrants up the St. Lawrence River as far as Montreal. Beyond that point, their further passage to Upper Canada was effectively blocked by a series of rapids beginning with those at Lachine and including several others to just above the Galops rapids where the towns of Prescott, Ontario and Ogdensburg, New York were established. At Montreal, the cargoes and passengers were transferred onto bateaux or onto larger Durham boats for the difficult passage up the rapids of the upper St. Lawrence River. At Kingston, situated at the extreme north-eastern corner of Lake Ontario where the waters of the lake funnel into the St. Lawrence, freight forwarders would warehouse the goods and forward them onward to ports on Lake Ontario and beyond in company with passengers aboard larger schooners and steamboats capable of navigating the waters of the Great Lakes.
Raw materials and partially manufactured goods including lumber, wheat, flour and potash as well as other cargo destined for overseas markets were likewise trans-shipped at Kingston or Prescott for the return trip down the St. Lawrence. Even after railroads began to slowly develop starting in the mid-19th Century, sloops, schooners, and other sailing ships, and later side-wheeler steamboats and propeller-driven steamships, still provided the most efficient and cost-effective mode of transport for cargo and passengers.
On Lake Ontario, there was also a substantial cross-lake shipping trade between the United States and Canada. Salt from Syracuse and later coal from Pennsylvania as well as manufactured goods were shipped north to Toronto, Belleville, Deseronto, Kingston and other Canadian ports, while barley from Prince Edward County, apples from Northumberland County and lumber from mills all across the north shore of Lake Ontario were shipped south to Rochester's port at Charlotte as well as to Oswego and other ports on the U.S. side of the lake. As canals were dug, improved and expanded and as populations throughout the Great Lakes region increased, the amount of cargo, the variety of goods and the number of ships sailing on Lake Ontario increased throughout the 19th Century.
For much of the 19th Century, Kingston was the most important port on the lake. As the primary trans-shipment point for cargoes passing up and down the St. Lawrence River, most ships sailing Lake Ontario would eventually sail into Kingston harbour. After the completion of the Welland Canal, and later the St. Mary's Canal at Sault Ste. Marie, vessels hailing from every major port on the Great Lakes would call at Kingston. However, mariners faced numerous difficulties while transporting goods and passengers by ship to and from this busy port at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The dangers that made these waters so hazardous were a function of a curious combination of geography, geology, hydrography and, most of all, the weather.
Many early writers penning observations of their journeys made reference to weather conditions while sailing on Lake Ontario. As early as 1788, Deputy Surveyor-General John Collins, commented on the lake and the type of ships suitable for its navigation:
Vessels sailing on these waters being seldom out of sight of land, the navigation must be considered chiefly as pilotage, to which the use of good natural charts are essential and therefore much wanted. Gales of wind, or squalls, rise suddenly upon the lakes, and from the confined state of the waters, or want of sea-room (as it is called), vessels may in some degree be considered as upon a lee shore, and this seems to point out the necessity for their being built on such a construction as will best enable them to work to windward. Schooners should, perhaps, have the preference, as being rather safer than sloops. ...
A "lee shore" is the nearby shore towards which a vessel is being blown by the wind and upon which the vessel could be easily wrecked. In all but a wind directly from the east, vessels sailing the waters of eastern Lake Ontario were almost always on a lee shore.
Isaac Weld tells of his experience sailing on Lake Ontario from Kingston to Niagara in June 1796, and it seems to have been a pleasant and uneventful one:
Lake Ontario is the most easterly of the four large lakes through which the boundary line passes, that separates the United States from the province of Upper Canada. ... This lake is less subject to storms than any of the others, and its waters in general, considering its great expanse, are wonderfully tranquil.
Other writers, however, experienced Lake Ontario very differently. Sailing from Kingston to York in May, 1795, Elizabeth Simcoe, wife of the Lieutenant-Governor, recorded in her journal:
Tues. 12th — I went on board the Onandaga, the Government schooner, but the wind coming ahead, we could not sail.
Fri. 15th — We weighed anchor at twelve. After sailing five miles a head wind and a stiff gale arose; we returned to the harbour. At two the wind changed and we sailed again; a wet afternoon.
Sat. 16th — Unpleasant, cold weather, little wind.
Sun. 17th — About 5 p.m. we were off Gibraltar Point at York [Toronto]. It blew extremely hard from the shore. ...
After having waited three days for a favourable wind, Mrs. Simcoe had spent twenty-seven very rough and wet hours sailing some 140 nautical miles to get back to her home at York.
It was not just sailing vessels that had to contend with the weather. Steamboats first made their appearance on the Great Lakes in 1816 with the construction of the Frontenac, captained by James McKenzie, built at Finkle's Shores near Bath. These ships too were subject to storms on Lake Ontario as reported by The Kingston Chronicle in September 1820:
The Steam Boat Frontenac, which sailed on Monday for York [Toronto] after proceeding as far as Long Point [in Prince Edward County], was compelled by the violence of the gale to return to Kingston on Tuesday evening. She sailed again early yesterday morning, but went no further than the Nine Mile Point [on Simcoe Island, near Kingston], and returned about nine o'clock. The wind for the past two days has blown very strong from the South West. The Steam Boat Sophia, which arrived here on Wednesday, is still detained in port by the weather, as well as the Frontenac.
Another traveler, Edward Talbot, wrote of Lake Ontario in 1824, that:
... It is often visited with violent storms, which render its navigation peculiarly dangerous; and though none except experienced seamen ought to be entrusted with the management of the craft which sail upon its wide but deceitful bosom, yet many fellows have obtained the command of vessels who are utterly ignorant of every thing connected with navigation.
The late-season storms were often especially severe at the eastern end of the lake and were a threat to any ship trying to make one last voyage in November or December before winter weather closed navigation until the following spring. The Kingston Chronicle described one such December storm on eastern Lake Ontario:
The [schooner] Mary Ann left Kingston in a storm of sleet on Thursday the 9th. instant, laden with goods for York [Toronto], and with a great number of passengers, Having passed the Duck Islands, she was proceeding with a fair wind, though against a heavy sea raised by a previous gale from the westward, when a series of disasters befel her which effectually prevented her from reaching her destined port.
The sleet which in falling, adhered to every part of the sails and rigging, soon rendering them unpliant and the ship became unmanageable.
The jib, foresail and mainsail were successively torn to pieces by the wind, the mainmast was sprung in three places and finally went over the side, carrying with it the greater part of the foremast. In this crippled state the vessel was left totally at the mercy of the elements, and was driven towards the south shore about three miles above Oswego. ...
The fate of the Mary Ann, is another added to the many, former proofs of the risks attending the navigation of Lake Ontario at this late period, when gales of wind are as frequent as they are violent, and are moreover often accompanied by storms of snow or sleet which becoming encrusted upon the sails and rigging render them unmanageable on the change of wind, and nautical skills useless.
We lament to learn a report, that three other vessels were wrecked in the gale of the 10th inst. on the United States shore.
Relying on all of his skill and experience, Captain Mosier, master of the Mary Ann, had set all of his anchors in his attempt to prevent a total wreck. The anchors held and the ship, crew, passengers and cargo were all saved. Other ships however were not so fortunate, and as increased trade due to increased population led to an increase in the number of ships sailing Lake Ontario, so too did the number of wrecks increase along with the tragic loss of life and property.
Had Mosier and other captains been able to better predict the storms that resulted in the loss of so many ships and lives, they might have postponed their departures from the safety of sheltered harbours, and these losses may have been reduced. However, weather forecasting in the early 19th Century was, at best, a crude art. Armed only with a barometer and a thermometer, and with a sharp eye to the speed and direction of the wind, ship captains could only guess at what the weather conditions might be once underway and many miles from a harbour of refuge. Meteorology as a science was still in its infancy by the middle of the 19th Century, and it was not until the 1870's that governments, first in the United States and then in Canada, established the first rudimentary meteorological services to forecast storms and to communicate their predictions to ports on the Great Lakes.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from For Want of a Lighthouse by Marc Seguin. Copyright © 2015 Marc Seguin. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
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