WHEN CANVAS WAS KING YACHTS
GREAT LAKES YACHTING
HISTORY
Until the late 18th century, aside from missionaries, fur trappers, traders and a few miners, there were few europeans living north of the Great Lakes. In an attempt to reassure the Indian population following the transfer of sovereignty of the Great lakes area from the France, a proclamation was issued by King George III effectively banning immigration to "any lands beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the West or Northwest."
The history of the Great Lakes area was dramatically changed by the American Revolution because it prompted immigration into British North America. Following the first wave of loyalist immigration in 1784 growth of the area was quite rapid. For instance the town of York (now Toronto) had a population of 346 by the year 1802. By the year 1814 it had a population of 1200, and was growing even more rapidly. The main, and sometimes the only, means of transportation to and from the many burgeoning settlements was by way of the lakes and rivers.
There were "yachts" on Lake Ontario a early as the year 1799 when the Toronto Yacht was built at the mouth of the Humber river, in what is now Toronto. The Upper Canada Gazette of September 24th, 1799 states:
The Toronto Yacht, Captain Baker, will, in the course of the next few days, be ready to make her first trip. She is one of the handsomest vessels of her size that ever swam upon the Ontario, and if we are permitted to judge from her appearance and to do her justice we must say that she bids fair to be one of the swiftest sailing vessels. She is admirably well calculated for the reception of passengers, and can with propriety boast of the most experienced officers and men.
The Toronto Yacht was not a pleasure vessel as we refer to the yachts of today. It carried mail and passengers between Niagara and York for many years before being wrecked off Gibraltar Point in 1812.
Another "Yacht" was the Bullfrog . An advertisement in 1834 described her as
"60 tons, completely rigged and well furnished in every respect" Earlier references, 1828, indicated she had been used as the vessel for the voyages of the Governor of Upper Canada, as was the Toronto Yacht.
Yachting, as a private sport, was flourishing in Toronto as early as 1832. An advertisement of that year in the York Sapper and Miner, October 18th, offered for sale "the fast sailing cutter Dart, 12 1/2 tons burthen, with or without rigging, sails and other furniture." She belonged to Captain, the Hon. John Elmsley, R.N., of York. The earliest authentic picture of lake yachting is a valuable engraving in Gleason's Pictorial, attributed to Mr. William Armstrong, a Toronto artist and ardent yachtsman. It shows the "fleet of the Toronto Boat Club coming into harbour" in 1853, and it is probably quite accurate. The yachts shown are two cutters, a schooner, a sloop with Bermuda rig much like our modern Marconi rig, and a lugger. The Royal Canadian Yacht Club was founded in 1852, as the Toronto Boat Club. It is the oldest and largest Freshwater Yacht Club. The rigs and models shown in this picture correspond to some of the eleven yachts in the club's first enrolment.
Sanity has been the keyword in the design of the yachts which have sailed the Great Lakes for the last 165 years. Sensible, beautiful, and practice. There have been no extreme yachts such as the Bermuda sailing dinghy with a bowsprit as long as itself, and a main boom of double the length. There have been no frightening yachts such as the Australian 18 footers, or the Australian Yachts of many years ago built two beams to a length to carry their enormous ring tailed mainsails and spinnakers. There have been no monstrosities of the double hulled and tipple hulled combinations of wire, trusswork and canvas that has from time to time become popular on salt water.
The deathtrap, a sand bagger with shifting ballast, was tried and dropped very quickly. Despite shallow harbour entrances, the centreboarder has never been very popular in yachts. The full keeled or fin keeled designs by some of the worlds great designers have always been favoured. The Canada's Cup boats, such as the Canada, Invader, Strathcona, Adele, all the way to Evergreen and Coug; the Fisher Cup boat of schooner days, the Norah, the Atalanta (which made an unsuccessful bid for the America's Cup) Minota and Beaver; "P" boats such as Patricia and Cara Mia; and other great yachts such as the Gorilla, White Wings, Merrythought, the Orioles I, II, III and IV, Ina, Aileen, Annie Cuthburt, Dauntless, Cora, Nora; and the more modern vessels such as Red Jacket (Now Mia's Red Jacket.) and many more, have made Canada famous, not only on the Great Lakes but around the world.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the yacht fleet of the Great Lakes numbered over 1,000 vessels flying betweem between thirty and fourty club burgees. The sailing fleet included vessels from 12 foot dinghies to 100 foot schooners. Between these extremes were open and decked skiffs, with fin keels, with centreboards, with bilge boards; mackinaw boats, open or cabin, with or without bowsprits; cat boats with one mast and cat yawls with two masts; sloops, yawls, and cutters, "bald headed" and club-topsailed .
Yachting has been described as "the action, fact or pastime of racing or cruising pleasure vessels."
THIS WEBSITE is an attempt to acquaint modern day sailors, and would be sailors, with some historical background to yachting on the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Ontario during that one hundred year period between 1832, and 1932 and just beyond, We have tried to provide a montage, the blending of informnation and stories about the yachts, the men who designed them and the men who sailed them.
YACHTING ON LAKE ONTARIO
Lake Ontario is the lowest and loveliest of the five Great Lakes. It has everything good to offer the cruising or racing sailor.
It is difficult to compare Lake Ontario with the fury of either the Atlantic or the Pacific but it can be a challenge for the stoutest craft. To "take everything Lake Ontario can send" a yacht has to be well found. As ports are frequent, and shelter is seldom farther to seek than 20 miles, quite tiny craft can coast the lake in safety. Eight to ten knot strength is the average summer breeze, and while squalls occur, they give fair warning and soon blow out. But a thirty and forty knot gale, with short seas running 15 feet high, sometimes scourges the lake even in summer time. In spring and fall the wind may attain a velocity of 60 knots.
Salt water sailors have scoffed at the "puddle perils" of the Great Lakes - having never experiencing them. On the ocean the well-founded sailing vessel fears nothing while she has sea room She can fight and conquer wind and wave so long as the land does not conspire against her. On the lakes, even on the greatest of the Great, there is no sea room, in the sense that it is not possible to lie hove to, or scud under bare poles, before the fury of the a gale, day after day. A few hours fetches the vessel up on a lee shore. She must either find shelter or pound to pieces. The land always menaces her.
The short chop of the lakes can become quite vicious. The spring and the fall storms on the lakes are particularly hazardous, and if experienced in a small craft, one can understand why there were approximately 4,000 to 5,000 wrecks on the lakes in the hundred years of pioneering up to the early 1900s.
For the yachtsman there is a choice of three courses "up the lake" from Kingston. In Ontario they say "up" for westward and "down" for eastward, because all the water of the Great Lakes flows eastwardly through Ontario with almost imperceptible current, to escape to the sea "down" the St. Lawrence River.
From Kingston you can take a mid-lake course that means being out of sight of land a soon as you have "sunk" the islands at the foot of the lake. Ontario looks exactly like the ocean, once you leave the shore, except that the long heave and swell of the ocean are absent. On either hand a clean cut horizon seems to run to infinity; water, water, everywhere, and millions of gallons to drink; for in the early days of yachting this was clear and fresh and sweet, 123 fathoms deep in the "deep hole," and 50 miles from shore to shore. As scenery, such an endless stretch of blue may be monotonous. There is deep water to within a mile of the shore almost everywhere and in many places large craft sail within a quarter of a mile of the beach; consequently, it is more interesting to follow the coast.
You can steer south for fifty miles across the broad foot of the lake and pick up the south shore at Oswego, then follow the United States side; or you can take the Canadian side and get up by two routes, either "outside" in deep water, passing the great peninsula of Prince Edward County on your starboard side, or "inside" leaving the County of Prince Edward to port. This gives you a hundred miles of winding through the sheltered Bay of Quinte, where the warm water is bright and safe to those that follow the channels to navigate a boat of 10 foot draught.
Summer paradise is the Bay of Quinte, with birds singing all day long in the woods on either bank, and good fishing in every nook and cove. Sometimes the shores are steep-to, as at Glenora with its Stone Mill and Lake-on-the-Mountain. From the deck you could, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pick blueberries from the limestone craigs. Elsewhere are stretches of shoal water and marsh, haunts of ducks. Rich farming country surrounds the Bay, with brisk towns, large and small like Bath, Picton, Deseronto, Napanee, Trenton, Belleville and Brighton. Almost any place is a safe anchorage if your ground-tackle is good, for the sea cannot make up. The shores are never more than six miles apart; in some places only 400 yards.
A six mile canal, a channel without any locks, cuts the narrow isthmus which connects the Prince Edward peninsula with the main land at the western end of the Bay of Quinte. Passing through it, at Presqu'ille you emerge into Lake Ontario and your track unites with the one you would have made coasting up Prince Edward by the shelterless, but shorter, outside route. For the next hundred miles ports are plentiful, - Cobourg, Port Hope, Newcastle, Bowmanville (Port Darlington) Whitby, Toronto, Oakville and Hamilton, in the early days of yachting, were all available for large yachts, and at the present time, in addition, Oshawa, Frenchman's Bay, Port Credit and Bronte.
Along the south shore ports are fewer and farther between, and as the bottom is shoal for some distance, a wider berth has to be given the shore at places, but from Hamilton, at the head of the lake, on the fine enclosed water of Burlington Bay, daylight runs will carry you all around the south shore back to your starting point at Kingston. You would look into Port Dalhousie and the Niagara River, which is the boundary line with the United States, and then the delightful ports of Olcott, Oak Orchard, Charlotte (the port of Rochester), Sodus, Fairhaven, Oswego, Henderson Harbour, Sackett's Harbour, Chaumont Bay and Cape Vincent.
Thus after nearly four hundred miles of coasting you have circled the lake, taking as long as you chose.
With such facilities for sailing - plenty of good open water with an average width of 30 miles, no tides or current of consequence, and a splendid season from May to October, with a minimum of gales and squalls, - it is little wonder that yachting has flourished on Lake Ontario. The wonder is that comparatively few have taken advantage of the opportunity.
The hundred year period from 1832 and 1932 was a period of enormous energy, development and transformation. It was a time when sailing was a commercial pursuit, with many working sailors to act as crew. At the turn of the century it was common to have professional sailors as well as amateur sailors to handle the massive sail plans then common on the Great Lakes sailing yachts.
In the nineteenth century cruising was common, but the greatest number of yachts raced. Always there has been the one-off designs. Small boat one design classes sprung up towards the end of the century, allowing a family of modest means to participate in the sport. New racing rules were constantly being developed to improve the fairness of competition.
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