Papa of Plenty, Louis Shickluna

Toronto Telegram, 9 August 1947
Schooner Days DCCCVII (807)
By C.H.J. Snider

His Family of "Barques, Brigs and Fore-and-Afts" and Steamers, Propellers, Tugs and Barges, Numbered Under Two Hundred and Over Fifty

MOST prolific parent of lake vessels, especially schooners, was the late Lewis Shickluna of St. Catharines, a Maltese carpenter in the Royal Navy dockyards at Valetta who must have come to America almost as soon as he was "out of his time" as an apprentice. He was born in 1808 and had built a vessel at Youngstown, N.Y., by 1829, when he was twenty-one. Soon afterwards he worked at building the Royal William, Canada's first ocean-crossing steamship, at Quebec, in 1831.

His first name, which may have been Luigi in Malta, is spelled Lewis and Louis indifferently in Canadian records. He usually contented himself with the initial "L" when he made a signature. His last name suffered considerable mutilation at the hands of careless clerks. "Spickiluna", "Shickaluna" and "Shickurna" are some of their guesses. Perhaps if he had spelled it Cicluna when he first came to America it might have fared better. His investment in shipbuilding was estimated at $4,000,000 by the Canadian Illustrated News at the height of his career in 1871. His ships and shipyards have all vanished but his descendants today are highly respected residents of St. Catharines and Port Colborne.

Second through Canal

The earliest vessel credited to Shickluna by that nestor of lake lore, Capt. James C. Van Cleve, who sailed Lake Ontario in 1826, is the schooner R. H. Boughton of Youngstown, N.Y. She was afloat and in active service by November, 1829, for she was the first American vessel to pass through the spade-new Welland canal, when it was opened in that month. She followed the Canadian schooner Jane and Ann, first vessel to pass by water from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. The canal then, with forty locks, only carried vessels from the Twelve Mile Creek to Chippewa.

Oxen towed them up the Niagara River to Lake Erie. Later connection was made through the Chippewa River and the "feeder canal" which went to the Grand River at Port Maitland. The Welland Canal was later pushed through direct to Lake Erie at Gravelly Bay, which became Port Colborne.

Grew with the Welland

The Welland Canal was significant in the life of Shickluna, for while he was only a transient ship carpenter in his early years, and then built vessels wherever he was required, from Prescott to Niagara, as early as 1836 he established a dock-yard at Shipman's Corner on the Welland Canal near old Lock 3. He may have built vessels in his dock before 1842, but the first six years seem to have been devoted to repair work on the new canallers. In 1842 he built the schooner Lady Bagot there. After the Corner became the Garden City of St. Catharines he turned out more than 50 ships in fewer than 50 years.

He built and rebuilt everything – yachts, schooners, barges, tugs, propellers and passenger steamers. So far as is known he left no catalogue of his creations, but registers show him the builder of:

These are not all of his buildings, merely all so far discovered in the registers. It has been said that he added two hundred bottoms to lake traffic. Probably an exaggeration, but his output was large. The yacht he is known to have built was the Oriole I in 1871, schooner-rigged centreboarder, first of four Orioles to wear the Gooderham colors, a red and white pendant with a golden bird.

The following list of Shickluna's efforts is possibly far from complete, but consecutive. Where the place of building is not mentioned it was St. Catharines:

We hope to be able to tell more about Louis Shickluna and his ships.