Schooner Days CMXIX (919), 1 October 1949

"Ocean Waves" Faired Ill on Lake

By C.H.J. Snider

Lumber Shoving

Two old captains, Tom Brokenshire and Billy Martin, friends and partners for years – Brokenshire invented the patent iron pump you could see on every schooner's deck seventy years ago – had the schooner Ocean Wave, a handsome clipper-bowed fore-and-after ripening for repairs. They owned her and sailed her together, Jacob Collier of South Marysburg also having "a piece" of her. In 1890 they decided to retire at the end of the season, give up sailing altogether, rebuild the Ocean Wave, and let someone else sail her.

They had a good freight for the Oswego box factory from Trenton, in November, for their last trip. When they had all the light softwood under hatches they were offered an extra inducement if they would take a deckload of hardwood barrel staves and headings. There was quite a lot of it, and it was putting the most weight too high up, but as it was their last trip they thought they might as well make a bang-up freight one way and come home light if necessary, instead of waiting for weather and a homeward load of coal.

So they sailed down the reaches of the Bay of Quinte for the last time, in the old groove they had followed for Oswego since boyhood - sitting deep in the water, but making good time, for the Ocean Wave was smart.

But they never reached Oswego. Two days later a steamer reported passing through what seemed acres of barrel headings, lumber, and the white sides of a schooner's cabin.

The Ocean Wave's was white. She had disappeared with her two captains and crew of five. Either she was run down by a steamer, or the heavy hardwood deckload was too much for her, and she broke up under the strain, spilling her buoyant cargo broadcast and sinking without its support. No evidence was ever found to suggest that she had been struck and no steamer admitted having been in collision with her or showed signs of it. The pitcher had gone to the well once too often. It was no wonder there were no survivors. A cargo of lumber adrift in a rough sea was the deadliest thing a lake sailor could get tangled in. Each plank was a floating buzzsaw and battering ram.

What's in a name?

The Ocean Wave, a charming name in itself, was inappropriate for lake vessels, and what sailors called an "on-lucky" one. This was particularly the feeling in. Prince Edward County, where the burning of the steamer Ocean Wave, in 1853 left a memory of horror comparable to the present Noronic disaster. Almost a century afterwards it is yet spoken of with dread, how the light of the burning steamer shining into the bare windows of houses on the Babylon shore brought great grandparents from their beds thinking the end of the world had come, and how they had to tear down barns to make coffins for the mutilated bodies when they washed ashore, Of the twenty-eight lives lost on this occasion, fifteen were members of the crew, who perished trying to save the passengers.

This other ill-starred bearer of the name was the "independent through line steamer Ocean Wave, Allison Wright, commander," which ran opposition to the steamers Maple Leaf, Arabian, New Era, Champion, Highlander, and Mayflower, which had formed a "through line" giving a 33 hour service between Hamilton and Montreal. The independent made a round trip weekly, leaving Hamilton at 1 p.m. Tuesdays, calling at Wellington Square and Oakville and leaving Toronto at 7 a.m. Wednesdays, calling at Whitby, Oshawa, Port Darlington, Bond Head Harbor (Newcastle), Port Hope, Cobourg, Kingston, St. Lawrence river ports and reaching Montreal Wednesday night, to leave again at noon Thursday and get back to Hamilton by Saturday midnight. Strenuous going, with cordwood for fuel, and the necessity of refueling every place she stopped.

She popped into Case's wharf at Point Traverse, at the tip of Prince Edward County, where was a great fuel pile for lake steamers, wooded, and hurried on at midnight, April 29th, 1853. Within an hour she was a blazing torch, between Point Traverse and the Ducks. The schooners Emblem, of Bronte, Capt. Belyea (later renamed Olivia, of Picton), and Georgina, of Port Dover, Capt. Henderson, stood by and picked up survivors with their yawlboats, although the heat of the blaze nearly set their sails on fire.