We also inspected the fast day steamers of the David Mactryne and the Caledonian S.S. companies among them the Columba and Lord of the Isles, whose repute as day steamers for speed and equipment stood on the highest scale and are still (1912) performing their regular service.
While there was much to admire in them, yet we found they were lacking in many things in both exterior and interior fittings which our summer lake passengers would consider important.
For instance—in making a trip one day on one of these steamers there was a nasty drizzling rain. It dribbled down the main stairway which was open to the sky, and there were no awnings or coverings over the upper deck. As a result the passengers, who wished to have fresh air, sat along the deck seats, either huddled together under umbrellas, or wrapped up in the Scotch plaids with which almost everybody seemed to be supplied.
"What for why?" said the captain in reply to a suggestion that a deck awning might be a good thing. "To keep off the rain," was the reply. "Ah mon," said he, "it wad keep aff the sun."
Perhaps in the contrast between the Scotch climate and ours in Canada, he was right, for they cannot spare any of the glimpses of the sun so sparingly vouchsafed to them.
After fullest enquiry and consideration, we came to the conclusion that the best thing we could do was to repeat a highly successful day passenger paddle steamer, the Ozone which had been built on the Clyde, and sent out to Australia a year and a half previously, and had there obtained a splendid record for speed and commercial success.
She was just the size we wanted, 250 feet long, 28' 6" beam in hull, or 52 feet over guards, draft 6 ft. 6 in. Compound engines with two cylinders of 47 inches, and 87 inches, developing 2000 horse power, and sending the steamer at the officially certified speed of 20 miles per hour on the Scotch trials on the Clyde between the Cloch and the Cumbrae.
This would be a step larger and a step faster than Chicora. We arranged with Mr. Robert Morton, the designer and supervisor of the Ozone, for a set of plans and specifications for the hull, which, constructed of Dalzell steel, would be put together on the shores of Lake Ontario, where the upper cabin works would be added according to our own requirements.
They offered to deliver a fully completed steamer at Montreal in four months, but we would have had to cut her and take off one of the guards to get her up through the canals. For my part, I had had quite enough of bringing steamers in parts up the St. Lawrence River on which the smaller canals were still incompleted, so we decided to erect our new steamer on the shores of Lake Ontario.
The engines would be built by Rankin, Blackmore & Co., of Greenrock, from whose shops had come some of the fastest engines on the Clyde. These would be a repetition of the engines which had been so successfully built by them for the Ozone and would be shipped out in parts to Montreal by the first steamer in the spring.