In successive numbers of the Kingston Chronicle, the advertisement of the Frontenac, occupying the width of two columns, conspicuously appears, with a large rude woodcut of a steamer with two smoke-pipes at the top. For the sake of the fares and other particulars, we copy this document (from the Chronicle of April 30, 1819). "The Steamboat Frontenac, James McKenzie, Master, will in future leave the different ports on the following days: viz., Kingston for York, on the 1st, 11th and 21st days of each month. York for Queenston, 3rd, 13th and 23rd days of each month. Niagara for Kingston, 5th, 15th and 25th days of each month. Rates of Passages: From Kingston to York and Niagara, £3. From York to Niagara, £1. Children under three years of age, half-price; above three, and under ten, two-thirds. A Book will be kept for entering the names of passengers, and the berths which they may choose at which time the passage money must be paid. Passengers are allowed sixty pounds weight of baggage; surplus baggage to be paid for at the usual rate. Gentlemen's servants cannot sleep or eat in the Cabin. Deck passengers will pay fifteen shillings, and may either bring their own provisions, or be furnished by the Steward. For each dog brought on board, five shillings. All applications for passage to be made to Capt. McKenzie, on board. Freight will be transported to and from the above places at the rate of four shillings per barrel bulk, and Flour at the customary rate delivered to the different consignees. A list of their names will be put in a conspicuous place on board, which must be deemed a sufficient notice; and the Goods, when taken from the Steamboat will be considered at the risk of the owners. For each small parcel, 2s. 6d., which must be paid on delivery. Kingston, April 28th, 1819." Capt. McKenzie has acquired confidence in himself and his vessel in 1819. An earlier notice in the Chronicle, relating to the Frontenac, was the following. Its terms show the great caution and very salutary fear which governed the action of sea captains, hitherto without experience in such matters, when about to encounter by the aid of steam the perils of a boisterous Lake. "Steamboat Frontenac will sail from Kingston for Niagara, calling at York, on the 1st and 15th days of each month, with as much punctuality as the nature of the Lake navigation will admit of."
The ordinary sailing craft of the Lake of course still continued to ply. We hear of a passenger-boat between York and Niagara in 1815, called the Dove; also of the Reindeer, commanded for a time by Captain Myers. In 1819-20 Stillwell Wilson, with whom we are already acquainted, is in command of a slip-keel schooner, carrying passengers and freight between York and Niagara. The Wood Duck was another vessel on this route. (In 1828 the Wood Duck is offered for sale, with her rigging and sails complete, for Four Hundred Dollars cash. "Apply to William Gibbons, owner, York." She is afterwards the property of Mr. William Arthurs.) The Red Rover, Captain Thew, and the Comet, Captain Ives, were others. The Britannia, Captain Miller, was a visitant of York harbour about the same period; a top-sail schooner of about 120 tons, remarkable for her specially fine model. She was built by Roberts, near the site of what is now Wellington Square, and was the property of Mr. Matthew Crooks, of Niagara.
Captain Thew, above named, afterwards commanded the John Watkins, a schooner plying to York. Captain Thew encountered a little difficulty once at Kingston, through a violation, unconsciously on his part, of naval etiquette. A set of colours had been presented to the John Watkins, by Mr. Harris of York, in honour of his old friend and a co-partner whose name she perpetuated. It happened, however, through inadvertency, that these colours were made of the particular pattern which vessels in the Royal Service are alone entitled to carry; and while the John Watkins was lying moored in the harbour at Kingston, gaily decorated with her new colours, Captain Thew was amazed to find his vessel suddenly boarded by a strong body of men-of-war's men, from a neighbouring royal ship, who insisted on hauling down and taking possession of the flags flying from her masts, as being the exclusive insignia of the Royal Navy. It was necessary to comply with the demand, but the bunting was afterwards restored to Captain Thew on making the proper representations.
In 1820, Capt. Sinclair was in command of the Lady Sarah Maitland. We gather from an Observer of December in that year, that Lake Ontario, according to its wont, had been occasioning alarms to travellers. An address of the passengers on board of Capt. Sinclair's vessel, after a perilous passage from Prescott to York, is recorded in the columns of the paper just named. It reads as follows: "The subscribers, passengers in the Lady Maitland schooner, beg to tender their best thanks to Capt. Sinclair for the kind attention paid to them during the passage from Prescott to this port; and at the same time with much pleasure to bear testimony to his propriety of conduct in using every exertion to promote the interest of those concerned in the vessel and cargo, in the severe gale of the morning of the 4th instant (Dec. 1820). The manly fortitude and unceasing exertions of Capt. Sinclair, when the situation of the vessel, in consequence of loss of sails, had become extremely dangerous, were so highly conspicuous as to induce the subscribers to make it known to the public, that he may meet with that support which he so richly deserves. The exertions of the crew were likewise observed, and are deserving of praise.—D. McDougal, James Alason, G. N. Ridley, Peter McDougal."
This was probably the occasion of a doleful rejoinder of Mr. Peter McDougal's, which became locally a kind of proverbial expression: "No more breakfast in this world for Pete McDoug." The story was that Mr. McDougal, when suffering severely from the effects of a storm on the Lake, replied in these terms to the cook, who came to announce breakfast. The phrase seemed to take the popular fancy, and was employed now and then to express a mild despair of surrounding circumstances.
In 1820 a Traveller, whose journal is quoted by Willis, in Bartlett's Canadian Scenery (ii. 48), was six days in accomplishing the journey from Prescott to York by water. "On the 3rd of September," he says, "we embarked for York at Prescott, on board a small schooner called the Caledonia. We performed this voyage, which is a distance of 250 miles, in six days." In 1818, Mr. M. F. Whitehead, of Port Hope, was two days and a-half in crossing from Niagara to York. "My first visit to York," Mr. Whitehead says in a communication to the writer, "was in September, 1818, crossing the Lake from Niagara with Dr. Baldwin—a two and a-half days' passage. The Doctor had thoughtfully provided a leg of lamb, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of porter: all our fare," adds Mr. Whitehead, "for two days and a-half." We have ourselves more than once, in former days, experienced the horrors of the middle passage between Niagara and York, having crossed and re-crossed, in very rough weather, in the Kingston Packet, or Brothers, and having been detained on the Lake for a whole night and a good portion of a day in the process. The schooners for Niagara and elsewhere used to announce the time of their departure from the wharf at York in primitive style, by repeated blasts from a long tin horn, so called, sounded at intervals previous to their casting loose, and at the moment of the start. Fast and large steamers have, of course, now reduced to a minimum the miseries of a voyage between the North and South shores; but these miseries are still not slight at the stormy seasons, when Lake Ontario often displays a mood by no means amiable—
"Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, Up from the bottom turned by furious winds And surging waves."
It is some consolation to reflect, that with all the skill and appliances at the command of English engineers and shipbuilders, it has been found hitherto impossible to render the passage from Dover to Calais a luxury; nor possibly will that result be secured even by the enormous ferry-steamers which are projected. In 1791, twenty-four hours were occasionally occupied in the passage from Dover to Calais. "I am half-dead," writes the learned traveller Dr. E. D. Clarke, at Calais, to his mother; "I am half-dead with sea-sickness: twenty-four hours' passage from Dover."
Again, the mode in which the first Lake steamers were made to near the landing-place in the olden time, was something which would fill a modern steamboat captain with amazement. Accustomed as we are every day to see huge steamers guided without any ado straight up to the margin of a quay or pier, the process of putting in seems a simple affair. Not so was it, however, in practice to the first managers of steamboats. When the Frontenac or William IV. was about to approach the wharf at York, the vessel was brought to a standstill some way out in the harbour. From near the fore and after gangways boats were then lowered, bearing hawsers; and by means of these, when duly landed, the vessel was solemnly drawn to shore. An agitated multitude usually witnessed the operation.
In the Gazette of July 20, 1820, we have the information that "on Saturday evening, a schooner of about sixty tons, built for Mr. Oates and others, was launched in this port (York). She went off," the Gazette says, "in very fine style, until she reached the water, where, from some defect in her ways, her progress was checked; and from the lateness of the hour, she could not be freed from the impediment before the next morning, when she glided into the Bay in safety. Those who are judges say that it is a very fine vessel of, the class. It is now several years," continues the Gazette, "since any launch has been here; it therefore, though so small a vessel, attracted a good deal of curiosity." This was the Duke of Richmond packet, afterwards a favourite on the route between York and Niagara. The Gazette describes the Richmond somewhat incorrectly as a schooner, and likewise understates the tonnage. She was a sloop of the Revenue cutter build, and her burthen was about one hundred tons. Of Mr. Oates we have had occasion to speak in our perambulation of King Street.