Joseph E. Dutton, best known as the captain of the Sardinian, was a remarkable man, and frequent voyages with him led me to know him better than some of the others. “Holy Joe,” as he was familiarly called, was an excellent sailor, but had to contend with a good many difficulties. At one time his ship lost her rudder in mid-ocean; at another time she lost her screw. Once she caught fire in Loch Foyle from an explosion of coal gas, and had to be scuttled. Dutton was a clever, well-read man, and a born preacher. When he had on board some eighteen clergymen going to the meeting of the Presbyterian Council at Belfast, he came into the saloon on a Saturday evening, and coolly announced that if they had no objections he would conduct the Sunday service himself. And preach he did. He had the whole Bible at his finger-ends. I recall at least one voyage when he personally conducted three religious services daily—one at 10 o’clock a. m., for the steerage passengers; one at 4 p. m., in the chart-room, and one at 7 p. m., in the forecastle, for his sailors. As to creed, he had drifted away from his early moorings, and admittedly had difficulty in finding secure anchorage. He had, so to speak, boxed the ecclesiastical compass. He had been a Methodist, a Baptist, a Plymouth Brother, but with none of them did he long remain in fellowship. Finally, he pinned his faith to the tenets of “conditional immortality,” arguing with great ingenuity and earnestness that eternal life is the exclusive portion of the righteous, and annihilation that of the wicked. One of Captain Dutton’s last public appearances in Montreal was on a Sabbath evening, in the Olivet Baptist church, when he baptized seven of his sailors by immersion in the presence of a crowded assemblage. He was a square-built, powerful Christian. The way he collared these men and submerged them was a caution. He gave each of them in turn such a drenching as they will remember for a long time, and all with the greatest reverence; nor did he let them go until he received from each a solemn assurance that he would be a faithful follower of Christ to his life’s end. Not long after this, Captain Dutton had an attack of Bright’s disease, which brought him to an early grave. He was buried in Mount Royal cemetery, where the monument, “erected by a few of his friends,” bears the inscription:
“Commodore Allan Line. Lieut. R. N. Reserve. In memory of Captain Joseph E. Dutton, late of the R. M. SS. Sardinian. Born at Harrington, England, February 8th, 1828. Died at Montreal, July 6th, 1884, aged 56 years.
“‘Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him.’—1 John iii. 2.”
There was a time when profane swearing used to be indulged in freely by sea-captains and their subordinates. Happily the custom is going out of fashion, though now and then a representative from the old school may still be found. Captain Dutton was never addicted to swearing, though his temper was tried often enough. On arriving at Rimouski in 1879, after making the fastest voyage to the St. Lawrence then on record, the Sardinian had to lie at anchor for two mortal hours before he could get his mails landed. One hour it took the tender to get up steam, and another hour to get alongside the ship, owing to a strong easterly breeze, which brought up a lop of a sea. All this lost time Dutton rapidly paced the bridge to and fro with evident impatience. At length, when the tender was made fast, he came down and mingled with the crowd on deck, on the keen lookout for letters and newspapers, when one said to him, jokingly, “Why did you not swear at the captain of that tender?” “Oh,” said he, with a pleasant smile, “he is only a farmer.” The provocation had been great, but the controlling principle was greater and highly creditable to Dutton.
Apropos to the subject of swearing was the story told by a fellow-passenger—a deacon in the late Prof. Swing’s congregation in Chicago. Dr. Swing had withdrawn from the Presbyterian Church, but continued to preach in a public hall or theatre, drawing immense crowds to hear him. Swing was a sensational preacher, who could extort tears or smiles from his hearers at will, and not unfrequently his random shots hit the mark. On one occasion, the deacon informed us, he overheard the remark made by one of Chicago’s fastest young men to a comrade as they were leaving the place of worship after listening to a scathing discourse on the besetting sins of young men, swearing included: “Say, Jim, I’ll be d——d if that is not the kind of preaching that suits me.” This is a hard story, scarcely credible, but it was told in sober earnest and in a tone that indicated that in the speaker’s judgment an arrow had pierced the young man’s heart, and that the shocking expression just quoted was, after all, neither more nor less than his peculiar way of emphasizing the fact that he was stricken.
The Dominion Line.
This line began in 1870 when a number of merchants, engaged in the New Orleans and Liverpool trade, formed what they styled the “Mississippi and Dominion Steamship Company, Limited,” under the management of Messrs. Flinn, Main and Montgomery, of Liverpool, the agents in Montreal being Messrs. D. Torrance & Co., of which Mr. John Torrance has been for a number of years the senior partner. Their boats were to run to New Orleans in the winter and to Montreal in summer. Their first ships were the St. Louis, Vicksburg and Memphis. In 1871 they added the Mississippi and Texas of 2,822 tons. The Orleans route was soon abandoned and the Dominion Line, then so called, confined its trade to Canada, having Portland for its terminal winter port. Gradually increasing the size and speed of their steamers they entered into a lively competition for a share of the passenger traffic, and soon became formidable rivals of the Allan Line, and for a number of years shared with them in the Government allowance for carrying the Royal mails.
In 1874 they had built for them at Dumbarton the Dominion and Ontario, each 3,000 tons; in 1879 the Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, of still larger dimensions, were added. They next bought the City of Dublin and City of Brooklyn from the Inman Line, and renamed them the Quebec and Brooklyn. In 1882 and 1883 they built the Sarnia and the Oregon, fine boats of about 3,700 tons each, with increased power and midship saloons. In 1884 Messrs. Connal & Co., Glasgow, built for them the Vancouver, a very fine ship of 5,149 tons, having a speed of fourteen knots and excellent accommodation for passengers. Although she has had several minor accidents she has been, on the whole, a successful and popular ship. The most serious misfortune that befell her was in November, 1890, on her voyage to Quebec, when she encountered a furious hurricane in mid-ocean. Captain Lindall, who had been constantly on the bridge for a long time, went to his chart-room to snatch a few minutes rest, leaving the first officer on the bridge. All of a sudden the ship was thrown on her beam ends by a tremendous wave which completely wrecked the bridge and swept the chart-room, with the captain in it, into the sea. The quarter-master at the wheel was also washed overboard, and both he and Captain Lindall were drowned. The first officer, Mr. Walsh, who had a miraculous escape, took charge of the battered ship and brought her to Quebec, where deep regret was expressed for the sad death of Lindall, who was a general favourite and as good a sailor as ever stood on the bridge.
