Schooner Sephie Led a Charmed Life
By Richard F. Palmer
It was a sight for sore eyes to old sailors early in the afternoon of November 17, 1916 as they watched the lumber-ladened schooner Sephie gracefully entered Buffalo harbor under full sail. It had been years since such an event had occurred and it would be the last. It would also be the last visit to Buffalo for the Sephie. The following year she would head for salt water.
An old Buffalo sailor nicknamed “Bo’s’n Slattery” said the day she sailed into the harbor “she looked spick and span and presented a pretty picture with all sails set. I haven’t seen a windjammer in the vicinity of Buffalo in over 15 years. The last one I can recall is the schooner Sephie which was bought somewhere up the lakes by Commodore Oliver Donaldson during the late war. She brought a big cargo of lumber down here in 1917 and came under the break wall under full canvas. She was a neat little ship and made a pretty spectacle with all sail set. Duncan MacKenzie, I remember laid her up for the winter. She is now owned in Portugal.”
Buffeted by heavy seas and fighting head winds, her skipper, Peter McKinnon, expected to be met by a tug. None in sight he “squatted” her sails and took her in behind the break wall through the south entrance for temporary protection from high seas. Later on she was towed to Black Rock where she was relieved of her cargo of 300,000 feet of lumber put aboard her at Blind River in Georgian Bay on October 31. McKinnon told a reporter that the Sephie “was not hurried on the way down, but was caught out in a few stiff blows and made good weather of it.” He had known her since her keel blocks were laid down.It is claimed she was the last Canadian schooner built on the Great Lakes. (1)
The stop over at Black Rock was her last service on the lakes. It was 1917 and wartime. Vessels were at a premium. German submarines had destroyed large numbers of merchant ships. It created at good market. In Saint John, New Brunswick they were getting $5,000 for worn-out old vessels that were 30 years old. The demand spread to the Great Lakes and swept away most of the old-timers still afloat. But few of them ever got to sea. None ever returned.
Although most such wooden schooners were past their prime at the age of 28 she was still fit and kept in good condition. But Donaldson did not intend to keep her on the lakes.(2)
Sephie had been purchased by well known Buffalo vessel man Oliver Donaldson, former president of Miller Steamship Co. “Donaldson was mixed up with lake business since his birth,” said a local lake man. “His father before him was a lake man and his nearest friends have been mixed up in marine matters. Oliver has always been identified with the vessel business. He tried to get out of it, and when the steamer P. O. Miller was sold the boys all thought it was a case of Donaldson bidding goodbye to the lakes. Now it develops that he went away quietly and bought this Canadian schooner so as to keep in touch with the lakes.” (3)
Vessel’s History
It was a memorable day for Goderich. Some 15,000 people gathered in Stratford to witness the launch of the Sephie on Dominion Day, July 1, 1889. She was the last large schooner built by William Marlton. He and his men had been busily engaged since early morning preparing for the launch. Shortly after being christened by her namesake, Sephie Williams, daughter of the owner, one of the ways, built of soft elm, gave out, preventing the ship from sliding off the ways. The launch was postponed for several hours until the problem could be corrected. Master carpenter Peter McPhail superintended the job. (4)
The Sephie (C. #96781) was 136 feet long, had a beam of 27 feet 6 inches, a 10-foot hold, 261 tons. Registered at Goderich, August 17, 1889. It was a fore-and-aft three-master and the last of a long line of freshwater schooners born on Lake Huron under the high hill where Goderich faces the west wind. Built for the lumber trade between Spanish River and Goderich, it also carried lumber bound for Sarnia and other down-river ports. In the early 1900s she was owned by the Ontario Lumber Company. During much of her career Sarnia was her home port, according to vessel registers. Her first skipper was Capt. Bill McKenzie of Goderich, follows by John McLean, James Green, Jim Green, Duncan McLeod, Hugh and Peter McKinnon.
The Sephie had very few recorded mishaps over the years and was considered a lucky vessel. But she barely survived the Great Gale of November, 1913, which sent so many lake steamers to the bottom and left widows and orphans from Duluth to Detroit. The Sephie took on 300,000 feet of white pine at Cauls Inland and sailed November 6th for Sarnia. Rough weather drove her into shelter at Cape Smith on the east shore of Manitoulin Island where she became waterlogged during the storm. The cargo prevented her from sinking. The crew, six men and the woman cook, succeeded to make the shore. The vessel was later picked up near Cove Island and towed in, dry-docked and repaired.
Once, Sephie barely missed striking the pier at Kincardine. With her jibboom knocked out she slid sidewise into the breakers, much as the Singapore and the Ann Maria did, when they broke their backs at the same spot in earlier times. The lumber-laden Sephie fell over on her side on the shelf of the bottom, but did not capsize. She was refloated by jettisoning some of her lumber cargo. (5)
Sold off the Lakes
Donaldson had no intention of keeping the Sephie in service on the lakes and in within a few months sold her to “Atlantic coast parties at a a liberal profit, getting double the amount he paid for her.” She was to be used in the eastern seaboard coal trade between New York and Nova Scotia. The Sephie wintered in Buffalo. (6)
Asked about the reported sale Donaldson said:
“Yes, I have sold the good ship Sephie, and I want to say right here that she is one of the finest little full rigged schooners afloat. I had owned her only a few months, and in that time I made some money with her in the lumber trade. Yes, the report that I doubled my money in selling her is also true.” (7)
When navigation opened in 1917 the Sephie was sailed to Oswego. It was dismasted and left on May 22 for New York, towed by the state tug Schenectady through the newly opened section of the Barge Canal between Oswego and Waterford. An account of the voyage to New York appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle on July 12, 1917:
“The three-masted schooner Sephie, E.M. Baird, of this city, owner and captain, the first vessel to go through the new State barge canal, is today in the Schuyler and Cadell dry-docks, Erie Basin. Her three masts have been removed, and she is being made for the coastwise trade. The Sephie is 146 feet in length, twenty-four years old, built in Ontario of oak and elm.
“She started from Oswego May 22, and reached here June 22. The captain figures he saved a month and a half coming through the canal instead of going out the St. Lawrence and down the coast, the old route.
Describing the journey, the captain said:
“It was an interesting trip through the canal - one which can be enjoyed by a motorboat party, because the scenery is picturesque. The only difficulty we encountered was some of the old wooden bridges, especially one at Minetto and another at Little Falls. They were so low that water had to be let into the boat to lower her water line so she could pass beneath them. They are being replaced by new bridges that are higher and will allow ships a least eighteen feet clearance.
“We had to hire a tug to tow us from Oswego to New London. At New London we had one of the State tugs tow us to Waterford. On the way down we passed through sixty-one locks. The trip was entirely free of charge.” It is believed the Sephie was towed at least part of the way by the state tug Schenectady.
Marine historian C. H. J. Snider wrote:
“Her Canadian schooner rig, three tall masts with long topmasts and a squaresail yard for a raffee, was taken out of her in Oswego, so that she could go down the Erie canal without sweeping away the bridges. Her spars went with her on deck, and were re-stepped in New York, and got her over to the other side. To change her to barquentine rig would only necessitate re-rigging the foremast and adding two or three yards for additional square sails—upper and lower topsail, and topgallant-sail.
Sephie at Kincardine
George N. Fletcher Alpena Public Library Marine Collection
“She would carry a square foresail or fore course on the yard which had earlier spread her double raffee. On the lakes she had four jibs, three lower sails and three gafftopsails, spread by booms and gaffs, and the three-cornered raffee peculiar to our waters. (8)
Exactly how long the Sephie was in the coast-wise trade is not known. The Buffalo Courier noted on November 4, 1918:
“The trim little schooner Sephie, sold by Oliver Donaldson of this city to New Brunswick parties two years ago, is now trading out of Honduras. She was extensively repaired at New Brunswick, at a cost of $10,000, and later sold for $25,000 to her present owners. She was one of the swiftest and trimmest little schooners on the lakes.”
Her fate after that falls into a great area. One note states in 1917 she was either sailed or possibly towed across the Atlantic, then re-rigged as a barkentine, spending her last years navigating the Channel Islands, and scrapped in 1923. (9) Snider commented: “She seems to have done well under the square rig on the other side of the Atlantic.” Her registry was transferred to St. Johns’s Newfoundland in December, 1919, and to the Port of London, England .(10)
Captain C. E. Robinson wrote:
“When she arrived over there [Europe] her owner had her partly rebuilt, and he wrote her builder, William Marlton, that ‘underwater she was as good as the day she was launched.” She was afterwards heard of in the coal trade between Bristol, England to Bordeaux, France.’ Apparently she survived the tumultuous Bay of Biscay where countless shipwrecks occurred throughout the centuries. (11)
A schooner called the Sephie in 1918 was in service between Para, Brazil, and Lisbon, Portugal, chartered to Booth & Co. Ltd. During her return to Lisbon in November, 1918 she was heavily damaged in the high seas. She limped into Lisbon and discharged her cargo, but was declared a “constructive total loss.” (12)
End Notes
(1) Wisconsin Maritime Museum George C. Metzler Great Lakes Vessel Database; Schooner Sephie Sails into Port Buffalo Daily Courier, November 17, 1916; Buffalo Daily Courier, July 4, 1924; Schooner Days DLL (502) Toronto Telegram, July 5, 1941.
(2) Registered August 17, 1889 - Ships Data Base, Naval Marine Archive, Picton, Ont.; Schooner Days #502, op cit.; Lloyd’s Register, 1896-97
(3) Oliver Donaldson ’s New Schooner Coming Here, Buffalo Daily Courier, October 18, 1916
(4) Inland Loyds Register, 1904; Great Lakes Marine Collection, Alpena George N. Fletcher Public Library; Schooner Days # 502, op. cit., and CXIII (113), November 11, 1933; Huron Signal, July 5, 1889.
(5) Schooner Days No. 502, op. cit.
(6) Donaldson Gets Great Price For Schooner, Buffalo Courier, April 7, 1917
(7) Ibid.
(8) Schooner Days DLL (502) op. cit.;
(9) Schooner Days DLL (502); Metzler Great Lakes Database, op.cit
Captain E. M. Baird Brought First Boat Through Barge Canal, Brooklyn Eagle, March 24, 1918. The “Sephie” passed through half weighted with water to pass under the low bridges.
(10) Schooner Days DLL(502)kk op cit.; Ship Registrations 1787-1966. Item 66243, Microfilm Reel #B-3719; records of the Naval Marine Archive in Picton, Ont.
(11) From the Notes of Capt. C. E. ”Eddie” Robinson — Family Collection, courtesy of William Dale Robinson of St. Catharines, Ontario; Why the Bay of Biscay is Dangerous for Ships? e-Book Marine Insight.
(12) P. 1049, American Maritime Cases Maritime Law Association of the United States, Baltimore, 1924
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Dismasted, the schooner Sephie is shown in the canal in Waterford, N.Y. in July, 1917.
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