‘Oswego Fleet’ fades into history

(From the Oswego Times, December 4, 1886)
With this week may be considered closed a rather remarkable season on the lakes and one which has been especially fatal to Oswego vessels.
For the past 10 years the Oswego fleet has been dropping off one by one until the number is wonderfully small compared with the big grain fleet which used to sail in and out of this port in the early days. Then the annual statement of the whereabouts of the Oswego vessels, where laid up, etc., was an important item and one which was full of interest to a vast number of people.
Now, while there are still many Oswego men who follow the lake for a livelihood, a good many of them are employed in vessels which do not come to this port and the sailors only come home in winter.
Look at the record of disasters this year. The Belle Mitchell went down on Lake Erie and was so completely lost that only a little drifting wreckage was left to tell the story. The O.M. Bond went down on the same stormy lake and only a portion of the crew escaped. The Camanche went ashore on Point Peninsula and is a total wreck. Yes, the Oswego fleet is growing beautifully less this year.
It is noticeable that the Palladium of late seems to have taken a contract to boom the Canadian captains who sail this port. It is very well to give men credit for good work and these Canadian skippers are good sailors and good men, no doubt, but it seems sometimes as if they took too many chances late in the season.
Perhaps it is the fault of the Canadian government which will not establish a signal service to warn mariners of coming storms, but his last fleet, in which the Ariadne and Ocean Wave were lost and nearly all the rest put in deadly peril, should not have made the attempt to get one in such weather as we have had for the past two days.
Even so staunch a steamer as the Resolute had all she could do to get in here in broad daylight yesterday, and it is no wonder that in the night and the snow, some of these belated craft failed to make the harbor. Others would have failed, too, but for the signal rockets at the life saving station which guided them into port. If these Canadian captains had not been so reckless, some good sailors would have been living now.
 Yesterday, when a Times-Express representative told that a schooner was off Pleasant Point, making an effort to beat up to this port, but was making rather bad work of it, people looked longingly at the two big tugs, the Proctor and Seymour and wondered why they did not run down and see if they could not pick up the schooner, which  was thought to be the Ocean Wave.  But they did not go. Of course the captains of those tugs would have liked well enough to go, but it must be remembered that the tugs are owned by Hall & Co. and that few skippers like to go out of port in a sea like which was running yesterday without orders.
There was some lively talk among the Canadian skippers in port yesterday, however, because the two tugs did not go and a good many thought that if Captain Charley Ferris had been here with his lively little tug in good trim, he would have taken chances.
The vessels which came in here yesterday report a good deal of ice in the Bay of Quinte. If this was true when they left, a good many of the schooners now in port will have to stay here through the winter.
A dispatch was received here yesterday afternoon that the schooner A.W. Vickery was lying disabled at an anchor near Point Peninsula. The tug Proctor was sent down to release her.
This afternoon everybody in port was delighted at the appearance of the tug Cummings having in tow the disabled tug Ferris. The two ran into Henderson Harbor until the storms as over and came on today to this port. The big steamer Lake Ontario came in this morning with barley. The schooner Great Western which had been ashore on the other side came in this afternoon.

    

The schooner Camanche which ran ashore at Point Peninsula in 1886, was pulled off and is shown waiting to be dry-docked for repairs at the Goble shipyard in Oswego. She was built in Oswego in 1867 by James Navagh at the Goble shipyard. 137’4” x 25’5” x 11’3” 322 g.t. Wrecked at Deseronto, December 3, 1904 with a cargo of coal. 



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