Schooner Reuben Doud

 

            Schooner Reuben Dud, inbound at Toronto's Eastern Gap.

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Saturday, November 28, 1953


Henry W. Clune’s Seen and Be Heard

                    MAILBAG

   During the recent severe blown on Lake Ontario tons of coal were washed up on the lake beaches on both sides of the Genesee River mouth, a fact that has aroused speculations as to the source of this free supply of fuel, available to anyone with the enterprise to lug it away.

   As expressed in a report in this newspaper last week, there was some feeling that coal veins has been exposed on the lake bottom. This was discredited by the discovery in the shore line deposits of a considerable quantity of coke, a commercial product. A plausible explanation of the lake “mined” coal is given in the following letter from a man who has lived close to the lake and observed its variable phenomena for years:

   “Dear Sir:

   The may be the the possible answer to the questions raised in a news story in the Democrat and Chronicle last week as to the origin of the tons of coal that have been washed up on the lake shore.

  One Sunday morning in the autumn of 1902, learning that the three-masted Canadian schooner, Reuben Doud, was fast on a reef half a mile off shore from the Town of Hamlin, several of us young fellows from the Village of Morton drove to see the wreck.

   The captain and part of his crew had come ashore in a lifeboat and the captain hired several of us to go aboard the schooner and shovel its cargo of coal into the lake in order to lighten it sufficiently to get off the reef.

   We were still shoveling coal at 4 o’clock in the afternoon when the tug, Florence Yates, towed a Coast Guard boat out to the schooner and the Coast Guard men joined us in our labors.  About dusk, after working all day, we asked the schooner’s captain to take us ashore. He refused, since all the cargo had not yet been jettisoned, but the Coast Guard men took us in their boat after the captain had munificently rewarded each of us with 75 cents for a day’s labor.

   Later the Coast Guard succeeded in freeing the Reuben Doud from the reef and she was towed to Charlotte Harbor, where she sank. She was raised in time, but sank again as she was being towed to a Canadian port, and this time was not reclaimed. I think there is a strong possibility that the coal now found along the lake shore is part of the Reuben Doud’s cargo.

   Incidentally, I have lived close to the lake all my life and have never seen it any rougher than it was during the blue between the 6th and 8th days of this month.

Charles A. Lind, Lakeland Farms, Kendall, N.Y. “

   

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