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Оглавление7 Evolution of the Alligator Warping Tug
The success of Jackson’s Alligator, when at work, was soon noted, and in January 1890 West & Peachey received orders for two more Alligators. One was ordered by the Moore Lumber Company of Detroit (Alligator #2) for use in their limits on the French and Pickerel rivers in Ontario, The other was ordered by R.H. Klock and Company (Alligator #3) for use on Lake Kipawa and the Ottawa River in the province of Quebec.
Both Alligators were shipped out to their new owners in March 1890. John West followed them a few days later to instruct those responsible for them on their operation.
The H. Trudel, Alligator #3, shown here tied to a dock, was built in 1890 for R.H. Klock & Co. of Klock’s Mills. Note the pointer boat tied astern, the passenger steamer, and the steam engine sitting at the railroad terminal.
Courtesy of Library and Archives, Canada, PA-13574.
This became standard practice with each Alligator tug that West & Peachey built. The tugs were normally shipped to their destinations in early spring to arrive in time for the spring log drives. This allowed time for the firm to test them thoroughly in the Lynn River before shipment to their final destination. Then John West, James Peachey, or one of the senior members of the firm would follow the warping tug to its destination, where they would put it into service for the new owner. Obviously this attention to detail and the interest of the firm in seeing that their client had a sound working knowledge of the tugs capabilities and operation payed off. The following testimonials bear this out.
Alligator #2 — Did All That Was Claimed Of It.
No. 4 Buhl Block,
Detroit, Mich,.
January 7th, 1891.
Messrs. West & Peachey, Simcoe, Ont.
Gentlemen, —
In reply to your request for a testimonial as to the working of the steam warping tug you built for us, we have pleasure in saying that the tug has given entire satisfaction; that it has done all the work that you claimed it would do, and that it has saved us, at least, one half its cost the past season in men and time.
Yours truly,
MOORE LUMBER CO.,
A. H. Fleming, Sec.1
Alligator #3 — Has Given Entire Satisfaction
Klock’s Mills, Ont.,
December 29th, 1890
Messrs West and Peachey, Simcoe, Ont.
Dear Sirs,
The steam warping tug which we purchased from you has given us entire satisfaction. It has, indeed, done all that is claimed for it; and we have much pleasure in recommending it to all parties doing business of this nature.
We remain,
Yours very truly,
R.H. Klock & Co.2
West & Peachey were soon making claims for the versatility of the Alligator Warping Tug to lumbermen and mill owners, as this statement implies:
It will climb hills and go through swamps and woods or up small streams from one lake to another. After warping a boom of logs it will return with the empty boom doing the work cheaply and thoroughly with a great saving of time and number of men … It is also useful in taking in supplies to the lumber camps, or in towing scows bearing horses and provender.3
The Alligator also proved useful in breaking rollways of logs. Many mill owners found it to be most useful in their mill ponds, as well, for towing small booms of logs to the jack-ladder, which carried the logs up to the waiting saw carriage. The long, steel cable and winch on the tug was used also for skidding heavy timber out of the woods efficiently from shoreline locations.
West & Peachey also developed and manufactured a small, portable sawmill that could be operated on location anywhere by the versatile Alligator tug. In replacing the old cadge crib and its horses and sixteen to eighteen men, the Alligator only required four or five men for warping, namely: the captain or pilot, an engineer, an engineer’s assistant, a fireman, and one or two deckhands or logmen.
The Canadian Lumberman and Woodworker, in its June 7, 1893, issue, noted that: “Messrs. Shepard, Morse and Company had the Alligator tug ‘North River’ on the Kippawa and the way this Alligator tug brought out a tow of logs astonished all old-time river men.”
The Alligator #10, North River, was purchased by Shepard & Morse Lumber Company of Ottawa in 1893 and sold in 1898 to the McLachlin Bros. of Arnprior. She is shown frozen in for the winter on a lake in Algonquin Park, circa 1900.
Courtesy of Archives of Ontario, #S-5145.
WARPING WITHAN ALLIGATOR WARPING TUG
Woodsmen spent the winter months felling trees. Bucking crews cut them into logs and trimmed the branches and knots. Teamsters hooked skidding tongs into the logs and snaked them out of the bush to a yarding point, called a skidway. Beginning in January, while in the yard or skidway, scalers would use a log rule to scale or estimate the number of board feet in each log and record it on their tally-boards. They would also identify each log with the owner’s mark, using a scaling hammer.
Edmund Zavitz’s huge, wooden box camera captures a typical stand of white pine.
Courtesy of Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, E.J. Zavitz Collection, #808.
Skidders then positioned the logs for loaders, or cant-hook men, to load them onto sleighs. They and the “skyloader,” who had to be an agile, sure-footed man, loaded and directed the logs onto sleighs. This was done with the help of a tall wooden crane called a “jammer,” powered by the sleigh team of horses. The team pulled a cable attached by hooks, or “pig’s feet” jammed into either end of the log to be loaded. Two men, known as “bull-ropers,” guided the logs into position over the sleigh. The skyloader stood on top of the sleighload of logs to position them for safe travel. This was always a dangerous job. A fully loaded sleigh carried from 15 to 20 tons of logs piled high on the sturdy bunks of the sleigh bobs.
Teamsters and their horses assemble outside the camp’s “camboose shanty” in preparation for the day’s work.
Courtesy of the Clarence F. Coons Collection.
Once loaded and the logs made secure, the sleighs were drawn out by the team of horses, over the tote roads, to the nearest lake or riverbank to be piled on the shore or stream bank to await spring breakup. At times the logs were piled directly on the ice of the lake or river. Upon the breakup of the ice, those logs not already in a lake would be broken out of their winter piles on shore to be driven downstream to the nearest lake by the spring freshets.
A skidding crew loads a sleigh with logs for transport to water.
Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, PA-12942.
A “Brag Load.” Here, a bobsleigh load of almost ninety logs are secured with logging chains and are ready to be moved out. The men are unknown, but the team of horses bear the names “Kid” and “Farmer.”
Courtesy of Haliburton Highlands Museum, #L 984-4-216.
As lake currents usually were not strong enough to move logs along, they were assembled in bag booms that consisted of a series of pine logs of sufficient length to enclose the number of logs to be moved, chained end to end. Once enclosed, the boom was closed and made ready for warping. At this point the Alligator tug, equipped with a powerful winch on the drum of which ½ to 1 mile of -inch steel cable was wound, was made ready. Two methods were used.
In one, the tug would engage her paddlewheels and steam down the lake in the direction the logs were to be moved. When a mile had been covered, the large warping anchor, attached to the steel cable wound on the drum, would be dropped to the bottom of the lake. If a shore-hold, in the form of a rock or tree, was available, the cable would be attached to it. The Alligator would then reverse her paddlewheels and back up to the boom, paying out the warping cable as she did so. On reaching the bag boom, the Alligator was securely hooked to it by chains. The paddlewheels were then disengaged and the drive for the winch from the engine put in gear. As the cable was wound onto the drum of the winch, the Alligator tug and her boom of logs were drawn to the warping anchor embedded in the lake bottom, or, to the shore-hold. The chains to the log boom were then unhooked, the paddlewheels put in gear, the warping anchor pulled aboard, and the whole process was repeated until the boom had been moved to the opposite end of the lake. Here the boom would be opened and the logs sent into the connecting stream, or flume, to the next lake. The Alligator would winch itself overland along the prepared portage into the next lake where the logs had been caught in a bag boom that awaited them. The whole process would be repeated in this way until the logs finally reached a main river, where they became part of a major log drive down river to the company’s sawmill.
The Gilmour & Company’s Alligator #18, Nipissing, is shown preparing to warp sawlogs held in the bag boom, circa 1895.
Courtesy of the Clarence F. Coons Collection.
This method of warping was also used where a bag boom of logs had to be rolled through a narrows, since fresh holds could be taken along the boom without disturbing the anchorage until the tug and the boom were winched up to it. Then the warping anchor would be raised and a fresh hold taken or another snub or shore-hold could be taken.
In the second method of warping, the bow of the Alligator was run up to the boom and the winch cable was fastened securely to it. The Alligator would then be reversed until the cable had all been paid out from the drum of the winch. The Alligator tug would then be chained to some suitable anchorage, such as a rock or tree on the bank. The winch would then be engaged and the bag boom of logs would be winched down the lake to the stationary Alligator tug.
Using these methods an Alligator could move up to 60,000 logs in a single bag boom in calm weather. Even under adverse conditions, with a strong headwind, the Alligator could still move 30,000 logs in a boom. This was a big improvement over the old cadge-crib method, which normally could not operate under adverse wind conditions. This meant that between 2 and 3 million board feet of material could be warped by the Alligator in a single bag boom. This, in turn, amounted to a significant percentage of the total annual cut of many of the sawmills. The Alligator, under ideal conditions, with a full bag boom of 60,000 logs, travelled at a speed of about 1 mile per hour. With fewer logs or adverse weather conditions, the speed would vary up or down. With no tow, an Alligator could reach speeds of 5 to 6 miles per hour.
In 1891, West & Peachey built a Alligator Warping Tug, named the Saginaw, for J.W. Howry and Sons of Saginaw, Michigan. It was the fourth one built by the firm and was ordered for warping logs in timber limits being logged along the Whitefish River on the north shore of Georgian Bay. The following testimonial attests to the tugs merits and the satisfaction of its owners:
Alligator #4
Saginaw, E.S. Michigan
November 16, 1891
Messrs West and Peachey, Simcoe, Ontario
Gentlemen,
In reply to yours of recent date in which you ask for a testimonial in regard to the working of the steam warping tug — “Saginaw” which we purchased of your firm last spring we are pleased to say that after using the boat for one season and having thoroughly tested it, we find that it does all and more than you claim. It is certainly worthy of our most hearty recommendation and we shall be pleased to reply to any parties whom you may refer to us. — We, this year, handled 300,000 logs with the “Saginaw”, and consider that she saved her cost to us in this one season’s work. The above number of logs were moved with the assistance of eight men, in one half the time it took us the previous year to move 126,000 pieces with cadj crib and sixteen men. We took the boat out on land and around dams and riffles and went up grades where the rise was one foot in three. We find the
“Saginaw” very useful in breaking in high “rollways” and also in towing scows loaded with supplies, up the creeks.
Yours truly,
(Signed) J.W. Howry & Sons4
ALLIGATOR #5
The fifth Alligator Warping Tug to be built was ordered by the Saginaw Salt and Lumber Company, who were operating on the Wanapitei River in northern Ontario. As work progressed on it during the winter of 1891–92, several improvements and modifications were introduced into its construction. As changes were made, all were incorporated into the tugs that followed. On March 31, 1892, the fifth Alligator Warping Tug, this one named Lorne, was shipped by rail to a northern destination.
An interesting description of the West & Peachey foundry as it appeared to a casual visitor in the spring of 1892 is to be found in the March 23, 1892, edition of the British Canadian, a Norfolk County newspaper. Written by Captain John Spain of Port Dover who wrote under the nom de plume of the “Rambler,” his account reports:
Alligators
Your rambling scribe called on Messrs. West and Peachey recently and found everybody; from the unassuming proprietors down to the apprentice boys, as busy as bees. Both flats, the yard and the street are strewn with disjointed parts of steam alligators or warping tugs. The second flat is used for the manufacture of pilot houses, steering gear, paddle wheels, boxes etc., which are nicely painted, then numbered and packed, with the name of each alligator marked on the boxes and cases containing the various parts. In the large machine shop you are bewildered with what is going on there in the shape of boring, drilling, trimming and polishing iron and steel.
The clanking sledge and clinking hammer talking with the ringing anvil to outvie the humming machinery, puts all other conversation out of the question, but your eyes can feast on huge wheels, steam boilers and bright engines. In the centre of the room is a templet or matrix, where the boilers and engines, together with their connections, are fitted exactly the same as if in the boat; they are then numbered, as above stated, knocked down and packed, ready for shipment. The hull of the boat is treated in the same way. Every bolt, spike or nail is got ready here, and each alligator is shipped in this knocked down style to its destination. Then Mr. West, with a gang of men, will go and put them together and start them through lakes and over portages to do the work for which they are so well adapted. Messrs West and Peachey are going to complete one of these alligator boats, put life in it, and make it crawl to the station and creep up onto a flat car, notice of which will appear in the town papers …
ORDERS FOR MACHINERY ONLY
In 1892, West & Peachey received their first request, for the machinery only, for construction of an Alligator Warping Tug. The request came from the McLachlin Bros., who were Ottawa River lumbermen located in Arnprior, Ontario. They, and some others, preferred to buy the steam engine and machinery and then construct their own warping tug on site.
Alligator #6, the Madawaska, was the first order received by the West & Peachey foundry for machinery only. The hull was built in Arnprior in 1892, by McLachlin Bros. of Arnprior, Ontario. The Alligator tug is shown hauled up on bank of Ottawa River, circa 1900.
Courtesy of Archives of Ontario, #S 4854.
West & Peachey considered this first request, and as they did not feel that it violated their patents, they agreed to co-operate. The machinery was shipped to Arnprior, and the McLachlins built their own hull in which the machinery was installed. They next installed their own superstructure and named the resultant Alligator the Madawaska. She was Alligator #6.
As other such arrangements were requested, West & Peachey found they were at times supplying machinery only, while others would request all machinery plus the lumber and other materials for the buyer to assemble their own tug. If requested, West & Peachey would also supply the plans for construction and assembly of an Alligator tug. By 1897, they were offering all machinery for building an Alligator Warping Tug for $2,300.
The Alligator, paddlewheeler #13, built in 1893, is shown warping herself up Union Street in Simcoe en route to the Georgian Bay and Lake Erie Railway siding at Metcalfe Street to be shipped to Gilmour & Company in Trenton, Ontario. This is the oldest known surviving photograph of an Alligator taken in Simcoe.
Courtesy of Norfolk Historical Society Archives, West & Peachey Collection, L 11191.
During the Alligator’s heyday, West & Peachey filled many contracts to supply machinery only. The chief buyers of machinery for tugs, in addition to the McLachlin Bros., were the Upper Ottawa Improvement Company of Ottawa, Ontario, and W.C. Edwards, also of Ottawa. Later on, during the production of twin-screw Alligators, West & Peachey would supply owners with the machinery to convert the tug with a paddlewheel drive to a twin-screw drive.
One is left to wonder if the attempt by McLachlin Bros. to build their own hull and install the machinery, bought from West & Peachey, did not save them as much as expected? Did they find building the hull and superstructure was a more difficult undertaking than they anticipated? We may never know the answer, but we do know that later the same year, 1892, two orders for complete Alligator tugs were received from the McLachlin Bros. These were Alligator #7, the Bonnechére, and Alligator #8, the Amable du Fond.
The first order for a complete tug in 1893 was for Alligator #9, the Ballantyne, also from the McLachlin Bros. Three 1893 orders for Alligator tugs were received from Gilmour and Company of Trenton, Ontario. In fact, Alligator tug #13 through to Alligator tug #18 were all built for this large lumbering firm. Those constructed in 1893 were tug #13, the Alligator; tug #14, the Trent; and tug #15, the Muskoka. In 1894, the orders from Gilmour and Company continued, with Alligator tug #16, the Hunter; tug #17, the Peck; and tug #18, the Nipissing. These Alligator Warping Tugs were all destined for use in the harvest of the timber limits of the lucrative Trent River and Trent Canal territory.
By March 1893, twenty men were working at the West & Peachey factory, and six Alligator tugs were under construction. Business had never been better, enabling the retirement of the factory mortgage. Both John West and his partner, James Peachey, were able to pay off their respective mortgages on their homes, as well. In that same year John West attended the Chicago World Fair where he picked up many good ideas from exhibits of the latest technology. He also purchased a new iron shaper, which was on display in the Canadian Machinery Hall, for use in their factory. And, from an American firm, he purchased a jacksaw used for cutting iron bars to their desired lengths. These he would use at his home base, but West was very adept at designing and manufacturing his own equipment, which he would then install in their company facilities. One such piece of equipment was a mill head with which they could cut threads on bolts and iron rods with automatic dies. At this time he also designed a piece of machinery for cutting key sets in wheels, gears, and the like.
In September 1893, due to the lack of space for the increased workload the firm was experiencing, West and Peachey decided to build a large, brick building adjacent to their foundry. It was put to good use immediately. By the spring of 1894, they had received orders for eleven more Alligator tugs. The firm was now operating day and night with forty men working in their shops. The weekly payroll had risen to $300. The previous year they had operated the shops on a ten-hour day with a weekly payroll of less than $75 to their employees. By the mid-1890s, an Alligator Warping Tug brought the firm $2,800 apiece. With the increase in demand for Alligator tugs came an increase need for lumber and other construction materials. As a result, during July and August of 1894, West & Peachey built a new steam-driven portable sawmill on the property. With their own sawmill, the firm now was able to saw up to 10,000 board feet of lumber daily.
ALLIGATOR TUG PORTAGING.
The ability to portage overland was an essential feature in the success of the Alligator Warping Tug, which was also the reason for their name. The tug could safely move up an incline of 1:3 (or a rise of 1 foot for every 3 feet of movement forward) and over very rough terrain. Much of the work required of it involved moving between lakes when no navigable stream existed between them. It was also essential for getting around dams, waterfalls, and flumes that provided for the passage of logs, but not for boats.
A level, graded road was not required, only the placing of logs under the heavy oak steel-shod runners, set about 6 to 8 feet apart, to keep the runners from grinding over the rocks. A heavy block pulley was attached to a chain near the bottom of the bow of the Alligator. Another single block pulley was attached to a tree on the side of the portage road. The cable was run out, passed through the block at the tree and returned to the tug to be passed through the pulley block attached to the chain on the bow of the tug. From there the cable was run forward and anchored to a tree on the opposite side of the portage road and across from the first pulley block. When the winch was put in operation, the cable rewinding on the drum pulled the Alligator forward on a straight course between the two anchors. In this way the Alligator could be moved at least a mile a day, and, if conditions were good, as much as three miles a day. In one case, an Alligator was known to haul itself overland for 40 miles, taking almost a month to accomplish the feat.
Portaging proved very hard on the wooden hulls of the tugs and a hull’s life span was dependent on the amount of portaging it was subjected to. Some tugs required new hulls within a year or two of their building and many Alligators had several new replacement hulls during their lifetime.
