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CHAPTER 1 Historical Perspectives: Great Britain to the Great Lakes

They that go down to the sea in ships,

that do business in great waters;

These see the works of the LORD,

and his wonders in the deep.

For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind,

which lifteth up the waves thereof.

— Psalm 107:23-25

The Wexford : A History

The shipbuilding firm of William Doxford & Sons built the Wexford at Sunderland near the Scottish border on the northeast coast of England. Shipbuilders since 1840, they had accumulated almost a half-century of experience in their craft. The shipping environment on the River Wear was a good choice for the prospective owners of this new packet freighter. Not only were builders well experienced, but the presence of chandlers and equipment suppliers was bountiful. The Wexford keel was laid at the very heart of a shipbuilding region, in place for over 500 years, as but one of some 128 ships built on the River Wear that year.

From the evidence provided on her order papers,¹ signed on September 4, 1882, by Messrs. R.M. Hudson & Company,² of the same location, she was to be a fine and well-equipped vessel. Hull number 145, the well-decked steamer was to carry a single deck of steel, with four large hatchways covered with stout boards and canvas. An enclosed bridge was designed over the whole length of the two-cylinder, 207-horsepower engine — built at the same yards — and boiler space to provide a secure power plant. She was planned with an “open top gallant fcle” [sic] and “a hood over steering gear aft.”³

She was to be a two-masted schooner. The deck would be strengthened with two longitudinal stringers, attached to web frames that ranged from 12 to 16 feet apart. Provision was made for 406 tons of water ballast below the holds. She may have been able to carry additional water ballast elsewhere, in her cargo holds and in the fore and after peak tanks. There were to be five bulkheads cemented in place. Crew space was provided in the bow, with entry through a hood from the open deck. Cabin space for the “old man”⁴ was located forward and below the pilothouse, amidships, while officers were housed in space near the stern.

This photo of the Wexford in the Welland Canal is a favourite image with many marine history buffs. It was made into a postcard that became popular for decades after the Great Storm.

Courtesy of the late Audrey Barlow. Enhancements by Captain “Bud” Robinson.

The steamer Corunna, built in 1891 by Ramage and Ferguson in Leith, Scotland, ran for the Leith, Hull and Hamburg Steam Packet Company Line of Scotland before coming to the Great Lakes under the ownership of C.H.F. Plummer and the Canadian Lake Transportation Company in 1907. She had a colourful history, not unlike the Wexford, and bears an uncanny resemblance to that vessel. She, like the Wexford, was rebuilt, with a new Scotch boiler installed by the Great Lakes Engineering Works, Ecorse, Michigan, in 1918. In 1930 she was purchased by the Corunna Steamship Company, Fort William, Ontario. In this era, many ships of similar design were built at the shipyards at the River Tyne, just to the north of Sunderland and the River Wear.

Courtesy of the C. Patrick Labadie Collection/Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Alpena MI, 39243-39256.

The Wexford was built in the era that bridged the period between the great age of wooden sailing ships and the new era of large steampowered, freight-carrying vessels made of iron and steel. Her internal design, crafted of steel girders and ribs, was the best combination of engineering design that married the old traditions with new practices — state-of-the-art for this time. When her new spar deck was added in 1884, the builders used web frames instead of beams to support the new construction. The engineering combined new approaches to structure with old. The altered drawings from 1883 refer to tween decks space created after this addition.

The Cherub. A steam-powered, sailing gunboat, stationed at Goderich in 1866, during the Irish-American Fenian Raids, carried a sailing rig quite different from the schooner-rigged Wexford. This image shows her bearing square-rigged sails on the forward main mast. The main power for both vessels was a coal-fired, steam-powered engine.

Photo from the Paul Carroll Collection.

The fact that she was built with two large masts, long booms, and a full suit of sails, and that part of her upper deck was crafted of pine, bore witness to the reluctance of her builders to leave entirely the traditions of a maritime age that was fast coming to a close. Ship insurers often preferred the additional safety factors afforded by carrying a suit of sails.

The 250-foot keel was laid, beginning October 9, 1882, and she was ready for launch on March 24, 1883. After her decks were fitted out and interiors finished, her sea trials were completed by May 29, 1883. With only minor alterations, including some “machinery repairs,” she sailed away in the hands of her owners on that same date.

Table 1: Wexford Specifications

Author’s Note: Readers will observe no less than three different lengths given for the Wexford. They are all essentially correct. The “B. P.” (between perpendiculars) is the length measured at the summer load line from fore side of the stem to the aft side of the rudder post. The “O.A.” (overall length) is the distance measured between the forward-most and aft-most extensions on a vessel. The minor variation in the O.A. length is most likely a function of using slightly different extremes as starting points.

Information from Lloyd’s Register, 1904–05:

Steel, screw steamer, 250’ x 40. 1’ x 16.7’

Built 1883, W. Doxford and Sons, Sunderland, A&CP official # C87342, ex Elise, ex Wexford Registered at Port of London, classified in Great Lakes register special survey No. 3–11, 1895 Liverpool special survey No. 1, 1900, Dunkirk Steel deck, spar deck, web frames (yellow pine decking noted on Collingwood drawings) 2,104 gross tons; 2,043 under deck tons; 1,340 net tons Flat keel, cellular construction, double bottom, 5 bulkheads cemented water ballast after peak Tank new donkey boiler, 1901

Engine 2 cylinder compound, 33” & 62” x 42”, 200 nominal horsepower Lloyd’s Register 1913:

Engine 3 cylinder compound, 18”, 30” & 51” x 42”, 210 nominal horsepower new Scotch boilers 6/04 – 12d x 121

Engine altered to triple expansion, 1904 at Collingwood, SB&E Co. Ltd., Ontario

John O. Greenwood in Namesakes 1910–1913:

Hull No. 145, 257” x 40’1” x 16’7”, Draft 23.7

3 compartments – capacity 675, 825, 1175. 2800 gross tons Hatches 4 24 x 14 The Collingwood Bulletin April 16, 1903 (Marine News):

Particulars of the steamer Wexford which Capt. W.J. Bassett has purchased in the Old Country for the Western Steamship Company have come to hand. The steamer is a steel ship 258 ft. 6 in. in length beam 40 feet and a depth of hole (sic) to upper deck 24 feet. The steamer is classed 100 A 1 by Lloyds. She is what is known as a flushed deck ship and has main and spar decks and is so arranged as to carry a large amount of water ballast when necessary. The steamer is also fitted with steam winches, steam steering gear and hand and steam windlasses. She has a carrying capacity of 3,000 tons of freight of 100,000 bushels of wheat which is greater than any canal size steamer at present on the lakes. Capt. Bassett will commence to load the steamer tomorrow on the Thames at London with a cargo for Hamilton, Montreal and Fort William and he expects to sail for Montreal on Wednesday next.

Order Plan for the Wexford, showing the deck profile with spar deck, as added in 1884 by William Doxford & Sons Boatyards, River Wear, Sunderland. The ship plan for the Wexford was typical of many used at this time along the western seaboard of the British Isles. Photo scanned from Ships Particulars Book, held by the Tyne and Wear Archives of Sunderland, with permission of the Sunderland Public Library, England.

Courtesy of Brent Bamford.

There is evidence,⁵ in the form of handwritten, pencilled notes on the order sheet, that she returned to the Doxford yards 16 months later, in September 1884, for work on a seven foot high spar deck.⁶ Part of this new construction to convert her to a flush-deck steamer seems to have allowed for an increase in coal capacity in the reserve bunker and would have altered her forward deck arrangement in particular. The fuel capacity appears to have been increased by some 50 tons of coal after the deck modifications.

There have been questions as to whether her galley was located midships or aft, with arguments posed to conjecture either position. It is generally assumed that the galley was located aft. According to diver Paul Schaus, “There were many broken and intact dishes on port side near the stern.”⁷ This observation would support the stern location of the galley and dining area for crew. There are secondary smokestacks or funnels in both locations. Early photographs show a large stack, sometimes casually but erroneously described as a “galley stack.” In one later picture, with the new name of the shipping company, Western Steamship Co. Ltd., added at the bow, under the name Wexford, a minor change appears to have been made in the midship coal-bunker ventilator configuration. She carried a directional ventilator as a cap instead of a rope-suspended canvas hood, as shown in one very early picture. It is also possible that this stack was part of some sort of venting system to draw methane off the coal stored in the bunkers below, to reduce or eliminate the possibility of explosion. Another possibility is that it simply provided a way to draw off heat, smoke, and fumes from the coal-fired boilers in the engine room that supported the secondary donkey boiler.

These successive profiles show the configuration of the Wexford as she evolved. The first is as-built in 1883.In the second, the 1884 spar deck as added was normally constructed of lighter material than the main deck below, and consequently had to be given a lighter draft when loaded.Only passengers and lighter cargo would normally be carried here. In the third drawing, the probable alteration made in the 1904 re-fit at Collingwood is shown.

Courtesy of Captain “Bud” Robinson.

The Wexford was a steel-hulled, 2,100-ton package freighter. Prior to the addition of her spar deck, she was rated at 1,626.91 tons. Her length between perpendiculars — bow stem and rudder post — was 250 feet, with a 40-foot beam. She carried a depth of just under 24 feet, after the addition of the spar deck. The builders’ specifications show her as slightly less than 259 feet ⁸ in length and some 19 feet in depth, before the spar deck. Her revised light draft, in 1884, was 7 feet 10 inches aft, and 7 feet 8 inches forward. Loaded, she carried up to 15 feet 3 inches before the spar deck was added; afterwards, 20 feet 8 inches was shown in the plans. Photographic records show her loaded on the Great Lakes at between 16 and 18 feet. The original plans show that she could carry 2,500 — and some reports say up to 3,000 — tons of freight, as well as over 400 tons of coal. The pilothouse deck was constructed of three-inch yellow pine. She carried a “hurricane deck” or open platform, extending through and above the wooden enclosure we are calling a pilothouse, protected only by stanchions, with a rail, often covered by weather-cloths for protection from the elements.

Her name, Wexford, was the same as the name taken by a town and a county in southern Ireland. The name Wexford had been carried proudly on many a seafaring transom since the early 1600s, when the British Navy ruled the seas.

Viking refugees from Denmark founded Wexford Town in Ireland around the year 850 AD. They were attracted by its handy location near the mouth of the River Slaney. The Viking name Waesfjord means “sandy harbour.” The Vikings fortified the harbour town with a defensive mound and a wall, and also allowed a Gaelic–Irish village to be established outside their own walled settlement. Wexford was a handy port for Vikings to break their journey when sailing along the east coast of Ireland between the several other Viking settlements, such as Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Arklow, Wicklow, and Dublin. The shallow Wexford harbour also facilitated salt farming, salt being a very important trading item to the Vikings.

The Normans captured the town just after their first landings in the year 1169 AD, and later improved on the Viking wall, extending it to include the Gaelic–Irish settlement, as well. Tragically, Oliver Cromwell also included Wexford in his “1649–1650 Irish Tour”⁹ and three-quarters of the two thousand inhabitants were put to the sword, including all the town’s Franciscan friars — the standard treatment for towns that refused to surrender to Cromwell. During the 1798 Rebellion, rebels made a determined stand in Wexford Town before they were defeated by the British Army. It is not clear why the name Wexford was used to name several British seafaring vessels over the centuries. It may have been to honour and to personify the courageous, daring, and defiant stand taken by the village inhabitants in the 1798 Irish Rebellion.

For five years the steamer Wexford plied the South American trade routes to and from Argentina, uneventfully, under her first master, William Richardson. A skipper with 10 solid years of experience as a ship’s master, Richardson hailed from Sunderland, and had most likely watched his vessel materialize in the Doxford ways before he applied to become her first captain. It is likely that he recommended the spar deck modifications made to her late in the season of 1884, as noted earlier. He remained as her skipper until 1888, at which time a 35-year-old Scot, Thomas Walker, a master since ’83, took over the helm.

It was clear that this “cabins amidships” steamer, a centre pilothouse packet freighter, sometimes also called a “centre-island” steamer, was well-suited to traverse the ocean routes from north to south Atlantic. She could conduct herself well in the constantly blowing trades, the gentle and erratic doldrums, and the occasional ocean gale. Her steam-driven engine, the single screw, and the benefit gained from carrying a schooner rig with gaff-rigged sails, worked well in tandem to carry her loads to southern climes and return. The twin-masted sailing rig gave added stability in the long, rolling ocean swells — and sometimes a good push with offshore trades on the quarter. The strong wooden booms, carried on each mast, doubled as deck cranes to help load and unload bales of cargo, packed below the four planked and canvas-covered hatchways.

As a package freighter, she probably carried manufactured goods, including textiles, porcelain, cutlery, and tableware from mills and foundries across the heavily industrialized districts of England. On her return voyages, she would be loaded with cane sugar, bananas, raw rubber, wool, mutton, citrus, tallow, tannin, tung oil, tea, and other exotic cargo to meet an enthusiastic demand back at home. The tween deck area would have contained packaged freight and lighter payloads, while her main holds would carry bulk cargo. No bills of lading have yet surfaced to confirm the exact details of her cargo at this time.

William Deal, crew member of the Wexford during her South American passages, shown at age 60.

Courtesy of descendant Keith Deal.

During her first 15 years as an ocean freighter, she also made passage to the Mediterranean Sea. No details have been discovered to confirm her destinations or her cargo under the direction of Master Knox Mogelstine, her skipper from 1891 to 1895.¹⁰ In spite of the fact that Mogelstine had been the master of several wrecked vessels prior to his role on the Wexford, this period of time was also uneventful for the British freighter.

Under Master James Sloggett, she made many trips to and from South America in 1896 and 1897. Sloggett was born in Plymouth in 1844, and became a ship’s master at age 30. The Wexford continued to ply the southerly routes until 1897, after which, in probable need of repair and in a time of falling freight rates, she was sold in 1898. She was renamed Elise by her new owner, a Monsieur Dubuisson of Dunkirk, France. Within a few years the new owner found her to be a business liability for the French firm. In 1901 she required the refit of her auxiliary donkey boiler.¹¹ She returned to London, England, and, by 1903, was sold yet again to the Western Steamship Company from Toronto. She was relocated to the Great Lakes, continuing to be registered out of London under her original name, Wexford. It is an interesting side note that the Western Steamship purchased a second vessel,¹² the J.A. McKee, a similar size vessel, built in England, at Newcastle-On-Tyne by Swan, Hunter and Richardson in 1908. The voyage of the McKee in the 1913 Great Storm is addressed, in part, later in this account.

The new owner of the Wexford, William J. Bassett, managing director for the company, travelled to England to take personal charge and provide supervision for Captain George Thomas on the long voyage home to Canada. The following account, from The Collingwood Bulletin of April 16, 1903, tells the story:

Particulars of the steamer Wexford which Capt. W.J. Bassett has purchased in the Old Country for the Western Steamship Company have come to hand. The steamer is a steel ship, 258 [feet] 6 [inches] in length, beam 40 feet and a depth of hole [sic] to upper deck 24 feet. The steamer is classed as “100 A1” by Lloyds. She is what is known as a flushed deck ship and has main and spar decks and is so arranged as to carry a large amount of water ballast when necessary. The steamer is also fitted with steam winches, steam steering gear and hand and steam windlasses. She has a carrying capacity of 3,000 tons of freight of 100,000 bushels of wheat which is greater than any canal size steamer at present on the lakes. Capt. Bassett will commence to load the steamer tomorrow on the Thames at London with a cargo for Hamilton, Montreal and Fort William and he expects to sail for Montreal on Wednesday next.

Bassett signed on as “Purser” — to be paid the nominal wage of £1 for the voyage — probably to meet the requirements of the British Board of Trade — to account for all crew on a foreign-going ship. He joined a crew of 22 plus the Captain, George Thomas, and her Mate, S. Colborne. The crew was a mixed collection of nationalities. Nine hailed from England, four from Sweden, three from Norway, two from Finland, two from France, two from Germany, one from Holland, one from Denmark, along with Bassett from Ontario, Canada.

During a stop at Dunkirk, France, a crewmember, H.G. Bentley, was discharged “… and left in hospital on account of sickness (scarletina) and that the balance of his wages £3 17.4 has been paid and his effects delivered to the hospital.” — signed John (undecipherable), British Vice Consul. The Vice Consul “sanctioned the engagement” of her new crew for overseas passage, and certified the Agreement and Account of Crew, April 6, 1903, which contained these details.¹³

Certificate of Endorsement for 1903 Transatlantic Voyage of Wexford. The process of “clearing out” was a formal review of a ship’s particulars, crew, and conditions aboard, always authenticated by government officials at the departure point.

Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, R184-202-5-E, 1903.

Several interesting terms of service were noted:

At the Master’s option, no grog allowed on the voyage. Provisions included a sufficient supply of water, bread, beef, pork, flour, peas, rice, condensed milk, tea and cocoa, for the trip. No cash shall be advanced aboard or liberty granted other than at the pleasure of the Master. The seamen and firemen are to keep their respective forecastles in a clean and sanitary condition and leave them so at the end of the voyage under a penalty of 5/ [shillings]¹⁴ — per man for each case of neglect.

Should any crew fail to join at the time specified in the agreement, the Master may engage substitutes at once. The crew shall be decreed complete with 21 hands all told. The fireman shall supply the galley with coals.

Anyone using offensive or abusive language to Master or Officers will be fined 10/ — anyone found asleep or absent when on the lookout will be fined 5/ per offence.¹⁵

Such were the Articles of Agreement for the crew when the Wexford departed Dunkirk, France, on April 8, 1903, headed for Montreal, via London.

An interesting requirement, in handwritten notes on page one of the Agreement and Account of Crew for the trip was an employment guarantee for all crew members upon their arrival in Canada: “[O]n arrival at port of destination the crew agree to be discharged and reshipped on Canadian articles in the same capacities and at the current Canadian wages for any period not exceeding nine months terminating in Canada.”¹⁶

It was rumoured that she was in trouble and had to stop in at the Azores to take on fuel to ensure that she would arrive home securely. The two-masted schooner rig was still intact at this time, and she may have used her canvas as a power assist and to add stability on the huge ocean swells. In any event, a telegraph from Mr. Bassett to his wife, at Collingwood, Ontario, on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, confirmed that all was well, and she need not worry.

Again, according to The Collingwood Bulletin, May 14, 1903:

On Saturday, Mrs. Bassett received the following cablegram from her husband, Capt. W.J. Bassett, who is bringing out the steamer Wexford for the Western Lakes Steamship Company. — “Port Delgada, Azores — Have put in here today. Short of coal. Will leave after coaling. Strong gale with heavy sea.” The steamer was not in trouble as reported around town.

The rest of her transatlantic journey was uneventful, and she arrived in Montreal on May 4, 1903, spending two days there. She was discharged at this port by mutual consent, under seal of the Shipping Master’s Office, Montreal, signed by the vice consul.¹⁷

As noted by The Collingwood Bulletin of May 28, 1903:

Capt. W.J. Bassett arrived with the steamer Wexford at Father Point ¹⁸ on Wednesday last and at Montreal on Friday. The steamer had a full load of freight for Canadian ports. The Wexford was bought by the Western Steamship Company and was brought out by Capt. George Thomas. The steamer is schooner rigged and was built in 1883 in Sunderland. Subsequently, she was engaged in the British and French trade. She is of 1,340 tons register, 250 feet in length, 40 feet in breadth and 23 feet deep. She is fitted with a (3 cylinder, triple expansion) compound engine of 200 horsepower. The steamer will immediately engage in the freight business of the upper lakes.

Once on the lakes, her first cargo of inter-lake origin was unloaded at Goderich. On June 25, 1903, the Bulletin reported that: “The Western Steamship Company’s new steamer Wexford, Capt. W.J. Bassett, arrived at Goderich on Saturday with her first cargo from one lake port to another. The cargo consisted of grain taken aboard at Fort William.”

The Wexford is shown dockside at an unknown location. If a boat is unable to get dockage at the inner harbour piers near loading and unloading facilities, she was often forced to wait in the less protected outer harbour areas.

Courtesy of Ron Beaupre/ Library and Archives Canada, PA-213341.

When it became apparent that she required a major refitting, Bassett contracted for major works to be undertaken following her first season on the lakes. She was to be taken to the Collingwood Shipyards — ironically, the concept of which was conceived in 1882, at the same time as R.M. Hudson was engaged in planning discussions with the Doxford shipyards in Sunderland, to build the centre pilothouse freighter.

According to the Detroit Post and Tribune of May 2, 1882: “Collingwood has in contemplation the building of a dry dock and shipyard, and the council is prepared to submit a by-law granting a very liberal bonus to any person or persons who will undertake to build, equip and properly run said dry dock and shipyard.” Collingwood had become the key shipbuilding yard on the Canadian Upper Lakes, and remained the industry leader until its demise in the 1980s. The winter berthing yard for the Wexford was normally Collingwood Harbour.

The Wexford is shown at the Collingwood Shipbuilding Company Yards at the opening of navigation season in 1909. This overhead shot provides a clear image of the deck plan of the centre island ship design in the middle period of her tenure as a bulk freighter, carrying mostly cargoes of grain on the Great Lakes.

Courtesy of the Library and Archives Canada, C006-767.

The Wexford was placed in dry dock in 1904 for major restorative works and an extensive refitting at the Collingwood Shipyards. Her boilers and engine were replaced by the Collingwood Shipbuilding and Engine Company Limited, which won the contract for her boilers first, and then her engine. According to newspapers, a “gang of men are [sic] engaged in taking down the old engines and preparing for the removal of the boilers.”¹⁹ She had two new “Scotch” boilers installed and a triple expansion engine, made in Collingwood. While the engine was similar to other marine engines, it differed from the usual design in that the piston rod and crosshead were separate. The connecting rod had a wedge-type upper end — and the thrust block carried adjustable collars.

Following those upgrades, she routinely made passage from Thunder Bay, apparently unloading steel and reloading wheat at Fort William for the trip downbound to the elevators at the Port of Goderich. There remains the question as to whether she actually carried deck cargo, such as steel rails for the railroad industry. There are no available Canadian records for this cargo, but most American history sources cite that the Wexford carried steel rails as part of her circuit from Lake Superior through ports on Lake Huron, Georgian Bay, and the lower lakes. No documentation is provided for these claims. Her log for 1903 was thought to be available at the National Archives,²⁰ but the document there makes no reference to cargo at all. The deck configuration does not seem to give credence to this claim. It is possible, according to Captain Bud, that she could have carried rails on her tween deck, in this case on the old main deck then below the newer spar deck, or indeed in the bottom of the main cargo holds if necessary to keep her centre of gravity low. If she did carry rails on her tween deck, this would have raised her centre of gravity, compounding any problem after storm ice accumulation. Perhaps we can rely on the word of her owner to settle the matter? During the Goderich Inquest, owner and manager of the Western Steamship Company, Captain J.W. Bassett, stated, “She has only carried two cargoes of ore, never any package freight and never carried deck loads.”²¹

This three-cylinder Doty engine is similar to a much larger triple-expansion engine fitted to the Wexford in 1904. The engine shown was built in Goderich. These engines, remarkable for their simplicity and versatility, were manufactured in many sizes.

Courtesy of the late Graham MacDonald.

The Wexford was a well-known Goderich, Georgian Bay, and Lake Huron vessel. Her centre pilothouse, cabin-amidships design, large twin masts (finally stripped of her full suit of sail), and the flared bow “salty” lines made her easy to recognize and to remember. Unlike her counterparts — boxy-looking lake freighters, long and plain, with their cabins found fore and aft, leaving a long, plain and open deck space — she was much more visually appealing.

Two traditional lakers, with fore- and aft-cabin structures, are shown wintering at Goderich, circa 1920, next to a smaller “cabins amidships” vessel. Lakeports such as Goderich, Sarnia, and Collingwood were the site of large numbers of lake boats laid up for shipkeeping each winter. Goderich Harbour would often host more than 20 vessels for the winter season.

Courtesy of Huron County Museum and Historic Gaol.

Her master and senior officers, sometimes accompanied by the unofficial passengers onboard, would stand atop the pilothouse on the open lee, cloth-clad hurricane deck, waving to spectators and dockworkers as she proudly entered port. Members of her young crew hailed from the lakeshore town of Goderich and other communities along the Huron shoreline, but most hailed from Collingwood, on Georgian Bay, where she rested during most winters as part of the storage fleet in that harbour. On occasion she also wintered in the Goderich harbour.

Her business success for the Western Steamship Company was sometimes called into question. The Goderich Coroner’s Inquest, following the storm in 1913, raised questions about her repair history and her time supposedly out of service — running aground, hitting the docks, and losing propeller blades on repeated occasions. In one wreck report from 1910 she was reported as held up in the “Soo” in December 1909 with “trifling damage” and a partial loss of her cargo of grain. Her owner, defending her safety record, said, “The Wexford has only been in drydock about six times in 10 years.”²²

The Collingwood Enterprise of August 21, 1913, reported that:

On Aug. 17, the SS Wexford went aground abreast of Lime Island²³ in the fog. On Friday night she was released from her grounding at 9 p.m. after lightering 50,000 bushels of wheat. Water had leaked into #1 and 2 cargo holds [wetting approximately 20,000 bushels of grain]. Pumps were used in the forward hold. A diver went to examine the vessel’s injuries and make temporary repairs so the vessel could continue to Goderich. The 50,000 bushels of wheat [lightered] would wait for transport and delivery by the first available ship from the company owning the Wexford [Western Steamship Co.]. Mr. F.D. Root, the manager of the Great Lakes Towing Co., was representing the insurance company. Capt. J.B. Foote [of Toronto] was looking after the Western Steamship Company’s interests. The vessel was expected to get away on the 18th of August.²⁴

In the Saturday Evening News, another Collingwood newspaper (August 30, 1913), it was reported that the “Wexford came in from Goderich Wednesday morning and immediately went into dry dock. A large number of plates would have to be replaced.” This event, the last known mishap before her November voyage, may have contributed to the hasty retirement of her skipper, Captain George Playter. According to a newspaper report, Playter became ill and went home for the balance of the season.

The Wexford, right, is shown in dry dock in Collingwood beside the passenger steamer Germanic, owned by the Northern Navigation Company. The Wexford had run aground, damaging a number of plates. The Germanic had survived a serious collision with a fishing tug, the Victoria K., which she cut in two and sent to the bottom. Both vessels were undergoing repairs. Date unknown.

Courtesy of the C. Patrick Labadie Collection/Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Alpena, MI, # 156067-156090.

The Wexford, laden with 96,000 bushels of grain from Fort William, and her crew, said to be 22 in number,²⁵ left the dock at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, early Saturday morning, November 8, 1913, bound for Goderich. The Collingwood Enterprise of that day reported that “The steamer Wexford was last seen on Saturday last when the steamer City of Midland passed her in Hay Lake [now named Lake Nicolet] while the former was lying at anchor, apparently she had later passed on down the river and gone out from Detour heading for Goderich.” The same account stated that she “took on coal at Detour and started down the lake well South of Duck Island on a line for Georgian Bay.”

We know that she was seen once again, somewhere north of Point Clark, by the steamer Kaministiquia, and one questionable report has her much farther west in view of the northbound H.B. Hawgood.

Her captain was Frank Bruce Cameron, born September 4, 1889. A sailor, he was the second son of lake port captain and Master Mariner Alex Campbell Cameron. Bruce was certified as a mate in Collingwood in 1910, and acquired his master’s papers, Certificate No. 6713, in 1912, qualifying him to act as a master of steam-freight vessels on the Great Lakes. A young man, he was only 24 years and two months old when he assumed the master’s role. The year before, on February 29, 1912, he had married his young bride, Blanche Moore.

The Goderich Lighthouse, circa 1900, showing the storm-signal tower as it would have appeared in 1913. The lighthouse grounds were used as a grazing yard for farm animals at that time. From its first construction in the mid-1800s, the lighthouse had been improved and refined until around 1890, at which time it seemed to enter a period of decline. Major improvements were planned for after 1910, but were not completed until political necessity dictated betterment of the lighthouse following the 1913 storm.

Courtesy of Duncan and Linda Jewell.

Cameron was a talented young hockey player of some renown and had the scars to prove it. During a playoff game against Cobourg in late February 1910, while playing defence for the Collingwood Shipbuilders, he bloodied the ice with a slashed artery on his left foot.²⁴ According to the newspapers of the day, the team went on to win the first of nine Ontario Championships (Ontario Hockey Association, Intermediate “A”).²⁶

Being assigned the captain’s role on the Wexford was his first — and final — marine role as a ship’s master. He assumed command of the Wexford in 1913, following the sudden retirement of her skipper in the last weeks of October. The glowing pride that surely could be seen in the face and eyes of his young bride, Blanche, would soon flicker and die. By mid-November, tears of sorrow and despair would replace her broad smiles and the sparkling eyes that had marked her aura of marital bliss.