EPISODE 318 stonehooking….schooner days..thE LITHOPHONE…WALTER NAISH…ANCHOR NNOT ATTACHED…ICE JAM BREAKS…POT CREDIT MEN TRY TO FND THE LITHOPHONE

EPISODE 318:   THE STORY OF ONE STONEHOOKER CALLED THE LITHOPHONE

alan skeoch

April 2021

When Lorne Joyce told me the story of the stonehooker called the Lithophone I hustled

directly home with my notes.   While there were many stonehookers anchored in Port Credit

harbour between 1850 and  1920, the story of the Lithophone is pre-emient in my mind

because its adventures were wrapped[ in the lives of the men who did the stonehooking.

EPISODE  318:   THE LITHOPHONE, 1899…WALTER NAISH’S STONEHOOKER   

                      There is an element of dark humour in this  story about a stonehooker called the Lithophone.  Dark humour because several men of stonehooking days risked  their lives to recover the Lithophone

   Organ Bob Joyce, named so because he played the organ in the Baptist church, was  the carpenter who built the Lithophone in 1899, one the fastest and initially sleekest stone hookers on the lake.  A scow model…55 feet long, 17 foot beam with a shallow 4 foot hold.  Designed to hold the slabs of blue shale on deck.

                      slabs on deck  were a lot easier to handle than slabs  in the hold.  A scow was therefore easier on the men in the stonehooking trade than were the old schooners. 

  First owned by the Al Hare and then sold to Walter Naish years later.  

 

By then she must have been badly battered for she was held together by cable and turnbuckles.  It was winter time When Walter got the Lithophone so he got a good anchor…cut a hole in the ice…dropped the anchor overboard and then wound the anchor chain around the windlass.  Walter knew he had to anchor the

                 the Lithophone firmly because 

Ice Break-up on the Credit River is a sudden event.  Boom, the ice breaks and whoosh out It goes taken any loose things with it.  The ice that year took out the Lithophone as well.  Walter Naish had not attached the anchor chain to the boat…just wound it aroung the windlass … unwound like a spool of thread.

 

Walt Naish shouted for Al Hare, and Hare hailed Jack Cummings and Jack Cummings got Newman.  They stuffed the Lithophone sails in a little  skiff.

 

 “Give a hand!” they yelled to Al Hare

“You’ll never catch her in that little thing!,” yelled Al,      

“Take Newman’s boat!”…The Hecla was a fishboat with two masts and three sails.  

“No time!”

So Al Hare took the tiller of the little boat and the men rowed and rowed…almost swamped.

“Better turn back!”

“No!” Yelled Walter Naish…he could not afford to lose the Lithophone.

 

By this time the Lithophone was bobbing around like a barrel in the water. She had been stripped of any weight for the winter and her centerboard was up.  Meanwhile the men were in serious trouble.  Four men, four sails, a hundred pounds of other gear  and water pouring over the front and sides of the skiff.  Waves getting higher and higher.  The Lithphone could not be caught. 

 Then the men saw the Hecla moving fast towards them with Harbourmaster Dan Sharp at the stick.  But Sharp didn’t even see the four men in the skiff.  By this time they had been blown to Long Branch and it was dark.  

So The men in the skiff beached themselves and walked back to Port Credit from Long Branch over muddy tracks and sodden fields.

 

Back in Port Credit , people were getting ready for the funeral.  The Hecla reported no sighting of the four men in the skiff.  So Al Hare, Water Naish, Jack

                      Cummings and  Newman were presumed drowned. 

 

When the four men sloshed their way into Port Credit there was relief.  All was not lost.  Walter Naish  was the biggest loser..lost his anchor, his chains, his Lithphone, his investment , his supper and nearly lost his life.

 

The Lithophone?  What happened to her?  A week later she was spotted afloat in the lake…decks awash…near the south shore of Lake Ontario.

 

Could the Lithophone be recovered?  Lew Naish, Walter Naish’s brother, owner of another stonehooker,  the Newsboy,  felt duty bound to do something.  So a crew (Jack Potter, Lew Naish, Walterh Naish, Bil Newman, George Hare, Harry Fowler)  boarded the Hecla, with Al Hare at the helm and headed for Port Dalhousie.  Not a good trip.  Fog and thin ice.  The men had to wrap themselves in the sails and wait out the night.  Open to the sky.

 

They worked their way along the south shore and finally caught a glimpse of the two masts of the Lithophone sticking out of the water like dead trees.  Awash. Deck cleared of cabin and anything else.  With help of tug Nellie Bly they tried to sail and steam the wreck of the Lithophone to Port Dalhouse harbour. 

 More trouble.   A new man on the tug slipped and fell overboard and under the stern.  He did not come up.  Al Hare got a pike pole and grappled for the body.  Took some time but found him tangled under the stern.  Pulled him loose.  Hauled the unconscious man on deck.  “He’s dead!” , declared all around except for Al Hare who began pumping the man’s chest after others had given up.  Others worked the dead man’s arms….got water out, bubbles from the nostrils…then the man began to roar.  Alive he was carried to a nearby hotel and wanted to buy out the bar for Al and his crew.  All Al wanted was for his name to be kept out of the paper.*

 

The Lithophone was towed home to Port Credit by the Nellie Bly and resumed stonehooking.  The Lithophone is Still around… somewhere in Port Credit for she ended her years as a stone filled wharf.  

 

(*Sources, Lorne Joyce and C.H. J. Snider, Schooner  Days,

                        adapted by Alan Skeoch)

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                      alan skeoch