USQUE AD MARE
A History of the Canadian Coast Guard and Marine Services
by Thomas E. Appleton

Deck Loads and Grain Cargoes

While great strides towards the safety of passengers in steamboats had resulted from the progress of steamboat inspection in the eighties, less fortunate Canadians who went to sea for a living were experiencing miserable hardships. Sailing ships were not subject to hull inspection, and thus they remained until the end. Although our merchant fleet of nearly a million tons placed Canada for a few precarious years among the top half dozen or so of maritime nations, few people outside the shipping business knew much of the operating conditions.

The main trade was of course in timber. Following the Napoleonic wars, when Britain stopped buying timber from the northern European countries, a post war boom, greatly increased demand for shipbuilding timber, and a sudden need for millions of wooden 'sleepers' or ties for the network of new railways then enveloping the English countryside, led to an enormous trade with British North America. The old colonies, formerly a military liability, now had an economic use, Canadian lumber entering Britain without duty. In the subsequent rush to sell cargoes from Canada, timber ships were hastily built to sell at a good profit after a few voyages and the ultimate was reached when a couple of ships were constructed from squared logs, spiked and chained together as a sea-going raft. These were sailed to London under an odd looking four masted rig. Atlantic, for it was designed to be dismantled on arrival and sold, there is no doubt that the lot of seamen on most of the timber ships was hard and perilous. All carried huge deck loads which hampered the men in working the ship which was, in any case, grossly overloaded. Some semblance of control had to be introduced, if only for the reason that many vessels failed to arrive and business suffered. A regulation limiting deck loads was therefore introduced.

Under this regulation, British ships were prohibited from carrying deck loads across the Atlantic from September 1 till May 1, a precaution which undoubtedly reduced the casualties to some extent. Lest it be thought that the reforming ardour of the legislators had outwitted the business instincts of early nineteenth century ship owners, it should be explained that customs officers, who were responsible for enforcement, had arrived at a handy interpretation of this rule. In the rarefied atmosphere of the lawmakers who drafted the regulation, it had been decided that ships should be allowed to carry sufficient spars to repair damages in case of heavy weather, a very reasonable precaution. However, to make matters more reasonable, customs officers came to accept squared logs, from which the ship's carpenter might have fashioned spars, on the scale of one for every spar in the ship except the lower masts and bowsprit; as this allowance amounted to no fewer than forty-two pieces of timber in the case of booms to spanker gaff, it was in itself something of a deck load, particularly as these logs were sodden with water.

Loading squared timber at Quebec in 1872. Toiling at winch and tackle is hot work on a summer's day and the men are glad to knock off for a brief spell under the awning. The square port in the bows was plugged and caulked before the vessel put to sea.

(Notman Archives)

If ship owners accepted the limitation somewhat grudgingly, at least the rule applied to all, for the timber preference kept foreigners out of the business and, from the point of view of enforcement, the traffic was cleared and entered through ports under British jurisdiction. As the years wore on, it might have been thought that the introduction of the Merchant Shipping Acts and various Canadian enactments would have improved matters, but an odd thing happened when, in 1861, the last preferential duty on foreign timber entering Britain was removed, and United States and other foreign ships entered the trade; shipping interests, on the pretence of introducing better safety regulations, managed to get the restrictive law on deck cargoes repealed, but somehow of other new laws never materialized. From that time, competition among the timber carriers became intense and, if a ship could stagger along with squared logs piled halfway up the rigging and a master could be found to sail her, stagger along she did.

In 1873, Mr. Henry Fry, President of the Dominion Board of Trade, wrote to Ottawa to draw attention to conditions in the timber trade. Henry Fry was a man who knew what he was talking about; a Bristol shipbroker who had been agent for James Yeo of Charlottetown, P.E.I., he dealt extensively in the timber and shipbuilding business of Prince Edward's Isle. Following a series of summer visits to Canada on the affairs of his principals, he settled in Quebec where he opened a firm on his own account. Pointing out to the Minister of Marine and Fisheries that forty-two timber laden vessels had cleared the St. Lawrence in the previous year only to be wrecked, and that only one sailed without a deck load, he went on to describe the fate of the crews of thirty-five of these ships which had been abandoned as waterlogged in the Atlantic:

"The harrowing details of these wrecks conclusively show how much deck loads contributed to the loss, and the various ways in which they bring about the destruction of ships and their crews.

Most of the ships engaged in this trade are necessarily second class ship, many of them having seen their best days, and some of them are not too well found. They are too peculiarly unfitted for deck loads from the fact that most old ships are weak in their upper works from decayed iron fastenings, and defective frames and beam irons. As soon therefore as a ship begins to roll in a heavy sea, she strains and leaks, and the deck load causes her waterways to open. If the pumps good and the crew can stand at them, she may possibly escape; but far more frequently when the pumps are most needed they are least available; a sea breaks on board, the deck load gets adrift, the sailors get their limbs broken, or they are killed by loose logs in trying to get them overboard; or the pumps are broken off at the deck by loose timber washed about and thus rendered useless; the ship becomes waterlogged, provisions and fresh water are destroyed, and the unhappy crew take to the rigging or the tops, there alas to freeze or perish, amid the horrors of starvation, cold and delirium."

In the hold of a timber ship. The square port in the bows is visible in the background.

(Notman Archives)

It was not a pretty picture. In the same year more evidence came to light when the British Board of Trade forwarded a report to the Canadian Government on the subject, together with a paper from the British Consul General in Havana, drawing attention to the appalling losses of sailing vessels carrying deck cargoes of lumber and barrel staves between the Bay of Fundy ports and Cuba.

From all these sources the case built up. It was reported by the British Board of Trade that, in November and December 1872, no fewer than 29 vessels were totally lost and 49 damaged, with the death of 67 seaman. This was the casualty list for two months only.

In the face of all these matters, the Department of Marine and Fisheries prepared draft regulations, and a bill was introduced to Parliament by the Hon. Peter Mitchell, receiving assent in 1873, by which no timber could be carried on deck to Europe between November 15 and March 15, and limitations were placed on the height of deck cargoes of lumber and shook in the West Indies trade. Of this legislation the Deputy Minister reported in 1874:

"Although there was considerable opposition to this measure from the Lower Provinces, I believe it will work well, and be attended with beneficial results, without unduly interfering with trade."

The squared timber trade has long since disappeared, as have the 'wooden ships and iron men' that characterized a great period in the history of Canadian shipping. Today it is doubtful if, in all of eastern Canada, a stick could be found of the size and quality once needed to make the mainmast of a full rigged ship. But down the Ottawa and Gatineau, still great wood producers, the rafts of old have been replaced by four-foot pulp logs. In the guise of any paper product, from newsprint to issue, this timber now fills the tween-decks of the ocean freighters loading in Montreal. Their lower holds, often enough, are filled with grain in bulk. One of the great movements of Canadian commerce today, the grain trade was just beginning when the squared timber business was at its height.

The responsibility for proper loading of timber, and of grain, belonged originally to customs officers but, when the procedures of the Merchant Shipping Acts became firmly established, these duties were shared by specially appointed officers known as port wardens.

1872 was a bad year for wrecks and, apart from the loss of life and property which shook the public conscience in the business of the timber deck cargoes, it had been marked by tragedy in the grain trade from Montreal to the United Kingdom, when six steamers went to the bottom with heavy loss of life.

At that time, ships were less specialized than they are today, there were no large freighters in the modern sense, and tramp steamers hastily built to earn a profit in one pursuit were quite as likely to earn dividends in another if opportunity offered, be it at the other, be it at the other side of the world. The St. Lawrence grain trade being on the upswing, it attracted large numbers of screw steamers from other routes, such as England to the Mediterranean with coal and homewards with whatever offered, to face conditions for which they were unsuitable. In moderate or summer weather these slow and low-powered ships were good enough but, wallowing with a full cargo of grain before the terrible gales of winter in the North Atlantic, they were often overwhelmed by stress of weather. Hatches were stove in, steering gears disabled and, once broached by a big sea, their fate was sealed.

Although the law required that grain steamers be inspected before sailing by the port warden, who was empowered to issue a certificate of approval, the penalty for evasion was only $40 which, to the master of a 'hard case' tramp, was nothing when compared with profits to be made by overloading. The owners and underwriters sometimes lost the ship, but it was the master who gambled with his life and the crew who paid with theirs.

With these matters coming to official notice, the law was amended and, from 1873, the grain ships were not allowed to clear from the customs house until the master was in possession of the port warden's certificate. Penalties were increased and, in general, the situation improved. However, as in the case of the timber carriers, unscrupulous men found ways to sidestep the law. In their former trade to the Mediterranean or the Black Sea these little ships could keep their bunker coal to a minimum, making up the difference by extra cargo. A Black Sea tramp loading in Odessa would take only sufficient bunkers to reach Constantinople, Malta and Gibraltar in turn, coaling at each of these ports with some 70 tons of Welsh coal which had itself come out from Cardiff in a ship clearing from Montreal would need 200 to 300 tons of bunkers to reach England. Although the port warden would see that the ship was properly loaded and ready for sea with cargo, bunkers and stores, the state of seaworthiness of the ship was largely a matter of judgement, port wardens themselves being former shipmasters with experience in command of grain ships. The official load line of 'Plimsoll mark', above which a vessel cannot load, was yet to come.

But there was a way out. Spending some two days under the grain elevators in Montreal, the ship would load 80-100,000 bushels and sufficient coal to get to Pictou or Sydney, N.S. The owner had complied with the letter of the law, and the vessel was fit for the first leg of the voyage. There were no port wardens in the Nova Scotia coaling ports, the Act did not apply, the holds were already full of grain and, when the bunkers were topped up, the ship was some 200 tons deeper than when she left the St. Lawrence. Furthermore the price of Nova Scotia coal was an inducement as it was cheaper at pithead than at Montreal, and the ship would face the Atlantic loaded to a deeper draft than would otherwise have been possible.

Despite these evasions, the rules of the St. Lawrence grain trade were on the right lines, and real improvements resulted. In addition to the steam tramps, there were a few sailing vessels in the trade, but these were iron or steel ships as the wooden sailors leaked too much to carry grain. In December 1873 the port warden at Montreal was able to write:

"... having seen accounts of the arrival at their destinations of all the vessels except two or three laden here during the season just closed, I have only heard of the case of one vessel (the barque Allan) that suffered from shifting of her cargo."

Shifting cargo, always a problem with bulk grain, was countered by regulations requiring a proportion of it to be bagged. In a sailing ship, heeled on one or the other tack for a long period, the problem was more difficult than in the steamers.

Slowly, with patience and hard work, government and industry gradually improved conditions for the seamen. Although some ship owners objected to the new trends, many sided with their underwriters and those who pressed for reform. For the sailor himself, to whom a gradual death by freezing and starvation in the scattered flotsam of a timber carrier, or the quick downward plunge in some overloaded iron tank of a grain ship, had been accepted as part and parcel of his hard lot, hope began to dawn.

It is not to be thought that the establishment of port wardens immediately remedied these hazards of grain and timber; many other aspects of maritime safety remained to be understood and remedies found. Even as late as the nineteen thirties grain steamers were overwhelmed occasionally in the Atlantic and, although the deck loads of the sailing ships were greatly reduced by law, many schooners came to grief in the lumber trades until sail was forced from the seas by economic conditions.

Ships still carry deck cargoes; the bulk carriers of grain, and now ore, are of a size and capacity then undreamt of. Today port wardens ensure the proper stowage of both grain and ore, and see that timber on deck is loaded and secured in accordance with modern regulations. But, in the reform, load line legislation, that the biggest advance was made towards safety of life at sea.