WFITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESI)AY MIARCFI 5, 1980, PAGE 9 TheWar of 182mde Whitby famous aro«und the world as a port of cai By EUGENE M. HENRY on both the north and south scene. th century. They were easy due course however, some It was the war of 1812 that shores of Lake Ontario and .Scow schooners were and inexpensive to build. affluent owners modified the >ussed international atten- Whitby Harbour was a buildt by the hundreds on the They could navigate in scow schooners rough lines ion on the Great Lakes and regular "Port of Cail" for Great Lakes in the nineteen- shallow water (6-7 feet). In to secure a more sleek boat. ushered ln, an age of sali, growth and prosperity, for port towns like Whitby. When hostilites between Canada and the United States were kt an end, im- migrant . farmer/settlers came to Central Canada in rlslng numbers. The fertile farm lands provided them with surplus grain for cash sales and Whitby Harbour was the storage terminal for export shipments across the lake to Rochester and Oswego N.Y. By the 185's there were several hundred small schooners working the ports many of them. .They were a viable mer- chant sailing fleet that would dominate Lake On- tario shipping for many years to corne. Steam propulsion was in- troduced on the Great Lakes early in the nineteeth cen- tury and the era of steam overlapped on the age of sail. Shipping agents lear- ned soon, however, that it took a heavy load of fuel to make a steam boat travel a fair distance. It was therefore, a long time before the small schooner passed from the local shipping In some ways they looked like condensed versions of the sait water clipper ships of those days. This greatly improved design continued to influence lake vessels of this type until the end of the age of sail. - Whitby businessmen with investments in dock side en- terprises at Whitby Harbour chartered small schooners and eventually purchased a ,iumber of them over the years. The "John Welsh" was built by Captain James Howe in a make shift yard on his harbour property the "Maple Leaf" and many other well known schooners used the harbour in those early days. This illustration by Ot- tawa artist Robert Hyn- dman reconstructs a famillar scene around our harbour in the 1850's Le. Captain Rowe's schooner John Welsh up on the ways for repairs. If there are any Free Press readers who would like a print of it, drop me a Une c/o the editor and it's yours. in closing, it seems relevant to observe that the first age of sail came to an end, not because steam boats drove the schooners from oùr harbour, but because the railways took the trade away and that of course is another story. TUESDAY is PERM DAY SCISSORS AIL PERMS 1/2 PRICE " Redkn P.m . .$50 TUESDAY... $25 " Henna P..... .$40 TrUESDAY ... $20 e Zotos Perm ... $45 TUESDAY.. $22510 0 Wolloa BaIsm Perm ........ $35 TUE$DAY . .$17»@ *Schwarzkom P«m ... $30 TUESDAY ... $15 -6.64O 601 Du.Mdu St.W. 668.1wHITBy TOWN PLAZA t' JOHN BANDURCHIN Churoed ACoeumtutm 185 Brock St. N. Whitby Telephone 668-4341 Services include income tax return preparation, tax planning, and accounting services for management@