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.
Let only the young come, Says the sea.
Let them kiss my face And hear me.
I am the last word And I tell Where storms and stars come from.
— Carl Sandburg, from Young Sea
Captain Bruce Cameron’s View: The Skipper’s Personal Log 1
Although there was always a ship’s log to keep records of trips, maintenance, and other particulars up to date, and there was a bill of lading for each trip, such as the one found in Bruce Cameron’s pocket when his body was recovered, ship captains and other crew sometimes kept their own personal diary as a log of their trips and their feelings about