For the 2012 season, the Lois McClure has sailed from its Lake Champlain birth to Montreal Quebec and from there to Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, where, at the end of July, it entered the Rideau Canal system to travel via that system to Kingston, Ontario before heading to Sackett’s Harbor and Oswego. NY on the south shore of Lake Ontario. To navigate through the canal system and move along, when not under sail, the Lois McClure has had the tugboat C.L. Churchill to move it along.
During this extended tour into Lake Ontario, the Lois McClure is operating much like a War of 1812 history outreach and education facility and focusing attention on the history of the ports of call where it berths for a period of time along the way, many of which would have had forts for defense and battles fought in their harbors or along their nearby shores during the period of 1812 -1814 when the conflict was underway.
When I arrived, the decks had been swabbed and the brass polished ready for the Museum exhibits to open but, as noted, I was a bit too early. I was happy, though, that I didn’t have to volunteer for any deck swabbing.
The Canal schooners transformed how commerce was conducted in the period after the War of 1812. When the Lake Champlain to Hudson River canal opened in 1823 and then the Erie Canal officially opened in the Fall of 1825, together these two canals created a navigable east-west liquid highway between Boston and New York City and a north-south canal-based route between Lake Champlain and New York City. While the Canal Schooners were responsible for the movement of freight, Packet Boats plied the same waterways with paying customers and offered luxury and comfort to those who could afford the ticket. Although both the Packet Boats and the Canal schooners eventually lost most of their business to the newer gadget – the railway – both types of boat were unique in the history of water commerce in North America.
The next boat moored beside the pier was the pride and joy of the Museum, the OMF Ontario, a traditional 1850’s style of lake schooner. Two wide for the canals and with a fixed keel, the lake schooner was restricted to travel on the lakes where they were built. Oswego had a very active ship building industry in the 1800’s. However, prior to the commissioning of the MOF Ontario in 1994, the last ship to be built in the Oswego shipyards was the Leadville launched in 1879.
The OMF Ontario is an 85 foot long steel-hulled topsail schooner with a mast height of 70 feet, a beam of 16 feet and a capacity for 49 passengers and crew. Aside from representing a great volunteer effort to get such boat actually off the drawing board and out on the water, the OMG Ontario represents one of the few successful efforts to create a floating classroom for teaching about the history of the lakes and the aquatic environment that has been so important to the development of the communities that line both the north shore and the south shore of Lake Ontario.
I was able to locate my kind of boat waiting for me in the parking lot!
As I headed back into Oswego, I looked back and found out why there were no dogs around the fire hydrant at the gate :-).
Today, Oswego has a number of boat docking areas protected by the lengthy rock rubble arrowhead breakwater with the Oswego West Pierhead Lighthouse at its point. The current lighthouse has been in operation since 1934. Interestingly, just recently, a commemorative plaque relating to the earlier lighthouse on the east bank near Fort Ontario was ‘found’ again near the fort.
One of the growing areas of tourist interest along the shores of Lake Ontario, and in the 1000 Islands portion of the St. Lawrence Seaway, is the recreational scuba diving activity focused on exploring the waters in and around various shipwrecks. In the Oswego area, the wreck of the 202 foot by 34 foot Great Lakes Cargo Vessel, David W. Mills, lies about four and a half mile west of the light house in 12 to 25 feet of water. It has become a popular destination for scuba divers since it was declared a New York State Submerged Cultural Preserve and Dive Site on May 3, 2000.
Before leaving this area of Oswego, I had to stop for a few moments to, once again, photograph a few different fire hydrants, the first one of which has the nicest view in town :-). Location. Location. Location.
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