Gilbert and Billy’s Excellent Adventure Afloat

The incident came to the public’s attention innocuously enough through a report of a stolen yacht. On the morning of 17 June 1933 Frederick Morris looked out of the window of his large house on the Dundas Esplanade on the Charlottetown waterfront and saw something was amiss. It was what he didn’t see that bothered him. Normally his racing yacht, the Zenith was moored just off the shore. The Zenith was painted white and was sixteen foot overall, seven foot beam and a twenty foot mast. She carried a single mainsail and no jib. Fred Morris was a keen yachtsman and one of the stalwarts of the sailing scene in Charlottetown. He was to become one of the longest serving commodores of the Charlottetown Yacht Club.

Satisfying himself that the boat has not simply broken off her mooring he reported the theft of the boat to the R.C.M.P. and arranged for a search of the harbour area to be made by motor boat.  Later that day it was learned  that the missing boat had been was spotted in Northumberland Strait off Point Prim by the ferry steamer Hochelaga and was reported to be heading to Nova Scotia with two aboard.  

Charlottetown Guardian 19 June 1933 p.1

The minor theft became page one news over the next few days. By the following day the police, after discarding the suggestion that the thieves had been a couple of Nova Scotia vagrants who had been noticed in the city and had previously been housed in the city’s lock-up, began to connect the disappearance of the yacht with the report of two boys reported missing from their homes. Gilbert Moore, aged 14, and Billy Dowling, 10, had last been seen on Wednesday the 16th and Gilbert’s bicycle was also missing.  It was suggested that the boys had gone off on a fishing trip and a misadventure had taken place but they would soon return. Over the weekend the two boys and a bicycle had been traced to Borden where they had been overheard inquiring about the next boat to Nova Scotia. It was presumed that they had snuck themselves and the bicycle onto a boxcar and had secretly gotten across the Strait on the ferry.  By this time the Zenith had been found  near Cape John on the Nova Scotia shore across from Charlottetown. Two boys, one short and one tall, had been seen going ashore from the boat.  

Charlottetown Guardian 17 June 1933 p.1

Several days later, notwithstanding the speculation about crossing on the ferry or the presence of Nova Scotia vagrants, the mystery was solved as the two missing boys were found in Port Elgin and sent home by the R.C.M.P. 

However the story that emerged told of an odyssey which stretched over five days and saw the boys cover several hundred miles over three provinces and Northumberland Strait.  On Wednesday afternoon the boys decided “to get out and see the country” and set out for Borden with Moore pedaling and Dowling on the handlebars, but on reaching the ferry terminal they learned that last crossing of the day had already departed for Cape Tormentine. Returning to Charlottetown they abandoned the bicycle at Crapaud and accepted a ride on a truck going to town. Instead of returning to their homes they set out for Victoria Park and spotted Morris’ boat about 1 a.m. 

Charlottetown Guardian 20 June 1933 p.1

Neither boy had ever sailed before.  When asked how he did it, Moore said he had read about it and he just held the rope and kept heading into the wind so the boat would not turn over.  After making their way in the dark to the harbour mouth they spotted the Point Prim light and headed toward it reaching it about dawn. With the hills of Nova Scotia visible on the horizon they began to cross the strait but with a wind shift and rising tide they were carried west and reached a point near Bay Verte, New Brunswick before they were able to head back they way they had come.  They spent Thursday night aboard the yacht sailing along the Nova Scotia coast and at about 11 o’clock in the morning on Friday they beached the craft at Long River, near Cape John. They began hitchhiking toward New Brunswick and spent nights and bummed meals at farmhouses along the way, giving fictitious names and claiming to be from Cape John.

On Monday their luck ran out and both boys, who by this time had become separated, were found near Port Elgin by the R.C.M.P.  They were put on the boat at Cape Tormentine, arrived back in Charlottetown on the 6:30 train, and were sent back to their families a little more than five days after their adventure had begun. There is no record that charges were brought against them. 

Asked by the police why he would want to take a ten-year-old along Moore simply stated that he had wanted to come along.  Moore’s explanation reason for the exploit was that he had an urge to see the country. 

It was generally conceded by experienced sailors that the boys had been very, very fortunate in the weather they encountered.  

 

 

From Rum running to Gun running – the Customs Cutter Margaret

HMCS Margaret

Question: What does smuggling booze into a dry Canada have in common with a revolution in Brazil? Answer: The Margaret.

The Margaret at launch – Marine Engineering of Canada 1913 p.31

The Canadian Customs Preventive Service was established in 1892 but it was not until 1914 that it received its first vessel built specifically for customs patrol purposes.  That vessel. the Margaret, was built by the English firm, Thornycroft at its Woolston Works near Southhampton. The 800 ton ship was 185 feet long by 32 feet in breadth, drew 15 feet and had a reinforced hull to resist ice. The 200 ton capacity of the bunkers gave a cruising range of 4,000 miles, or 2,000 miles at full speed. She carried a 30 foot motor launch, a 26 foot lifeboat, a 22 foot captain’s cutter and a 16 foot dinghy. As initially configured she was armed with two 6 pound guns Vickers guns of the latest design. Launched in January 1914 she was completed and delivered to Halifax in April 1914 and took up her customs patrols. Anticipating the outbreak of what would become the Great War by only a few days she was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy on 4 August and was commissioned in 1915 as HMCS Margaret. She, like the Hochelaga and Constance,  became part of the fleet of small vessels which served as escorts and patrol vessels along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for the duration of the war. She was in Halifax Harbour a the time of the Halifax Explosion and suffered minor damage.

The Margaret was decommissioned and  returned to the Customs Preventive Service following the end of the war and once again took up her patrol duties in the Gulf of St Lawrence and Atlantic Coast in 1919. She was converted from coal to oil-fired boilers in 1925. During the 1920s she was a frequent visitor to the Marine Wharf in Charlottetown and was responsible for a number of liquor seizures in the region. The Margaret played a peripheral role in the 1926 Customs Scandal which brought down the Mackenzie-King Government and led to a constitutional crisis. In testimony related to bribery and corruption within the customs service it emerged that the Customs and Excise Minister Jacques Bureau had treated the Margaret as his private yacht, made renovations to increase her already comfortable accommodations, and removed her from her duties, exposing the coasts to increased smuggling activity. Newspaper reports noted an extensive cruise to the Saguenay with the Minister’s friends and an orchestra, the stocking of the ship with solids and liquids and the presence of women with questionable reputations. The cruise was only a sideshow to the wholesale corruption which permeated the Department and the captain and crew of the Margaret seem to have emerged with their jobs and reputations intact. It would not be the Margaret’s last brush with scandal.

In 1927, while in pursuit of a smuggler the Margaret struck a rock near the Magdalene Islands and was very nearly lost. The crew and captain had abandoned ship but returned to the sinking vessel, saving it by bailing water by hand, until taken in tow by a passing steamer. In the fall of the same year the customs cutter made at least nine seizures including one near P.E.I. in which the value of the seized cargo was nearly $200,000.

In 1932 the Preventive Service was transferred to the RCMP and late that year in an effort to reduce costs the Margaret was tied up in Halifax and was shortly afterwards sold at auction for $18,000. She soon found herself in the middle of a South American revolution.

Rio Branco on patrol

In 1930 a coup d’état in Brazil had prevented a duly elected government from taking control after an election and Getulio Vargas became president of the country. A movement in the state of Sao Paulo aimed at restoring the constitution led to an uprising (the Constitutionalist Revolution) which began in July of 1932 and continued until October of that year.  Open conflict between Sao Paulo and the national government saw two unequal sides. Although the revolutionaries had taken over military bases and supplies, they had fewer soldiers, limited reserves of ammunition and very light air support. As with many such actions, anticipated support from other regions of the country failed to materialize.

Plans were hastily developed by the rebels to purchase planes, armaments and ammunition and their agents were soon in contact with suppliers, most of whom were in the United States. However under American neutrality laws American ships could not carry materials under these circumstances so evasion was the order of the day.

The timing of the sale of the Margaret could not have been better for the rebels.  A New York ship broker named Fred Zimmerman had a chance meeting with one of the Sao Paulo agents and within days was in Halifax inspecting the ship. The height of the depression was a a good time to be buying a ship as prices had plunged. Suggesting that $50,000 or $60,000 might secure the ship the money was immediately supplied from Sao Paulo.  Zimmerman’s bid was $18,000 and the only other bids received were for $5,000 and $2,000 – this for a vessel which had cost nearly $500,000 to build.  Zimmerman later testified that he had provided an unnamed Canadian official $1,000 to facilitate the sale. That left over $30,000 to be accounted for.  Zimmerman and the Paulista agent had agreed that it was to be split between a number of other players involved in the transactions. Cheques were cut and subsequently cashed but not by the parties to whom they were made out. The money had vanished! Charges of theft were investigated but later dropped as it was impossible to identify just who had made off with the funds. The matter was subsequently a very minor part of the investigation of the American Senate Committee on Munitions (Nye Committee) and the testimony regarding the purchasing of the Margaret reads like a bad dime novel.

In the meantime the Margaret, which had been purchased in Zimmerman’s name was transferred to a friendly German colleague and the ship, with her name changed to the Ruth, was temporarily registered in Germany which allowed her to skirt the American shipping ban. Taking on a cargo of armaments and munitions, and with a mixed crew under a German captain, she left the United States ostensibly bound for Dresden, Germany.  Shortly afterwards the Ruth was dropping off supplies along the Brazilian coast by fast motor boat and within days she appeared off Santos, the port for Sao Paulo.  However, Santos was under blockade by a cruiser and two destroyers. An attack from the small air fleet of the revolutionaries failed to distract the blockade ships and the Ruth was forced to head to Buenos Aires without unloading.

Rio Branco at Guanabara Bay

Shortly thereafter the revolution collapsed and the national troops occupied Sao Paulo. The Ruth was considered an asset of the defeated state and became the property of Brazil. The vessel had another name change and on 14 December 1932 was commissioned ay the Brazilian Navy as the Gunboat Rio Branco.

She was converted to a survey vessel at the beginning of 1934 and when Brazil joined the Allied side in WWII she was fitted with 47mm guns and became a corvette. At war’s end she once more resumed her role as a survey vessel and served as well as a fisheries protection vessel.

Rio Branco

By 1957 or 1958 the Rio Branco, ex-Ruth, ex-Margaret was no longer an asset to the Brazilian navy and she disappears from the record, presumably broken up for scrap.

The Naval Service of HMCS Hochelaga

Before the Hochelaga was the steamship making a daily trip from Charlottetown to Pictou and back again it had had several lives which I wrote about in an article titled “One Steamship’s Story – How an Archduke’s Yacht Became a Zionist Immigrant Ship” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2014 edition of The Island Magazine.

HMCS Hochelaga during WW I. Note the semaphore signaller on the bridge

One of these lives was as a naval vessel during the Great War. A 1955 report written by the Naval Historical Section in Ottawa contains some additional details which I did not have for the article about the war service of a vessel which was an essential cross-strait link between Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.

The Hochelaga started life as the Waturus, a private yacht of a member of the Austro-Hungarian royal family and was later owned by an American millionaire. At the outbreak of the war the Canadian navy had a critical need for ships of all sorts and sizes and the yacht was purchased for $70,000 in 1915. Sailed by a civilian crew to Halifax she was placed under naval command and sailed for Montreal to be converted to a naval vessel and armed.  By September she was on coastal patrol based in Sydney. For the rest of the war she operated out of Halifax and Sydney but visited ports such as Louisburg, Cheticamp, St. Lawrence Bay, Gaspe, Quebec and Montreal. There  is no indication that she ever visited P.E.I. ports during this period. The official report also fails to mention the time when the captain of the HMCS Hochelaga was court marshalled for his failure to pursue a German submarine.

A somewhat shabby HMCS Hochelaga, probably near the end of the war.

Surplus to needs at the end of the war she was paid off to reserve fleet early in 1919 but was re-commissioned in July of that year in connection with the arrival of the Prince of Wales in Quebec and a cruise by the Governor General in the St. Lawrence and Saguenay Rivers. The ceremonial duties ended in October when she received orders to board two inspectors of the Government Radio Service (operated at the time by the Naval Service). She visited wireless stations along the St. Lawrence and the North Shore where equipment was inspected and supplies landed. She reached Halifax in early November 1919. During that winter along with trawler HMCS Arras the Hochelaga was employed clearing ice from harbours such as Shelburne and Sheet Harbour. In January 1920 she was based in Canso to “assist fishermen off that port in case of distress” a role that the Canadian Coast Guard was later to play but at the time was one of the additional duties of the navy.

Owing to funding cutbacks after the war there were no resources for manning the ships with naval crews and at the end of March 1920 the White Ensign was hauled down and the ship was re-commissioned as the Canadian Government Steamship Hochelaga with a civilian crew under the Blue Ensign. The CGS Hochelaga was re-fitted as a yacht for the Governor General and the Duke of Devonshire embarked in July 1920 for an extended tour of the Gulf of St. Lawrence ports. This harmless excursion was the basis of a diplomatic eruption as the Governor of Newfoundland was also at sea in HMS Calcutta commanded by a British Rear-Admiral. When the Calcutta encountered the Hochelaga in Newfoundland territorial waters the Newfoundland Governor was affronted with the infringement of the sovereignty of his domain and the ensuing wrangle between two representatives of H.M. King George V went on for several months.

SS Hochelaga in Pictou. Photo courtesy of Charles E. Frohman Collection/Hayes Presidential Center.

Following that voyage CGS Hochelaga was finally paid off on 30 October 1920 although a captain was kept aboard through the winter along with four stoves to protect the fancy furnishings from moisture.  She was not sold until 1923 when John Simon of Halifax bought her for $11.000 and she became one of the Island’s links with the mainland. That story with the surprise ending to the life of the SS Hochelaga is to be found in The Island Magazine article noted above.

A photo gallery of the known images of the Hochelaga / Waturus can be found here.

I am indebted to Bill Soper of Stanhope who located a copy of the Naval Historical section report and allowed me to make use of it for this posting.