Page 8 - Sept_Oct 2019

GERALDINE IN SODUS BAY - A FINE ARMSTRONG JOINS THE CLUB
Heritage Committee
At over forty feet on the waterline and 28 tons burthen, the centreboard schooner Geraldine was not just the Club’s flagship, she was the largest yacht in the local fleet. She was obviously quick, too, as three- time Commodore Edward Hodder (1810-1878) led the race to Port Dalhousie and back to take the Prince of Wales’ Cup in her inaugural year. Her centreboard, clearly no detriment to her speed, was also a major asset in Dr. Hodder’s other maritime pursuit, exploring the coves and harbours of Lake Ontario – and more importantly, recording what he found so others might be encouraged to follow in his wake. His Harbours And Ports Of Lake Ontario is the foundation for the Club’s Hodder Award, which recognizes Club yachts that have cast their anchors in all the inlets that Dr. Hodder thought worthy of a visit. (A half-model is mounted top left on the Harbourview Room’s Flagship Wall.)
Geraldine’s centreboard enabled him to slip into Little Sodus Bay, to remark that the Bay has, “depth of water sufficient for the largest class vessels that sail on the Lakes. Unfortunately, however, the water in the channel does not exceed an average of six feet, so that this otherwise secure basin is almost useless.” That is, unless you have a centreboard that reduces your draught – and on one of his visits, his companions included the Club’s founding Members, Honorary Secretary, civil engineer, photographer and painter William Armstrong (1822-1914).
Perhaps Mr. Armstrong accompanied his obstetrician friend as crew aboard Geraldine or aboard his own rather smaller yacht – we know from books like H. E. Baines’ The Cruise of the Breeze, that told the story of a cruise in Dr. Hodder’s previous yacht, that unlike the British (or presumably Americans from the wealthier cities), Canadian yachtsmen like Dr. Hodder typically sailed with a crew of their friends (“The moneyed class is a working class,” remarked Baines), but cruises in company were also popular.
We don’t have a record of this, or indeed, of many of these cruises, but in this one instance we have something even rarer, a pictorial record, and by the finest of the Club’s visual documentarians. In Kwasind (June 2002), Robin Wilson noted,
“Throughout his career, Armstrong ...
recorded Indian life and Maritime scenes in watercolours and line drawings. Many of his works are now contained in galleries in Ottawa, Toronto and Harvard University”. [He] delighted in painting the Club’s yachts in full sail. Several of these paintings grace [our] walls and form a valued part of our heritage.” (Reproductions are hung on the Island in the verandah outside the Ballroom and on the City front
mezzanine.)
A large portfolio of his drawings and paintings are also held by the Queen, but that’s another story.
To our existing holdings, we have now, thanks to a bit of fund-raising (our Heritage dinners and donations, mostly) been able to purchase “Little Sodus Bay, New York. The Royal Canadian Yacht Club Schooner- Yacht Geraldine, 28 Tons, Winner of the Prince of Wales Cup in 1868, Port Dalhousie & Return”. It’s a rare treat to obtain a work that links two Club Members who were notables in their own societies and times, notables in the Club and significant contributors to Club life in both their own and our times.
Early Days on the Great Lakes: The Art of William Armstrong is available from the Toronto Public Library.
8
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 • KWASIND
8
HERITAGE