By Suzette Lopez
On June 30, 1934, the last schooner on Lake Ontario, the LYMAN M. DAVIS, was burned at the Sunnyside Amusement Park in Toronto, to entertain thousands of spectators.
The LYMAN M. DAVIS was built in 1873 at Muskegon, Michigan, by J. P. Arnold for Lyman Mason and Charles Davis of the Mason Lumber Co. After the 1871 Chicago fire and Wisconsin’s Peshtigo fire there was an enormous demand for lumber. The Mason Lumber Company owned a considerable acreage of standing timber. The pine would be used for building homes and the hard wood for schooners. They needed their own schooner for the transportation of this lumber. The LYMAN M. DAVIS was born. She measured 123 feet in length, 27.2 feet beam and 9.4 feet in depth and usually carried a crew of 5 to 7.
The DAVIS had a good career in the lumber trade and later the coal trade. She was rebuilt at Sturgeon Bay during the 1903-04 winter and sold Canadian in 1913.
In 1928 there were only two lake schooners left on Lake Ontario – the two-masted DAVIS and the three-masted JULIA B. MERRILL. The MERRILL was set ablaze and then set adrift to the entertainment of thousands at Sunnyside in 1931.
The DAVIS was laid up in 1932. She had been used exclusively in the coal trade and the season before and made 20 trips from Oswego across the lake to Kingston and the Bay of Quinte.
In July of 1933 it was announced the DAVIS, at the close of the park season, would “end its career in a carnival of flame, for the delight of Sunnyside crowds at Toronto.” This announcement did not delight many.
C. H. J. Snider wrote a popular weekly column called Schooner Days for the Toronto Telegram. He launched a “S.O.S. The LYMAN M. DAVIS” crusade asking what the public thought. For four weeks in September 1933 he posted their comments. A “tidal wave of correspondence flowing in her favor” was received. Most wanted her preserved. Tied up at the park for tours. Some pointed out the waste of fuel to burn it could be used for the “thousands of poor families” instead.
It was noted that it would cost more to break up the DAVIS for firewood than to buy the same amount of cordwood cut and split. The oak of which the DAVIS was made is noted as being poor to burn in a kitchen stove.
The Toronto Telegram announced on September 23rd that the Telegram readers had spoken and the LYMAN M. DAVIS would “not perish in flames this year.”
Mayor Stewart intervened and the DAVIS was saved for that year.
But it was purely business for Sunnyside amusement park. In 1927 the park burned an old 75 foot yacht named BARBARA L. The police estimated there were 75,000 people at the beach for that stunt. And in 1927, that stunt did not have all the free press the DAVIS was getting from Toronto.
The following tribute was printed in the Toronto Telegram on June 30, 1934.
“The LYMAN M. DAVIS, which rode triumphant through Great Lakes gales for more than half a century, was destroyed today as the feature show in a Sunnyside holiday spectacle.
“Burned to the water’s edge and wracked by the explosions of powerful fireworks, the stout little schooner, which was born in a Muskegon shipyard 61 years ago, was towed to deep water shortly before 2 A.M. and sank by a dynamite charge in her bottom.
“Only when the final act sent the vessel, hot and steaming, beneath the quite ripples of the outer bay, did the last of the many thousands of persons leave the amusement park. For more than an hour the great crowd stood fascinated by the roaring flames. They were more than fire-struck. They were held by the same type of spell which in olden days drew morbid crowds to the public Toronto hangings.
“Even the most thoughtless of the watchers saw in the sinking vessel something more than the destruction of an inanimate thing. They had a feeling that out in the center of the oil fed flames, the bursting bombs and roaring rockets, a personality, and what, until then, had been a living memory of inland sailing fleets, was quickly dying.
“As a spectacle, the schooner’s burning was eminently satisfactory. The deck and holds had been piled high with dry wood and tinder like crates on Thursday, from a Western Gap pier head. Even in that the vessel’s destruction had the character of an execution. She was made to take that last short voyage, even as a condemned person is made to walk to the gallows, and she did in the ignominious tow of a sooty tug.
“On the deck and in the rigging fireworks experts had placed powerful bombs and rockets. The last property for the fire set was placed late last night when men poured eight barrels of coal-oil through the ship.
“Shortly before midnight a tug towed the LYMAN M. DAVIS from the Sunnyside anchorage, to a point about 300 yards beyond the sea-wall. The tug held her there at the length of a great cable.
“The fire was set almost on the hour, and in a few moments the flames had roared along the oil trail from stem to stern and to the tops of her slender masts. As the fire burned into her vitals, the bombs and rockets were ignited.
“The explosions fanned out great sheets and sparks and out from the burning ship rockets rose high and cut into the darkness of the upper sky.
“All that remained of the schooner was towed out into deep water before the flames reached the waterline. To the late-stayers there came the sound of a muffled explosion. The fire again flared high and then quickly died into blackness.
“The LYMAN M. DAVIS had ceased to amuse.”
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Suzette Lopez is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.
Photo at top of page:
LYMAN M. DAVIS at Muskegon.
Other photos:
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Suzette Lopez is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.
