Pirate Bill and the "Patriots"

Another look back into the past    of our area      
 
An interesting account of Lake Ontario region history is available from Shaun McLaughlin who publishes on the Patriot War and the well known historical personage of Bill Johnston.
Shaun McLaughlin is a journalist and tech writer living in eastern Ontario. He has published several books on the Patriots War, Pirate Bill Johnston, and other upper St. Lawrence River and Thousand Islands history  raiders and rebels press 

 He calls his publishing endeavor Raiders and Rebels Press.
He has self published two historical novels "Counter Currents" and "Islands of Love and War" and a historical nonfiction work that the History Press picked up,“The Patriot War along the New York Canada Border”. The so-called Patriot War is an obscure and little understood episode in the history of U S-Canada relations. Yet it has interesting parallels to more modern times.

 In large part the trouble started when Canadians in both Ontario and Quebec got sick and tired of their corrupt unresponsive governments during the 1830s. Immigration and differential treatment of recent immigrants from the U.S. and economic hard times that resulted in a bank bail out that ignored indebted farmers contributed to the resentments. People took to the streets and shots were exchanged in 1837. Once trouble broke out, folks on the New York side of the border were more than willing to help out to keep the resentments bubbling. Among them was Bill Johnston.

Johnston was probably one of the best known pre-Prohibition era smugglers on Lake Ontario. Both before and after the 1812 war he was quite active in “free trade” of rum and tea. A Wikipedia entry says he made a little money on the side by passing information on to the U.S. revenue agents on Canadian smugglers. One of his claims to fame during the Patriots War was the burning of the steamer Robert Peel.

One reason for Johnston's fame was his ability to elude the enemy forces thanks to his skill and good seamanship. An old account of his time says The flagship of his fleet consisted of a 16-oared barge ( a long narrow rowboat similar to a 'gig' only larger) manned by his companions and mounting three-pound guns. The paper says the boat and crew were able to make a speed of from 12 to 14 miles an hour, and the small size of the craft gave it far greater mobility than a steamboat,as it could take advantage of all the “nooks and crannies that abound” in the Thousand Islands.



Learn more about him and the Patriots War at McLaughlin's blog or at .
http://www.piratebilljohnston.com/

  How Lake Ontario Got It's Name -a mangled history lesson

Richard Palmer, historian, author, and editor of various regional history works, sends along this newspaper story from 1857 telling how Lake Ontario got its name. Since nobody knows the true origin of “Ontario” this is as good a story as any. Note Saratoga Springs was a famous health spa at this time. The writing style may be 19th century but the satire is timeless.

"From ancient documents in our possession of undisputable authority - for the plausible reason that no one knows anything about them - we are enabled to give the true derivation of the word, which, it will be seen, owes it origin to a trifling incident that would probably have never been recorded, had we not rescued it from the obscure pages of the oblivious past.

"A few years after the first settlement of the country by the whites, a venerable old gentleman from the north of Holland, named Myneer Vonsnappentweezer, who was extensively engaged in the wholesale ladder business, in the vicinity of New York, fitted out a prospecting expedition, consisting of half a dozen whites, two Irishmen and a Mohawk Dutchman, to explore the interior of the country, in search of a suitable site for a cork-screw manufactory. After a long journey through the wilderness, during which time the party suffered the most terrible hardships, subsisting six weeks on a bag of salt and a bottle of tomato catsup, the expedition finally reached the ancient village of Mud Lock. 

"Here the party fell in with a Kangapoojah Indian on his way to Saratoga Springs with an invalid niece, who informed them of a very extensive water privilege directly north - referring to the Great Lakes - and offered to conduct them to the vicinity for the moderate compensation of three plugs of nail-rod tobacco and a boot full of old Santa Cruz.

"Having secured the services of the guide, the party resumed their journey by a circuitous route through the John Brown Tract, and came out at the village of "Graball," now known as Mexico, though it still retains the characteristics which its ancient name would suggest; that this was the spot is established beyond a doubt, from the fact that an oyster can and an old fashioned junk bottle labeled, "Pure Old Cognac, vintage of 1532, were found a few years since in that vicinity, where it is supposed the party halted for refreshment.

Upon reaching the summit of a hill, the party were thrown into ecstasies at the sight of a magnificent sheet of water spread out before them and reaching as far as the eye could extend. The Indian guide on beholding the scene, suddenly threw up his arms in wild gesticulations, and apparently with deep emotions exclaimed "On Thar I-Oh!" The sentence was here abruptly terminated by the speaker having stepped upon a piece of scantling with a rusty nail driven through, which penetrated through his halter and entered the ball of his left foot just back of the first toe, and the concluding exclamation of "Oh!" was occasioned by the sudden sensation of pain; the remainder of his remark would have been to the effect that several years previous, "on thar," - meaning upon the lake - he had brought down seventeen "helldivers" and a "shitepoke" with one barrel. (note to reader helldivers aka grebes and shitepoke's aka herons are fishy tasting birds NOT considered birds worth eating.)

"Mr. Vonsnappentweezer, however, misunderstanding the character of the remark, and observing the extravagant emotions of the Indian, joined in his supposed enthusiasm, and catching up the broken sentence exclaimed, "Ah! It is the On-tar-i oh!" "Ontario!" "Ontario!" reiterated the remainder of the party, and from that moment the name became established.

"The Indian shortly recovered from the pain caused by the accident, by the application of a bottle of Persian Balm, which he happened to have in his carpet-bag, but the connection which his misfortune held to the origin of so prominent a name, was never before explained. Mr. Vonsnappentweezer after his return, published a long account of his explorations, which was extensively copied into the daily papers, describing the extensive "water privilege" in the northern part of the state, by the name so singularly bestowed.

"Thus it will be seen how the intelligent and enquiring mind  can trace out and restore the legendary and doubtful portions of history, and bring to light incidents that were never before recorded, and undoubtedly never transpired."

Beautiful Ambivalence- The Lake, Maritime Heritage and Nature

The duality of the lake is clear in maritime history. This freshwater sea is a life giver and an entity that takes life with the casual ease that we squash a mosquito with. The lake kills, it steals our land and washes our houses away, yet we insist on building cottages and lavish 4000 square foot houses on the very lip of the land for a thirty year view. This ambivalence, this paradox runs through much of life and is much on my mind these days. These truly are the best of times and the worst of times. A sunset is beautiful, but you're one day closer to death with the sun's passing. Yet we linger and enjoy. Maybe that's the secret- finding beauty in these strange and terrible times. The slug comes to mind. 
 

I've been battling them in the garden lately as I hope to see at least a few beans germinate. Slugs love just emerged bean plants. Though interesting with their varied colors and their copious slime it's a stretch to see a lot of beauty in a slug ( though the slime does dry to a nice silvery color on the plant leaves.) But have you ever seen a stash of slug eggs? They're amazing- like tiny translucent crystal pearls. Slime transformed into something from a fairy tale. 
 

My world just became a bit more beautiful. We got "Sara B" the schooner out of the barn. Like a big black butterfly emerging from its cocoon after a long two year transformation, she will hopefully soon spread her white wings upon the bay and lake and sail off over the horizon. The homestead feels a bit empty without her looming presence, but she's about to become a boat again. It's time. It's time to stop skipping stones and wading around in the shallows. It's time shove off from the shore and sail again for a few more short days-

Martitime Tales

Word yesterday in my e mail box is that "Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario" from the History Press should be in print and on sale by July.

 

So, what is your new book about? This is a common question for authors to deal with, and the History Press marketing department suggests authors come up with a list of easy to understand catchy 'talking points' as you attempt to answer. They also suggest coming up with a tag line. I'm leaning towards waters of wealth and treachery to sum up the duality of nature in general and the lake in particular.

Emily Dickinson put it so well and so succinctly- 'sweet is the swamp until we meet a snake.' Nature is beautiful and alluring but also dangerous and dark. And so it is with the lake. It has been and still is a source of wealth, spiritual energy, and great pleasure. But its indifferent power takes lives every summer. Not long ago two people died in the waves while swimming at the West Barrier Bar. Every year anglers, duck hunters , and yes, sailors too, are claimed by its uncaring waters, leaving families bereaved. Never take the lake for granted an old timer told me once.

Lately I see this yin and yang contrasting aspect everywhere. An environmental writer in a farewell letter just before his death said that we must learn to live in an age of contrasts and paradoxes. These are the best of times and the worst of times. Fossil fuel comes to mind. Fossil fuel gives us unparalleled freedom of mobility and makes it simple and easy to heat houses and produce electricity. The petrochemical industry has given us fiberglass boats too! But it's also led to horrendous environmental and social costs, like climate change and ocean acidification.

And so it is with the lake. It gives and it takes away. We don't realize how much it does do for us. Ask the folks who live near the Aral Sea, a body of water in central Asia with a surface area nearly that of Lake Superior that was almost sucked dry by irrigation. Their very climate changed after it disappeared. Their growing season was reduced by ten days. Toxic pesticide laced salts from its basin have been blown by the wind up to six hundred miles away. When some Soviet central planner decided irrigated cotton was more valuable than the various products and ecological services provided by the Aral Sea and so decided it should be sacrificed deliberately for agriculture, he blundered badly. Over 40,000 people from fishing villages alone were displaced and one best guess is that the lost economic activity alone runs 2 billion rubles a year. (This estimate excludes of the value of ecological services such as climate moderation and ground water enhancement).

Like the song says, you don't know what you got til it's gone- will we pave paradise and put up a parking lot here too? Or might we pay attention to the lessons of history? There have been instances of societies that learned from past mistakes. It has happened and it could happen again. Though one does seriously wonder... (art work by Peter Rindlisbacher and shows the Hamilton, a 1812 War era schooner whose brief career due to a mistake in engineering is part of Maritime Tales).

west coast note

The Beach Comber Goes West-written from San Diego a couple weeks ago

Recently two refugees from winter's gloom visited San Diego's Balboa Park. We're from a rural area where the less worldly natives are called 'woodchucks'. I'm a transplant from the suburbs, so I consider myself a woodchuck in training, but on this day the big city glitz and glitter had overloaded and crashed our sensory input capacity. Mildly dazed, we meandered on to the Prado and I paused to peer into the tranquil depths of the pool in front of the lath house. Why do people throw money into pools? They should just buy a boat, I thought.

While I was counting the dimes, a monster fish swam slowly past. It was at least two feet long and splotched with black white and flaming orange. Look at this huge goldfish I called out to my accomplice. Another tourist also gazing into the pond said that's a coy.

I fancy myself as being quite the nature nerd. I took college courses in biology (forty years ago) and I can tell a raven from a robin. But I had never heard of a coy fish. It looked like a carp to me. A colorful shy carp? What was it feeling coy about? It was actually quite pretty and it seemed fairly bold. Several more lunkers drifted by, a pure white one shimmering like a ghost, a dark gray one, and a really fat blotchy black and orange whale that must have been a twenty pounder. They all looked like carp. They appeared to think I might have something to feed them as several hung in the water and gazed up at me open mouthed.

When we got back to our North Park base, I fired up the computer and Googled coy fish. It turned out to be 'Koi', and yes they were carp. All dressed up in pretty colors but definitely good old Cyprinus carpio. I also learned people selectively breed them, and some of the patterns and color combinations of these gaudy fish are highly prized by carp connoisseurs. People pay thousands of dollars for a specimen with a particularly perfect pattern. And one Koi was reported to have lived in a royal pond in the Orient for 226 years.

Just what makes a “perfect” pattern isn't real clear to me. While I couldn't quite see shelling out the price of a half decent used car for a glorified goldfish to brighten up my frog pond back home, I did enjoy watching them. These one percenters of the carp nation floated like brilliant fishy flowers in the tranquil pool next to the lath house and its botanical displays.

Urban carp are thriving in elegant carefully kept park and garden ponds simply because of their pretty colors. Beauty, they say, is skin deep. But it's also in the eye of the beholder. I enjoyed the koi of Balboa Park. A lot of other tourists also admired them. Despite their gaudy garb they were still carp, though, just like the ones back home that lurk around in the weeds under my boat dock each summer.

PS since this was written I've returned to my neighborhood beach and am hard at work on a new venture tentatively titled "Dangerous Waters". Check the log on line at www.silverwaters.com for more on this project-

part two Water Awareness Journey

As we sped north towards Shreveport past Cypress stands draped with soft silvery Spanish Moss and more upland stands of oak, tupelo and gum a distant dark plume of smoke rose into the sky. We began passing huge flat fields of stubble. Rice. They're burning off the fields.

Orange flames flickered at the base of the smoke- a hundred black vultures circled and swirled over the highway and a hundred more roosted in the trees beside the huge field. We flashed by the two half mile long lines of flame burning perpendicular to the highway. Each line slowly drew away from the other as it advanced across the field. We felt the heat in our car as we flashed past this apocalyptic hell field with its smoke and blackened charred earth. A bad day for the mice. A good day for the vultures.

I learned from a farm newspaper picked up at a gas station that salt water intrusion now threatens the irrigated rice crop. In a land of fifty plus inches of rain a year, a forty inch rain fall is severe drought and ground water depletion is a real problem. The ag interests are seeking more diversions from the Mississippi. I wonder. How long will it be before we see increased withdrawals from Lake Michigan through the Chicago Canal to water the rice fields?

We rolled north to Shreveport and near that city the first signs of the Haynesville shale gas boom appeared. Well pads, rigs, the distinctive plastic lined open pit lagoons for flowback water began appearing along the roadside. We overhauled a tanker spilling a dribble of water that sprayed onto the road. As we passed the red cab we saw Haliburton on the door. We then overhauled a second tanker, also dumping his load on the road. We did not test the liquid. We don't know for sure it was polluted. But why would a truck dump good water on the highway? As my co- captain observed- one truck, maybe a screw up. But two trucks traveling together?? That's a bit beyond statistical likelihood of simple stupidity or incompetence. That looked an awful lot like standard corporate operating procedure.

Louisiana is a poor and sparsely populated state. It has suffered severely from chemical contamination and oil pollution for decades. It's logical to assume that few people are monitoring the industry and even fewer thank they can change its behavior here. A Google search for environmental websites dealing with shale gas drilling here turned up very little in the way of activist information.

A day and two tanks of gas later the little blue Honda and its crew were passing through the Permian Basin of west Texas. Here for eighty years oil has been extracted. Ten years ago the supply was dwindling and the basin was thought to be nearly sucked dry. Then fracking began. Today industry believes another 30 billion barrels of oil may be 'recovered' from the Permian. Odessa, Midlands, and Monahans are booming 24 -7. The trucks roll constantly, day and night on I 10. The lot in front of the motel we stayed at was full of trucks. More than two thirds had drilling gear or were tankers. On a Sunday morning they were rolling at 7 am. On Saturday I watched ten trucks go by four of which were tankers. An industry publication says it's like another Kuwait has been added right here in the good old USA. “It is almost as if the laws of scarcity have been repealed” gushed the industry observer.

But not for Texas water supplies. It takes seven to nine barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil. And each well may use up to 13 million gallons of water. The drillers get it from ground water. Even as the worst drought ever recorded in the state has shriveled and parched Texas, they are pumping millions of gallons of freshwater into the oil wells and recovering and re using less than a quarter of it. This “unregulated gluttonous use of freshwater” as one Texas newspaper called it, has gotten so bad that Governor Perry signed into law last year a regulation that the drillers reveal the quantity of water used for each well. Pretty amazing considering how friendly Texas generally is to the industry.

The drillers can use brackish water extracted from deeper under the ground. But it costs more and with the supplies of gas and oil on the increase gas prices and profits are dropping. This is not the time to spend more on recycling and cleaning up water. So use it up. Quick before the regulations get put in place. The last few surviving ranchers and farmers can go to work driving trucks. At least until 2020. Then the latest boom will go bust. Actually an industry paper reported on the day I wrote this that a “much needed correction” was in the works as the industry began cutting back on shale gas drilling investments. Will New York's moratorium stand?

We filled up the gas tank again and drove on.

We drove past a dried up orange grove in Arizona and empty pastures in New Mexico. We drove past unused fields whitened and poisoned by irrigation salts. We drove over the Canal that supplies the hay fields of southern California. And we drove over the Rio Grande where I saw one very small puddle fed by a tiny trickle.

Drought and water scarcity, writes William deBuys in his book “A Great Aridness”, are a different sort of “natural” catastrophe. It comes on gradually and grinds away at the economic system built up upon a customary supply. In ancient times New Mexico and Arizona peoples successfully practiced dry land farming for centuries. Then seven hundred years ago the last great drought arrived. The society unraveled. Archaeologists have found large numbers of broken human bones and skulls- broken by human on human violence.

Will forethought and science prevail in this fossil fuel dependent society of today? We have the technology to do it differently. We passed a 250 MW concentrated solar utility plant under construction west of Tucson. We passed a hybrid diesel delivery truck in Louisiana. I walked by a tiny smart car over by the library yesterday. Rain does still fall, at least occasionally. The sun still shines and plants still grow. For now.

water awareness part one

Our Water Awareness Journey

I'll get back to the pellets and biomass soon. Right now while it's fresh in my mind I want to share observations of a cross country trip where we observed what happens when there is too much and too little water and people have made unwise choices regarding same.

The lake watcher headed west with her co captain and a crew mate from Wolcott a few days ago. Our first destination was the deep south where we became acutely aware of the impacts of too much water. We traveled from Mobile Bay west to the fabled French Quarter of New Orleans which largely escaped the rage of Katrina. Biloxi however did not. I had noticed the occasional groupings of live oaks around weedy plots as we drove the coast highway. When we neared the old gulf city of Biloxi these groupings became more frequent. Broken bleached snags and stumps marked the seaward median strip where once a complimentary row of oaks reached out over the highway to lace branches with the land side trees. We saw large multistory casinos with ripped and tattered siding exposing the steel beams beneath. A bill board touted Slab Removal 1.50 per square foot. We saw concrete street lamp bases still sprouting wires, bent and uprooted fire hydrants, and many many slabs with ragged live oaks and for sale signs usually listing a banking contact. It will be many years before Mississippi recovers from Katrina and its 25 foot storm surge.

Do you think that just maybe the banks might decide not to finance new mansions with waterfront views there?

The vital bustling colorful flavorful raucous French Quarter was largely untouched by Katrina. Humans are a resilient species and they're still busy trading and dealing and selling to the tourists in the Big Easy. We took a mule wagon ride ( mules stand the heat better then horses) with Daryl the guide and Willie providing pull. Before boarding I observed two notices taped to the seat backs. One had a three inch header PETA LIES the second with smaller print outlined the mule welfare guidelines of Willie's employer. He heads back to the barn when it hits 95 degrees. Daryl was a 22 year veteran of the tourism guide biz. He had been with his street wise mule for about 13 years.

Do you know where The Music was born? Not in the French Quarter. It was born in the Treme ( pronounced Trem-may). Daryl told us with pride in his voice. This, I now know, was one of the city's oldest neighborhoods where the free people of color lived. He also told us a well regarded producer had created an HBO series about the area and he had a bit part in one episode as a dancer. Later we had a beer and listened to three young black male musicians and a young white female vocalist wail out the blues. The waiter smiled and thanked me when I put a tip in the muscians' jar. The 99 % are still scrapping and scraping by in New Orleans. They even spare the tourist a smile and a cheery hello now and then.

Katrina largely spared the Lafitte swamp, too, but here we saw the first signs of drought. Crispy brown withered vegetation and dry bare earth lay beneath the tall straight Cypress trees and their knees. One tiny puddle of water under the boardwalk contained a dozen minnows. No alligators to our regret. But the treetops were busy with birds-winter warblers, sparrows, titmice and chickadees with an accent and slightly different plumage than New York black caps.

We stopped at the visitors center to inspect the restrooms and here a volunteer told us the swamp was under the influence of the great southwestern drought. But not to worry. The gaiters find holes, the turtles and fish repopulate, the birds go somewhere. But what the swamp can't deal with is giant Salvinia. This and a trio of other invasive south American plants how rapidly spreading through the bayous are weaving a choking mat of vegetation so thick you can walk on it in some places. You can't hand pull it- it takes a dredge and in five weeks it repopulates. A bit disheartened by this we moved on.

Next hydro fracking and a historic drought in the Permian Basin of west Texas.

pellets fish and clean water

Pellet stoves happy fish and clean beaches. First in a series

What has a wood burning stove got to do with a less smelly beach? Bear with me. This will take a couple of paragraphs.

Erosion is not good for lakes. When dirt washes off bare land, it often carries antibiotics, persistent pollutant chemicals and endocrine disrupters and pathogenic bacteria with it. If the mud has come from a cornfield or some other land with row crops on it, the runoff frequently carries fertilizers that end up fertilizing algae and rooted weed growth in the lake. Too much nitrate and phosphate pollution from agriculture has caused toxic blue green algae blooms, near shore “dead zones” with no oxygen, and botulism outbreaks that killed thousands of birds on Lake Erie and Ontario. So how are pellet stoves mixed up with this?

Pellet stoves are an increasingly popular way to heat houses in the rural areas of the Great Lakes region. Most use sawdust that has been formed into little cylindrical pellets that look like rabbit chow. In areas with lots of trees, waste sawdust pellets bagged up as fuel are very competitive with propane and heating oil if you have a special stove to burn them in. Northern Europe has modernized pellet stove designs because the fuel burns much cleaner than cordwood. In fact, late last December a bulker loaded with 28,000 tons of pellets left a terminal near Norfolk Virginia for Germany where homes and businesses burn about 1.6 million tons a year. Europe in general is increasing its consumption of pellet fuel and one industry trade group predicts that use could double in eight years from the current 11 million tons to 15 to 25 million tons.

But as clean burning easy to use pellet stoves become popular, the available sawdust supply dwindles. It takes seventy years to grow a decent sized tree. It takes seventy days to grow a field of perennial grasses or golden rod. And native grasses can make fuel pellets too. A hundred years ago people burned hay and straw and dried cow chips out on the tree less prairies. Straw stoves have been around for years in Scandinavia and in rural areas of the U.S. In fact back in the 1870s straw burning steamers were being used on threshing rigs. And people have burned wheat and rye grain in stoves. Back in 1988 when I saw my first pellet stove in Watertown it was burning spoiled corn kernels. So the interest in grass pellets now on the upswing simply continues the long standing practice of getting heat energy from farm crops and waste fiber.

Stay with me for one more paragraph.

Many grasses are perennial plants. They develop huge strong root systems that penetrate deep into the ground. A good hay seeding of perenial grasses that's fertilized regularly can last for at least a decade as the farmer takes off two or three cuttings a year. All that time, the grass holds the soil on the field even as it provides forage for cows, or cover for nesting birds and wildlife. Given ample fertilizer you can produce five tons of biomass per acre in the Lake Ontario watershed. That biomass, like wood, can be turned into pellet fuel and used in heating. At the time I wrote this the retail prices of wood pellets were running 260 to 300 dollars a ton. And it can reduce soil erosion and inputs of fertilizers and chemicals into Lake Ontario too One way it does so is if farmers plant wide buffer strips of grass near streams and creeks to soak up the excess manure they apply to their fields. This keeps the fertilizer out of the water. Planting perennial grasses on steep slopes also keeps that priceless resource we call 'dirt' in place. As Jared Diamond author of the ground breaking book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed points out, history shows repeatedly that when a society loses its topsoil, it can not long endure.

In a press release from a German company announcing construction of a pellet plant in east Texas that will produce 500,000 tons of fuel a year German Pellets says;

“Wood pellets are the fuel of the future. They are produced from the renewable raw material wood, meaning that a sustainable supply is guaranteed. In addition, wood pellets are significantly less expensive than fossil fuels. Pellets are a clean, CO2-neutral fuel, which means they do not contribute to climate change or pollute the environment. “

Possibly. But some folks right here in Ontario and Quebec and upstate NY and Vermont are thinking grass pellets may be the fuel of the future. Our next article will take a look at REAP and Cornell and some other endeavors to create sustainable affordable bio fuel from land that should not be growing corn.

coming next- can cattails contribute to 'energy independence' from the Middle East?