Mapping The Unknown

The first chart of Lake Ontario

Augustus Ford later in life after his dealings with Chauncey-perhaps he hears the wolf at his door?

The very first shipwreck on Lake Ontario occurred in January 1679 when LaSalle’s twenty ton “barque” was lost. At that time the lake was an uncharted and largely unknown frontier. It took more than a century and some military motivation before serious mapping of Lake Ontario’s underwater shoals and shipping hazards began. The U S Navy hired an experienced commercial captain named Augustus Ford to do the job. Before that Samuel de Champlain, a skilled artist and cartographer, had included the lake in his map of New France, published in 1612.

Part of New France from Champlain’s map showing Lake Ontario. Note the depiction of the Bay of Quinte

However, little was known about hazards to naval forces in the form of shoals and rocks beneath the surface.

Ford came to Oswego in 1797 as a merchant mariner, part of a French trading venture. He was surprised and dismayed, according to one historic account, at the lack of information on a lake “200 miles in length” with a “great many dangerous shoals”. One of those ship killers lurks a few miles west of Oswego. Today it’s known as Ford Shoal and though marked with a lighted buoy, it continues to this day to claim keels and attract wreck divers who explore the remains of a wooden steam barge that confirmed its location back in 1919.

Rocky shoals like these south of Main Duck claimed many a keel before good charts were available.

As he sailed on trading trips, Ford began mapping the lake by surveying its southern shore harbors and hazards. During his survey work, Ford, like many pilots of his day, kept a journal, recording soundings and land marks. He wrote “I then commenced keeping a journal by taking the soundings by keeping the hand lead in constant use when there was a chance, and examined all shoals taking the bearings and distances from the main land and courses from one point to another by different angles. I not only sounded all the British side and American but through the middle of the lake and this a constant employ for 12 years.”

Sackets Harbor during the 1812 war

In 1810 Ford, who had previously served in the navy and now resided in Sackets Harbor, was ordered to report to duty on the recently built navy brig Oneida. Here Commodore Chauncey soon determined that Ford’s extensive knowledge of the lake was of great strategic value. He asked Ford to draw three charts of the lake, one of which would be published. Chauncey told Ford he would have a plate engraved at a cost of about five hundred dollars, and that forty copies would be printed for Ford’s benefit. Ford wrote “the copyright secured to me, out of the forty copies each commanding officer was to have one copy of the chart.” He added that the offer was made in the presence of two witnesses, General Jacob Brown and Colonel Macomb.

Alas, Augustus Ford never got his forty copies. Even worse, Chauncey felt free to violate the copyright agreement and had a number of copies made ( and we might guess sold possibly to his own benefit?) and Ford never got a nickle out of the Navy for his years of work. He spent decades petitioning the government for compensation. He wrote in one petition: “I pray something might be done to retrieve me in my advanced time of life. I lack but a few days of being 70 years of age . . . I have had a large family to support, not less than 13 children that has always kept me on a Lee shore and now poor and infirm.”

Despite how critical good charts for naval planning had been, once the war was finished Ford’s pleas were ignored. As late as 1857 his heirs continued the effort only to have it ultimately invalidated by the U.S. Senate.

His petition is posted on line https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~twigs2000/genealogy/chartmaker.html. As the webpage notes, this sort of treatment is enough to make anyone despise the government!

We will be writing more about documenting the lake’s mysteries and bottom features in future articles. I wonder have any readers of the Chronicle been able to locate the Devil’s Horseblock?