More Main Duck Memories
of Lake Ontario's most remote island
“Tringa” at the Main Duck Island dock June 2022.
Sailors who live by the wind have walked Main Duck island's beaches and trails for hundreds of years. I have featured the island in two of my books “Twinkle Toes and the Riddle of the Lake” and “Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario” ( available at my website www.susanpgateley.com ) from which the following comes.
The great Canadian mariner and homeland defender Rene La Force, while enroute to Fort Niagara with a shipload of troops during the French and Indian war, anchored his schooner and accompanying flotilla behind the island in June of 1756. Here, he waited out a head wind and sent his people ashore to forage where they found “wild pigeons, cabbages, and garlic” for a welcome change from hardtack and salted meat. Today the island still lures pleasure boaters with tales of buried treasure, mysterious graves and tragic wrecks. It was once a refuge and sanctuary for Prohibition era bootleggers like Ben Kerr and Gentleman Charlie. And cold war warrior John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under Eisenhower sailed his small yacht to it a number of times as a boy and eventually bought the island and had it declared a port of entry so his wealthy friends could skip going to customs in Kingston.
I have been visiting this low windswept paradise for water snakes and snapping turtles for over four decades. I remember vividly my relief after fumbling my way into its harbor on a warm dark June night at about 2300 hours in 1980 after an attempt to steer across the lake from Pultneyville by compass to Point Traverse and Fisherman's Cove ten miles to the west of Main Duck. Oops. I missed. Probably should have swung the compass first.
As I lowered “Ariel's” Danforth into the weeds the sugary fragrance of late blooming flowers scented the muggy air. The great shaft of light from the powerful lighthouse on the island's west end swept overhead periodically, and I was grateful for that guiding beacon back before GPS that was ever ready to help lousy navigators make landfall. After 15 hours solo at the helm, the Island’s snug harbor was sweet indeed.
Other boaters have failed to find sanctuary here. About five years ago on a visit we noted the charred remains of a Dulles era cottage near the entrance. “Some kayakers paddled out and got marooned here by the weather. They burned it down as a signal beacon” a boater told me. Other boat crews have also come to grief here on stony ledges around Main Duck. People like to anchor in the island's lee on the poor holding, but when the wind goes north it's time to go. No matter if it's 3 am you gotta go when northerly it blows. Period. Or risk being beached and bouncing on rocks.
I saw a spectacular seiche once here. (A seiche is an oscillation of lake water caused by high wind or sudden atmospheric pressure drops. Wikipedia says the name means to sway back and forth). A tremendous squall roared down the lake one late August afternoon. I and a friend aboard another boat were anchored in the shallows near the head of the little harbor. At least eight other boats were crammed in the deeper areas. I was gazing aloft at the fast approaching roll cloud with dread and fascination thinking how glad I was to be safe in port when the other single hander said “look at the water!”
Mud boiled around us as my rode stretched taut in a current. Bits of weed rushed by as the harbor water gushed out into the suddenly lowered lake. “It's gotta be running ten knots!” My anchor ripped out of the mud and I grabbed my friend's boat as I floated past its stern. His deeper keel was stuck in the mud so he stayed put. At the entrance a yacht lay heeled on her side in a foot of water. Everyone not aground was yelling, cussing, hauling up anchors, starting engines, fouling props, and banging into each other.
Then the water came roaring back in. An eel fisherman got underway with his sturdy steel skiff. He took a line from the grounded yacht and as the “tide” rose three feet, he yanked the yachtie off the hard gravel. The seiche kept surging in and out for quite awhile, but each subsequent 'slosh' was much less dramatic as the amplitude died out.
Several times we tucked ‘Sara B’ behind the Willow Tree guarding the harbor entrance. This misty day was in 2008.
My most recent visit found the island peaceful and quiet. Alas, no money is available for new roofs and maintenance on the keepers’ cottages, though. My spouse and I think the cottages would make wonderful eco-lodges or quarters for island caretakers who could keep an eye on stupid campers and careless campfires. We would happily volunteer for a month in September. But I wouldn't spend the winter as Claude Cole family members once did. Like that alcoholic lone island caretaker in the 1950s who blew his brains out one winter night it would be too much for me listening to the waves and winds roar day after day. I'd go crazy too.
Main Duck visit in 2015 for filming of our documentary. It has video of the island. Find it at my website (susanpgateley.com) first page has upper right corner video link Quest For Hope
For more on Main Duck's fascinating human and natural history check out “Twinkle Toes and the Riddle of the Lake” and or “Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario” at susanpgateley.com or Amazon.com
Interesting.... I sure have no clue as to who the unfortunate man was or why he ended up in your family plot. The story I got was from Cecil Laub(spelling????) the one time harbor master at Fisherman's cove. I thought the suicide occurred was in the 1950s. The story goes Cecil ( a fisherman) had a seaworthy boat and so was asked if he could go out and recover the body. He recalled bottles on the floor and a shot gun rigged up for the suicide. He also recalled gruesome evidence of the island's vole population that had chewed on the body. I guess it had been awhile since the poor fellow killed himself. I don't know if that is a different incident from the 1944 one. There's a chapter in Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario published by Arcadia ten years ago on Main Duck. In it I reference some newspaper clips that say Cole died in 38. so I guess Dulles had it after that. Maybe Cecil did go out there in 1944. Memories are tricky and mine isn't good!!! Thanks for the interesting tidbit - Cole of course had Cape Vincent connections. It's a logical jump off point for Americans to go to Main Duck.
Recently, as in October of this year, I unearthed a gravestone on my family’s plot in Riverside Cemetery, Cape Vincent, NY. It was a man by the name of Jacob Dreve. He died in Feb of 1944 and his obit states he was found dead in his hut on Main Duck Island. He was 69 and was the caretaker of the island. Dulles’ custodian John Hart found him while delivering supplies. He is said to have died by his own hand. I wonder where you sourced the 1956 suicide reference. I would love to know why he was buried in my family’s plot.