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Printed from the Niagara Falls Review

Lovable landmark, or a highway wreck?; Few options remain to make use of the old ‘pirate ship’ in Jordan

MATTHEW VAN DONGEN

Tuesday, January 02, 2007 – 02:00

Local News – The ship’s two masts loomed above them in the gathering darkness. The massive wooden hull dwarfed their tiny inflatable raft from Canadian Tire, struggling against the icy December wind on Lake Ontario.

In late 1999, Liz and two friends made an unauthorized evening visit to the mysterious tall ship listing in Jordan Harbour.

Conditions were not ideal.

The abandoned ship was frigid. The dark, slanty walkways and stairwells were eerie. The amount of trespassing involved on a trip to an ownerless ship was debatable.

But the three friends – all veteran explorers of deserted sites – couldn’t stay away.

“It was this really bizarre artifact that thousands of people pass on the highway every day,” said Liz, who contributes anonymously to a Toronto-based web magazine for urban explorers/well-intentioned trespassers called Infiltration.

“It’s not that often you find an abandoned ship just hanging around. We wanted to know its story.”

The ship’s story is more bizarre than it looks.

Jordan’s beloved “pirate ship” began life in 1914 as a St. Lawrence River ferry named Le Progress.

It was converted into a floating restaurant in 1991 and built to resemble La Grande Hermine (The Big Weasel), the ship French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed along the St. Lawrence River in 1535.

An owner with big dreams but little money parked the vessel in the marina of the Beacon Harbourside Inn on Canada Day 1997 – the final stop on an odyssey of unpaid dockages along the St. Lawrence River. Arsonists cooked the floating restaurant in a 2003 blaze, leaving a slowly rusting hulk on the Lake Ontario shoreline.

When Liz visited in 1999, the vessel was unburned and filled with fascinating history.

A big dining hall with ornate pillars and artsy-painted murals of touchy-feely nudes. A kitchen that still boasted an oven, a freezer and a dumbwaiter.

Enough washrooms to sink a less hardy vessel, plus a closet devoted entirely to extra toilet bowls.

“It had lots of toilets. Certainly more than made sense,” Liz recalled.

Liz also noticed she wasn’t the only recent visitor. Broken liquor bottles, graffiti, candles and a couple of ratty mattresses littered the floors and hallways.

“It looked like a place where teenagers came to get drunk,” she said.

So Liz wasn’t surprised when she heard the ship was torched a few years later.

(Niagara Regional Police called it arson, but found no suspects in two years before closing the file).

She was horrified, however.

“It was a truly wonderful, magical, bizarre thing that only a horrible person would want to destroy,” she said.

Liz figures she and other highway-travellers have “a relationship” with the rusty QEW sentinel – and even in its slowly disintegrating form, she doesn’t want it to disappear.

But no one is quite sure what the future holds for Jordan’s pirate ship.

At some point, the ship’s default owners will have to make a decision, said Fritz Loitsch, who runs the marina for the Beacon Harbourside.

Loitsch said the man who originally parked the ship – (the hotel owner doesn’t want to identify him) – has since died, leaving the marina on the hook for nine years of docking fees.

Given the fire damage, Loitsch estimated getting the vessel shipshape could cost more than $200,000.

“We haven’t really decided what to do with it,” said Loitsch, who answers questions daily from the curious about the ship. “We’re not being paid to keep it, but at the same time it’s an attraction.

“It pulls people off the highway to look, every day.”

That’s not to say he hasn’t investigated the options. Various government agencies have told him what he’s not allowed to do.

He can’t access government dollars to restore it. Or have it towed away on a taxpayer tab. Or even sink it deliberately for divers.

Right after the fire, Loitsch admitted those options looked attractive.

But not so much now.

Strangely, the charred wreck is attracting more interest now than ever before. Some highlights:

- A group of ship-lovers pumped out the belly of the beached beast last year with dreams of moving it to Hamilton Harbour. (They have no money, so don’t hold your breath, Loitsch said);

- A film crew, purportedly from an Ontario tourism association, filmed the ship in the spring.

The ship hosted two different photo shoots in two years – alternatively featuring fur-clad bikini models and scantily clad pirates.

- The chairman of a shipwreck preservation society based in Olcott, N.Y., inquired about sinking the wreck for divers in U.S. waters.

The last option has already sunk, said Rod Hedley, who chaired the now-defunct society.

“Divers go wild for that sort of thing,” he said, noting the plan could have been an economic boon for Olcott. His local government, however, gave Hedley’s idea the heave-ho.

Hedley said time is likely running out for anyone else hoping to move the converted ferry.

“Eventually, the bottom is going to rust out, it’s going to tip over even more and someone will start to howl about it,” he said.

“Someone will have to pay to get rid of it and that will be a shame. In my eyes, it still has value.”

It doesn’t have value as a sailing ship, however, said Blair McKeil of McKeil Marine in Hamilton.

Could it ever have floated on its own?

“Oh jeepers no,” said McKeil, whose company tug-towed the restaurant from the Montreal area to Jordan.

McKeil said the ship’s steel masts were never meant to raise or lower sails.

In fact, nearly every aspect of the vessel was far from seaworthy – the wiring, the rigging, even the way the wood panelling was attached to the steel hull.

“It was never built to be used as anything other than a prop. All it did was look pretty,” he said.

The ship is a bit of a sore spot for McKeil – he was never paid for his services, either.

He said he considered claiming the vessel in lieu of payment. Closer inspection showed the old steel hull was “a liability,” however – and it was the most shipshape feature of the entire floating catastrophe.

Right now, the old ship is still valuable as a tourist magnet for the hotel, Loitsch said.

That might change if the hotel ever needs to expand its marina parking. Without the ship, the enclosed harbour has space for 450 boats. Right now, the marina only uses 120 spaces.

Otherwise, Loitsch has been told he can let the old wreck rust into a comfortable, watery retirement.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment hasn’t had any complaints about the ship and local officials don’t have any concerns. The Canadian Coast Guard would be interested only if the ship posed a danger to shipping lanes. Ditto for Transport Canada.

After the fire, Town of Lincoln officials looked into the possibility of ridding the municipality of what some might consider an eyesore. But being on the water, the ship isn’t in town jurisdiction, said chief administrative officer Bruce Peever.

“And anyway, people still see it as a landmark,” he said. “We don’t really want to be the ones to get rid of a landmark.”

ID- 341214 © 2007 , Osprey Media. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Niagara Falls Review acticles reprinted with permission by the authority of Joe Wallace, City Editor of the Niagara Falls Review.

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