It's been two years since we've been to this festival and a few things have changed. One, they moved the date up later and it resulted in some of the best weather of the summer thus far. The other thing that changed was that the festival now has commercial sponsorship, which meant there were a few more boats but it cost you to board them. Yay commercialism
But let's not dwell on that. Let's dwell instead on a hot sunny day, a nice breeze blowing through the Gap into the Inner Harbour, and all manner of sailing craft spread along the quays.
There was a pretty good collection of ships on display. A combination of Great Lakes ships and ocean going replicas. One of them was a ship we've seen before, the Pride of Baltimore which, strangely, is out of Baltimore Maryland and the Niagara
There were some sea going ships as well... sort of. They brought in the Bounty. Well not THE Bounty, the one that was the scene of naval history's most famous uprising (not mutiny) but a replica. But the replica that was used in the Marlon Brando version of the movie.
The real story of the Bounty is pretty interesting with very little relationship to that told in at least two of the movies. There is no real evidence that Captain Bligh was quite the tyrant he was made out to be; some in the British Admiralty thought him too lenient. It seems more likely that the crew of the Bounty, once they got a load of Tahiti's natural resources .. those being breadfruit and half naked women .. had no desire to return to dreary old England, and wives, debts etc. So they set Bligh adrift in a dinghy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and didn't he manage to get himself right back to England with just the most meager of supplies and navigational gear; to this day it's considered one of the most amazing feats of ocean navigation. Not that this replica had anything to do with that, but it is still a very pretty ship
Pretty as well is a tall ship when she is under sail, tacking over towards the Island
We took a little harbour cruise to see the ships from the water and to gain a view of the city that we are normally denied. The boat we were on didn't really allow for good video, but Collette managed to get a few pics but then, she always does
There were a couple of unique ships, like the Empire Sandy billed as the largest sailing ship currently on the Great Lakes ..
... and the Unicorn, with its all female crew
And for me, there was a blast from the past, the brigantine St. Lawrence II a youth training ship that sails out of my hometown in Kingston Ontario
All in all it was a great day down by the harbour. Living in the center of the GTA as we pretty much do, surrounded by our large parks and hiking trails I sometimes forget that Toronto is, indeed, a harbour town. The harbour was a huge part of this city's past and had a great deal to do with its growth. On our tour we saw that much of this city's industry was built along the harbour where they could be serviced by Great Lakes traffic; bringing in supplies and taking away merchandise. While we there the Redpath Sugar Company, the last factory in the harbour, had several boats at its docks, bringing raw sugar cane from South America. I'm glad that most of that industry has left the harbour now and what remains are the quays, the gulls and this weekend at least, the sussurus of the waves against wooden hulls.
So here's the video, the music is by Rivertribe out of Australia
Tall Ships Toronto 2010 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.
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