MAPLE LEAF
AS A UNION ARMY
TRANSPORT
By James W. Towart and Col. J. V. Witt, USA Ret.
Contact James W. Towart
The Maple Leaf was purchased by J. H. B. Lang and Charles Spear of Boston, Massachusetts, from Josiah P. Dewey of Cobourg, Ontario, and George Schofield of Rochester, New York, for $25,000 on September 2, 1862.8 The documents in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., relating to this sale present an incomplete picture. Aside from the sworn statement by Dewey and Schofield proclaiming their title to the Maple Leaf, there has been no record found that they presented any documentary evidence of their title. What they did produce was a Certificate of Ownership issued to Donald Bethune & Company in Toronto in 1851. They also describe the Maple Leaf as "Now or formerly belonging to the Port of Toronto," which indicates they did not know or did not wish to reveal her current port of registry.
The sale transaction was recorded by the Custom House of Boston on September 5, 1862. A document issued by the Surveyor of the Port of Boston and Charleston certified "That the Steamer Maple Leaf of Boston is American made," which is not correct as she was built in Canada. The significance of this lies in the fact that it was against the law for any foreign-built ship to be enrolled in a port in the United States or be employed in the coastwise trade.9 It was possible for Congress to grant exceptions to this law and they did so under certain circumstances. However, no application was made to Congress in the case of the Maple Leaf. Additional research may eventually clarify this cloudy picture.
The vessel was chartered to the U.S. Army in Boston by a contract signed on September 3, 1862, by Charles Spear, who represented the owners, and Captain W.W. McKim, an assistant quartermaster. This signing marked the beginning of a turbulent commercial relationship that extended over a period of 22 years.
The contract provided that the Army would time charter the vessel for one month with the option to extend the charter period indefinitely at the rate of $550 per day. The owners were to provide the crew, the provisions and make all necessary repairs. The Army was to pay the charter hire and port charges, as well as to provide the fuel. The responsibility for the loss of the ship due to marine or war hazard was assumed by the Army whenever she was south of Cape Henry, the southern cape of the Chesapeake Bay and the northern limit of the war zone.10
The charter rate of $550 a day was very high and it reflected the unusual market conditions that were initially caused by the Army's need to charter all the transports it could obtain to move General McClellan's Army of the Potomac to the James and York Rivers in Virginia to conduct the Peninsular Campaign that began in March 1862. The transports were needed to supply the Army during the campaign. They were also used to remove the defeated army from the Peninsula in August and September 1862.
In May 1863, the Quartermaster General's Office commented on the charter market situation in these words:
In the first operations along the coast, and in fitting out great expeditions, it became necessary to pay, for short times, prices much higher than would have been justifiable had it been foreseen that the vessels would remain more than from thirty to sixty days under charter. Many of these vessels have been retained until their profits have been excessive.
In 1870, the Assistant Attorney General of the United States had this to say about the chartering of the Maple Leaf:
The original charter was a fraud upon the United States. Under the rates fixed therein, the claimants (owners) would realize a net profit exceeding the cost of the ship in less than two months.11
The controversy began when the Maple Leaf arrived at Fort Monroe, Virginia, in November 1862. On November 19, Lieutenant Colonel C. W. Thomas, the head of the Quartermaster's Office of the Seventh Army Corps, stated that he had no further need for the Maple Leaf and that he ordered her to proceed to Boston to be discharged from Army service, unless she was rechartered for some other service. The vessel then left for Baltimore, Maryland, where she remained until December 6, undergoing repairs.
On December 28, 1862, the Maple Leaf returned to Fort Monroe with cargo on board. Colonel Thomas later said that he assumed that she had been rechartered by another quartermaster. She continued in Army service and on May 3, 1863, returned to Fort Monroe without orders. Colonel Thomas at that time confronted Captain Dale about the status of the vessel, but the captain professed to have no knowledge of the terms of the charter and he denied ever having been given an order to go to Boston to be discharged. Colonel Thomas summarized the situation in a letter to Captain McKim on June, 10, 1863, and he recommended:
...that she
(the Maple Leaf) should not be paid for her services until the cause of her noncompliance with my order is satisfactorily explained and then only at a reduced price. 12
On June 15, Charles Spear wrote the following to Captain McKim:
The captain of the
Maple Leaf is a high minded honorable gentleman, brother of S. K. Dale Esq., the present mayor of the City of Bangor, and is well known in this city and vicinity, and is totally incapable of ignoring the order referred to . . . 13
On June 22, 1863, Colonel R.E. Clary of the Quartermaster General's Office in Washington, D.C., wrote letters to Captain McKim in Boston and Colonel Thomas at Fort Monroe ordering them to reduce the charter hire for the Maple Leaf retroactively to $300 a day from April 22 to June 22, 1863, and to further reduce the charter hire to $250 a day from June 22 forward. Also, Captain Mc Kim was ordered to execute a new charter contract for the Maple Leaf to become effective on that same date.14 Captain McKim was later alleged to have ignored a previous order in a letter from the Quartermaster General's Office dated May 21, 1863, to terminate high-cost chartered steamers.15
The new contract was negotiated in Washington between August 8 and August 10. The parties were Colonel Clary and Archibald Getty, who was associated with Edward A. Souder & Co. of Philadelphia. Getty was representing the owners of the Maple Leaf while Charles Spear, the managing owner, waited at his Washington hotel. Getty said this about the outcome of the negotiations:
Finding that nothing else could be done, we agreed to receive what he
(Colonel Clary) was willing to give us, and consented to the execution of the new charter contract. I considered it the best terms these claimants (owners) could get. We had advanced money to them upon the charter of the Maple Leaf as our own security, and we wanted our money; therefore we advised them to accept the terms offered. 16
The new contract, in addition to changing the rate of hire, also revised the language dealing with the possible loss of the ship. The owners were to assume the maritime hazard and the Army would assume the war risk without geographic limitations. However, the Army included the proviso that it could purchase the ship whenever the profit from the charter equaled the agreed valuation for the vessel; that is, $50,000 plus thirty three percent per annum profit.17 This was intended to limit the Army's exposure to having to pay the owners unreasonable profits from the charter. This revised contract formed the basis for Spear's later claims and lawsuits against the U.S. Government after the war. J. W. T.