Symbols of this era, the steamship Segwun and replica Wenonah II remain in operation today and are well-known tourist attractions. Each cruise undertaken, every passenger thrilled by the experience, serves to keep alive the memory of this early romantic period.

But they only tell part of the story. Not every vessel that plied the Muskoka lakes in the 19th and early 20th century was as stately as these fine ships. For every large steamship like the Segwun, there were 10 tugs, supply boats and yachts, small workhorses that were every bit as important to the development of the region but which nonetheless faded into obscurity as soon as their usefulness had run its course.

Such was the case with the Maple Leaf, a game and occasionally even heroic tug, and the ungainly but seemingly tireless Ethel May, operated by sawmill operator Charles Woodroffe of Foot’s Bay.

The Maple Leaf was built in Toronto in 1892 for Singleton Brown, a prominent native of Bracebridge. Brown owned and operated a store in town, but his primary income came from the large sawmills and shingle mills he maintained. It was these industries that the Maple Leaf was intended to serve.

Logs for the mills came down the Muskoka River from the heavily forested interior, most of them towed by tugboat. Ever the astute businessman, rather than pay a captain to do the work on his behalf, Brown decided to cut out the middleman by purchasing his own vessel. Enter the Maple Leaf.

At 37 feet in length and only eight tons she was hardly large, but her modern engines and sturdy hull were up to the challenge and she towed logs on the river for almost a decade. Brown saw another use for her as well. He purchased a barge, the Vladimir, and outfitted her for passenger excursions along the Muskoka River. The barge was licensed for 100 passengers and the Maple Leaf another 25 on top, and both were generally filled to capacity during the summer months with eager tourists.

In 1897, the Maple Leaf rode to the rescue of the much larger, much more glamorous steamship Muskoka, which had run aground along the river while attempting to avoid a log boom. There was fear the Muskoka would sink, and so passengers had to be hurriedly disembarked. Then, once this had been accomplished and it was determined the vessel’s hull had not been sacrificed, the little Maple Leaf pulled the Muskoka free and into safe waters. It was unarguably the highlight of the ship’s short career.

Singleton Brown died in 1900 and his wife sold both vessels. The Maple Leaf went to Lake of Bays, where it was operated by Captain Marsh to tow logs, ferry passengers and carry freight for his Huntsville and Lake of Bays Transportation Company. She ran every day from Baysville to Port Cunnington, Portage and Dwight.

By 1906, the shipping line, now known as the Huntsville Navigation Company and operated by C.O. Shaw, was at the peak of its fortunes, riding a wave of success. It employed 60 men, operated seven steamers and had the contract to carry mail to ports all over Lake of Bays.

Unfortunately, the Maple Leaf wasn’t to be a part of this success. On the evening of July 26, she took fire at her dock at Baysville and burned to the waterline. When at last the fire had burned itself out, there was found to be nothing salvageable and so the ship was broken up for scrap.

The Ethel May was almost identical to the Maple Leaf in dimensions, measuring 46 feet in length and eight tons displacement. Their careers had certain parallels as well.

The Ethel May, which even the most charitable observer could hardly describe as an attractive boat, was built near Foot’s Bay by Captain Alfred Mortimer around 1892. Her hull was new, but the engine had been salvaged from a previous vessel of the same name that had simply been worn out by years of wear-and-tear.

Mortimer, whose father had founded Mortimer’s Point and operated a prosperous resort, was a young man determined to establish for himself a profitable career as a tugboat captain. The Ethel May was to be central to realizing his ambitions.

But the maiden voyage was anything but smooth sailing. For the first trip, Mortimer invited a handful of family and friends aboard. All went well until the boat docked at Bracebridge, when authorities swooped down on the Ethel May and impounded it. It seems officials of the Muskoka Lakes Navigation Company, ever territorial of their monopoly on the passenger trade, objected to the fact that Mortimer had guests aboard his boat without the appropriate licence.

It wasn’t until several months later, and only after paying a stiff fine, that Mortimer got his boat back. He hadn’t been idle in the meantime; the young mariner had tracked down and given a whupping to the Navigation Company official who had initially raised the ridiculous objections against him.

Bad start notwithstanding, Captain Mortimer and the Ethel May soon solidified well-deserved reputations for dependability plying the lakes.

After a decade of jack-of-all-trade work (everything from carrying freight to towing logs and skiffs loaded with tanbark), the Ethel May was sold and converted into a laundry delivery boat. She served in this capacity for a single season, and then sat idle for a year or two. She might well have rotted away if she hadn’t been rescued by Charles Woodroffe.

Woodroffe operated a sawmill near Foot’s Bay, but the mill’s appetite for logs was insatiable and he needed a tug to deliver it food. That’s where the Ethel May came in. After purchasing the boat Woodroffe began felling trees all around western Lake Joseph in earnest, and it was a common sight to see the little tug, with owner proudly at the wheel, out in the waters pulling booms with literally dozens of logs.

The Ethel May’s career came to a sudden and perhaps untimely end in 1914. That summer, the First World War had broken out in Europe and Woodroffe enlisted to fight for King and Country. With its master gone, the boat sat idle and untended in the water, slowly rotting away. When Woodroffe returned at war’s end five years later, he found his one-time pride and joy a worthless hulk. The Ethel May was scrapped and a new tug purchased to serve his sawmill, which would operate until well into the 1930s.

The fates of the Maple Leaf and Ethel May seem tragic in retrospect, lacking in the dignity that they surely earned from years of dedicated service. But in reality, most steamships met similar ends. Their hulks, numbering into the triple digits, lay strewn across the breadth and width of Muskoka’s lakebeds, forgotten and slowly rotting away.

The Segwun is among last remnants of its kind.