Plant Line Steamer Halifax led a dual existence as the Boston Boat in summer and a cruise ship in winter.
I have previously written about the Plant line and the ships that provided a Charlottetown-Boston link. In that article I briefly noted that Henry Plant also was a pioneer in the development of winter cruising (not forgetting the pioneering effort of the Charlottetown Steam Navigation Company’s steamer Northumberland ).
The Evangeline was another of the Plant Line steamers which operated in the waters off Florida as well as in Northumberland Strait.
This week Kevin Griffin, who works with a company called the Cruise People has written an extensive and interesting history of the cruise activities of the Plant Line in his daily cruising-business blog. The Plant cruises provided a winter use for several of the Charlottetown-Boston steamers when the Strait iced up and the Boston traffic fell off. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the Plant Line operations. Griffin may be familiar to regular readers of this blog as I have referenced his very useful and entertaining history of the Clarke Steamship company, ships of which were regular visitors to Charlottetown well into the mid-twentieth century.
As we are still watching the snow slowly recede and waiting for winter to end in fact as well as in calendar it is tempting to think that one could do much worse than taking a cruise in warm climates just now.
Beautiful ships….is that Lords wharf the ‘Halifax’ is docking.
Great stuff !
Actually my guess is that the guy is standing on Lord’s wharf. The Plant Line steamers used what later became Pickard’s wharf and one of the reasons for dredging Lords almost out of existence is that it was hard for the Plant ships to dock there. The mansard roofed building is on what later became the Marine and Fisheries wharf.
I never though that the “Halifax” was a beautiful ship. It looks too high for its width and looks unstable although when it was launched it was described as the best-looking ship in the east coast.