“most suitable for an afternoon’s enjoyment” Excursions in the Bay – 1877

On hot summer days it is refreshing to think that for many of us getting to the beach is only a matter of jumping into a car and heading out. This ease of access to the sea shore is a relatively recent phenomena for Charlottetown. In spite of being a port the shoreline is remarkably inaccessible as there is not a really good beach within the city limits. There was bathing at Victoria Park and Kensington Beach and for the uninhibited there was always the attraction of swimming off the wharves. But this was hardly a family or social activity. Accessing a real beach meant a train ride to Hunter River or Bedford and then by wagon to Rustico or Tracadie where there were summer hotels, a round trip that could easily take all day.  Or one could take the Southport ferry and then go by carriage to Keppoch or Langly Beach.

What was accessible however, was a mini-ocean voyage or cruise to the mysterious Islands in Hillsborough Bay.  There was no regular steamer service but vessels were available and for a moderate expense a party could charter one of several boats to go beyond Charlottetown’s Pillars of Hercules (Blockhouse Point and Seatrout Point) to the Bay beyond, an area marked in the townsfolk’s mental map with the warning “here be dragons.”

The exotic realm beyond the Harbour’s Mouth was popular with groups of all sizes. Pooling of resources for a sports club, fraternal lodge, or Sunday school put the cost of a charter within almost everyone’s grasp and these sorts of excursions were a popular fund-raiser.

An article in the 25 August 1877 Semi-Weekly Patriot details the attractions of the islands of the bay. Of the two islands St. Peters was the more hospitable with four farmsteads and a fish stage (later a lobster factory). It would soon have  schoolhouse and a lighthouse.  Today it is uninhabited and slowly reverting to forest and marsh and the extensive reefs make landing difficult for all but shallow draft boats. The lighthouse had been decommissioned by 2020, but it still has an attraction. Venturing to the interior will expose you to significant danger from the champion mosquitos raised on the island.

St. Peter’s Island 1880. Meacham’s Atlas

Very few of our people  have ever been on either Governor’s or St. Peter’s Island, or know that the latter is well cultivated and contains over 400 acres of land, divided into four farms, has good water, diversity of scenery, sheltering trees, good beach, fine lookout on the strait, and is in every way most suitable for an afternoon’s enjoyment. If you wish to take a party over forty, get the Southport, with her fine deck for dancing; leave the city about 2 p.m.: Capt. Mutch will land you on the Island dry-footed, and unharmed in an hour and a half. Spread the cloths. “do” the Island; there are obliging residents who will boil the water for tea or coffee, and whose horse and cart you can get to haul the heavier baskets &c. to land from the boat.

St. Peter’s Island 2020. Google Earth.

Three hours can be pleasantly spent on the Island and should you have chose a moonlit night the steam home will be most enjoyable, the music on the water, fast flitting feet, happy faces and voices, and the perfect safety, thanks to the obliging captain and crew, will make one think that the landing at the pier at 9 p.m.is too early. Should you desire to go in a smaller party, say eight, fourteen or 25, then Batt’s Tub [sic] Boat will run down and back for about $10, or the Daisy, if not occupied by her owners, will do it for half the money but carries fewer people than the Tug. The Southport will cost you about $25, which is certainly very little for a boat capable of carrying 1,200 people.

More isolated and without a resident population Governor’s Island is even less visited although seal watching draws quite a few to the shores but few brave the rocks land on the beaches. The downwind stench of an extensive cormorant rookery which is gradually killing off any of the trees of the Island is a further deterrent to visits. The moaning of the hundreds of seals on the island’s eastern sand spit and reefs at low tide is  a bizarre accompaniment to the visual desolation.

Governor’s Island about 1970.

Governor’s Island is a little farther outside the harbour’s mouth, is unsettled, but cuts a good deal of hay. Along its shore is good snipe shooting and mackerel fishing. On the reef looms the fog alarm while over all rests a deep calm and hush unbroken by passing steamers that pass too far “on the other side” and everything tends to rest the eyes and ears, and soothe the weary mind.

Even more accessible and cheaper,  but still carrying the hint of an ocean adventure was the ferry to Rocky Point with its several attractions for the day visitor.

Perhaps you choose rather to take a basket of picnic varieties step on board the Rocky Point Ferry Boat, enjoy the ten minutes run across, spread and appreciate the lunch on the bluff overlooking the Elliott or West River, and return to town in the cool of the evening, having some hours study of the everchanging scenes upon our harbour, with spirits greatly lightened for city work and life, and purse almost untouched.

“A Sea-cook is a Peculiar Character …”

Anyone who sails will tell you of the importance of having someone aboard who can cook. Food achieves an importance aboard that is barely contemplated on land – especially on a long voyage.   This was perhaps more true in the 19th century that it is in the 21st.

In 1884 Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin, an American author, took an extended cruise of the Gulf of St. Lawrence which began in Charlottetown. A year later his book, The Cruise of the Alice May was published in New York and contains an account of his experiences and observations on the region. Benjamin was a prolific writer who had  a varied experience as a diplomat to Persia, an art historian, a marine artist and a travel writer. His work was published in several popular magazines and he produced a number of books on varying topics including two which contain early descriptions of Prince Edward Island 

Benjamin and his three companions arrived in Charlottetown without having secured a ship for their cruise in advance of their arrival. Rather than embarking on a sleek yacht (of which there were few in Charlottetown)  for the two-month exploration they instead engaged the captain and crew of the Alice May, a trading schooner out of Miminegash. The ship was a fifty-six ton vessel, fifty-nine feet long and sixteen wide. Lacking passenger accommodations the travellers took over the hold of the vessel to make a snug cabin. The crew, however, lacked a cook and Benjamin in the course of describing the preparations for the adventure detailed the void that this left in the arrangements and the steps taken to correct the omission:

It is needless to go into the details of the provisions stored in the schooner for a cruise of two months. Everything was ready, the rigging overhauled, the last nail pounded in: the winds were favorable and yet we were detained at Charlottetown day after day, unable to sail. It was a cook that we waited for: What was the use of having provisions, fuel, or galley, without a cook? A sea-cook is a peculiar character, requiring a special training. He must know how to prepare a sea hash out of salt horse flavored with onions, incrusted with the variegated browns of polished mahogany, and savory enough to create an appetite in a stomach that the tossing waves have rendered as sensitive as the needle of a compass. He must also understand how to make eatable bread, and take his duff out of the kettle on Sunday as light as cotton and as delicate as sponge-cake. Besides this, he must know how to economize in the use of water and provisions; and, more difficult yet, he must contrive to keep the crew satisfied with the mess he cooks for them, while at the same time he looks out sharply for the interests of his employer and the captain. He must also be proof against the worst weather, and undeviatingly punctual to the hours of meals. It goes without saying that it is not an easy thing to find such a paragon in the galley; but when he is there, he is, next to the captain, by far the most important character on board. We had made up our minds that it would be difficult to find a cook in Charlottetown, combining such exalted qualifications, who would be willing to go for such a brief cruise, and were prepared to take up almost any one that offered. But we were not prepared to meet such a gang of shiftless, shuffling, vacillating, prevaricating, self-complacent, exorbitant, and utterly good-for-nothing varlets as those who applied for the position, or whom we discovered after chasing through the lanes, sailors’ boarding-houses, and purlieus of Charlottetown. Over and over again we thought we had engaged a man; but when the time came to sail, he was not to be found. At last, out of all patience with the whole business, we telegraphed to a friend in St. John, New Brunswick, to send us a cook, and that we would pick him up at Point du Chéne. No reply had arrived to the telegram when we sailed, and thus we started without a cook, in a sort of vain hope of stumbling across one at some port.

While the self-catered trip to Shediac was not without its adventures, including a grounding at the entrance to the harbour, there was a delay at the port.  The cook arrived in Shediac from Saint John before the Alice May arrived. He then took the steamer for Charlottetown to meet the sailboat. Meanwhile the schooner was bound for Summerside (described by Benjamin as “mere naked cluster of warehouses and uninteresting, cheaply-constructed dwellings”) and then, failing to find the cook which they had been told to expect, across the Strait. They were forced to wait in Shediac, which Benjamin noted “offers few attractions to the tourist,”  for several days until the cook retraced his steps and joined the crew to Benjamin’s great relief;

With no end of inventive culinary resources; he was indefatigable in the discharge of his duties, sober and faithful to the interests of his employers. Happy the ship that sails with such a cook, and happy the diners who batten on his beefsteak and onions, hash, roly-poly and tea.

An on-line text of the full Voyage of the Alice May, including line-drawings by one of the crew, is available through Google Books and can be found here

 

Marooned but not alone on Governor’s Island

Governor’s Island is a lonely spot but like all islands it has an intrigue about it. Scarcely four miles from shore in Hillsborough Bay the low spot has little to recommend it as a vacation destination either now or 112 years ago.  Today a cormorant colony has crowded almost all other bird life and much of the vegetation off the island but at the turn of the last century Governor’s Island was an attractive site for wildfowl hunters as ducks and geese used it as a stop in their seasonal migrations.

Governors Island – Detail from Chart of Hillsborough Bay 1842 – updated to 1916.

In early November 1906 Lee Seaman and his two brothers, all of Charlottetown,  set off in a small sloop for the Island for a day of hunting. One of the brothers, Athol, had worked at the Judson lobster factory during the summer while attending university. The three men planned to stay the night on the Island in a small house used by lobstermen in the summer. It was usually empty this late in the season as there were no permanent residents of the Island, unlike St. Peters Island across the bay which still had a number of farms and a school. However when the Seamans arrived they found to their surprise that seven others were in temporary occupation. Two of the lot, Nathaniel Gay and John Smith of Pownal, were also there for the shooting. The others, James Judson and his son Austin, Alf Robertson, and Thomas and Theo Berhaut had come across the bay from Alexandra to erect a building for the lobster canning factory. The group spent most of Saturday at their several pursuits and in the evening set out to return to the mainland. The Judson party had a 20 horsepower gasoline boat, Mr. Gay had a large sloop and the Seamans a smaller one. With the power boat towing the other two they set out but the wind had increased through the day and was so strong that instead of moving forward the little fleet was being pushed backward.

The group resolved to wait out the weather and returned the limited shelter provided by the Island. They may have remembered that only a few years earlier two men working at the lobster factory had drowned trying to return to the shore in poor weather.  Because no one had expected to stay on the Island more than one night, foodstuffs were in short supply.  The group had consumed all but a small supply of salt, pepper and beans which they found in the house. The wild fowling appears to have been poor and when a hunting party set out it was the herd of cattle pastured on the Island for the season that attracted them.  A fine young ox fell victim to the hunters and a repast of beef and beans with liberal applications of salt and pepper was all that was on the menu. For a change the following day the chef offered beans with beef and then on Monday it was either beans or beef or beans and beef.

The wind continued unabated well into Monday and as the group struggled to secure their boats they were amazed to see that the newly constructed lobster factory building was moved 20 feet by the strength of the November wind.   Finally on Tuesday the wind died sufficiently and the three groups were able to return to their points of departure – apparently none the worse for their marooning.  The Island was left to the cattle – at least to those that had survived, and to the visiting geese who had the sense to stay away from Governor’s Island when there were hungry humans about.

Further reading – An article about the Judson family and Governor’s Island by Marian Bruce entitled “The Man Who Loved Governors Island” appears in The Island Magazine for Fall/Winter 2012. The story of drilling for oil at Governor’s Island is found here.