Putting the “Port” in Southport

The photo below  shows that Southport Ferry Wharf at Minchin’s Point. Dating from about 1912 it shows the wharf in poor repair. The ferry service had stopped in 1905 and deterioration was rapid. The ferry service and its wharf had been the primary reason for the establishment of a community and the fortunes of the community to great measure mirrored those of the wharf itself.   

 

Detail from George Wright’s chart of Hillsborough Bay and Charlottetown Harbour 1842.

Yes. there really was a port at Southport – well, at least there was a wharf. Best known as the ferry landing for the Hillsborough Ferry, the wharf eventually was responsible for the creation of a village on the southern shore of the Hillsborough River opposite Charlottetown.  As it was on the route between Charlotte Town and  Georgetown the ferry was likely a feature from the earliest days of the colony.  The wharf, and the beginnings of the tiny settlement, first appear in George Wright’s 1842 chart of Hillsborough Bay and Charlottetown Harbour. 

Detail from Capt. Bayfield’s chart of Charlottetown Harbour 1847

However the wharf was not at the high bluff, known as Minchin’s Point or Murphy’s Point but a little to the west avoiding the steep climb up the bank.  The wharf at Minchin’s Point was built following a call for tenders in 1842 and appears on Capt. Bayfield’s chart of Charlottetown Harbour which appeared in 1852.  In early years the wharf had a floating jetty to make it easier to access the ferry in spite of changing tides.  Thereafter there are a long series of extensions and re-buildings of the wharf to accommodate the succession of ferries which were used on the route. Steam powered vessels such as the Ora, the Ino, the Arethusa the Elfin, the Hillsborough and the Southport were familiar and regular visitors to the wharf at Minchin’s Point.  

The ferry traffic gave rise to the need to hotels and taverns as well as businesses serving the travellers. It also became a service centre for communities such as Keppoch Kinloch, and Cross Roads for those wishing to avoid having to cross the Hillsborough in order to meet their needs. By 1863 the community was well-established and the alternate names “Southport” and Stratford” appeared to both have been in use. 

Stratford or Southport. D.J. Lake’s Topographical Map of P.E.I. 1863

An article in the 20 November 1878  Semi-Weekly Patriot documents further growth of the community.

Passing by the Church, Smithy and Schoolhouse at Alexandria, and the Church at the cross roads, we reach Southport, destined to be one of the fashionable and health-bearing adjuncts of Charlottetown. It is now quite a business centre , and when the new road is opened it will become still more important. The day is coming when the seaside from Farquharson’s point to the Harbour’s mouth will be studded with villas. Charles Haszard Esq., by the ferry facilities which he so obligingly affords, is doing much for Southport as well as for the health and pleasure seekers from the city. The Honourable the Speaker of the Assembly is a citizen of this place  – where he and H. Bovyer, W.H. Farquharson, and John Kennedy carry on mercantile business. An Episcopal Church, a school-house, a Tannery, two line kilns, a Post Office, three forges, two Houses of Entertainment, seven Brick Kilns, a Tailor’s Shop, one Harness and Saddlery establishment and two weigh scales are among our Southport notes. Beer, McIntosh, McKenzie, Alex. and Neil Stewart, Flood and Son, and the two Cardiffs manufacture Brick extensively; the blacksmiths are Allan Stewart, Allan Ham and Charles Walker; and the Carpenters and Carriage Builders are Angus and John McInnis, John Godfrey, James Wood, Isaac Turner, and James Costello. 

Notwithstanding the glowing 1878 report that the community was destined to be a “fashionable and healthy adjunct” it was clear that growth of the village had slowed if not stopped. There are scarcely more houses shown in the area in the 1880 Meacham’s Atlas than there had been 17 years earlier.  Although landowner John Picton Beete had ambitiously subdivided the property and laid out a street network the anticipated growth failed to arrive.  The area did, however had become the centre for brick making with a large number of brick yards and as the newspaper account above notes a large number of brickmakers had establishments near Southport. While most of the brick manufactured  would have been carried by ferry or across the winter ice to Charlottetown it is probable that some export of brick took place at the ferry wharf.    

Detail from manuscript map of Lot 48 by C.R. Allen, prepared for Meacham’s Atlas 1880. Public Archives and Records Office.

The short-lived brick boom came to an early end as supplies of brick-clay were exhausted  and the community once again lapsed into a quiet stagnation. Comparing the plan above with the 1935 air photo below it is clear that Southport in the 1930s  was still stuck in the 1870s. Over the years the ferry wharf had been extended and re-built but the construction of the Hillsborough Bridge, which was completed in 1905, and the opening of new roads to the east, meant that traffic no longer stopped at Southport. The railway by-passed the hamlet and what services that were provided by merchants were for locals only.  There was a frisson of excitement in 1913 when construction of a marine railway large enough to carry the S.S. Prince Edward Island was begun close to the ferry wharf but work ceased in 1915 and was never completed. 

There were occasional reports of other vessels using the Southport wharf to load cargo. For example, in 1886  the steamer M.A. Starr crossed the harbour to Southport after unloading at Charlottetown in order to load potatoes for Halifax. Small schooners continued to load produce at the Southport Wharf into the 1930s, and the wharf was dredged n 1937.  The Dominion Department of Public Works used the wharf as a place to tie up scows used in dredging and construction but by the end of the Second War even this seems to have ended. With the end of activity the wharf soon eroded. A caution buoy marked a spot where a sunken scow rested on the bottom but even that marker was removed in the last few years. 

Today few, if any, traces remain of the ferry wharf and it is no longer even buoyed as a hazard to navigation as no boats except those of oyster fishers have a reason to visit the Southport shore. However one part of the Patriot’s 1878 forecast has become true. The shores all along the edge of the Hillsborough, right to the harbour’s mouth and beyond are today “studded with villas.”   

 

Margaree Steamship’s S.S. Farnorth – The last of the Boston Boats

The S.S. Farnorth, probably in Halifax ca. 1935. Photo from http://www.tynebuiltships.co.uk/R-Ships/richardwelford1908.html

The direct connection between Prince Edward Island and Boston which existed for more than fifty years was broken during the Great War when the Plant Steamship Company elected to taken the last of their steamers off the run owing to war conditions. However there were probably sound economic reasons for ending the service as well.  Passengers had other options with the development of better rail connections which gave speedy access to New England and patterns began to shift as more and more Islanders were going to Montreal, Toronto and the west. There was also less north-south trade as Canadian manufacturers from central Canada took over Atlantic markets.

Never the less the idea died hard and for many years the Charlottetown Board of Trade lobbied for a resumption of the direct connection. After a gap of twenty years the idea seemed to have died but it was revived in 1934 when Wentworth N. McDonald, owner of Margaree Shipping of Sydney Cape Breton bought the steamer Farnorth  which had been owned by the bankrupt Farquhar Steamship Company.  Farquhar had operated several shipping routes in Atlantic Canada and its ships were occasional visitors to Charlottetown, taking cargos to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland ports.

The new service was to be provided by the 255 foot Farnorth which had been operating throughout the Gulf of Lawrence for a decade under the ownership of Farquhar & Co,. of Halifax.  The ship had been completed in 1908 having been built in the Jarrow Yard of the Palmer Shipbuilding and Iron Company on the Tyne. She was originally named the Richard Welford and was operated by  a Newcastle company. In 1915 she was hired as an armed boarding steamer by the Admiralty and although torpedoed off Gibraltar she was repaired and survived the war. She was returned to her owners in 1919 and re-named the Hethpool.

S.S. Farnorth, launched in 1908 as the Richard Welford. Photo from http://www.tynebuiltships.co.uk/R-Ships/richardwelford1908.html

The ship was powered by a triple-expansion steam engine generating 350 horsepower giving (when new) a speed of 13 knots. It was a mixed cargo and passenger vessel, originally configured for 60 – 70 1st class and 40 2nd class passengers.

The new owner in 1934 was the Nova Scotia-based Margaree Steamship Company owned by Wentworth N. MacDonald of Sydney. MacDonald would have been know to Islanders as he owned a variety of small steamers including the Constance and the Enterprise which served Island ports.

Unlike the Plant Line steamers which operated on a Charlottetown – Halifax – Boston routing the Farnorth’s schedule was a little more of a meander. It advertised Boston – Halifax – Charlottetown – Mulgrave – Port Hawkesbury – St. Peter’s Canal – Baddeck and the Sydneys  (both Sydney and North Sydney) where one could connect with the Newfoundland Railway steamers.  The service re-established an old route whereby one could travel from Montreal to Boston or New York with the Farnorth connecting with the Clarke Shipping steamer Gaspesia at Charlottetown. The vessel arrived in Charlottetown on 10-day schedule with a fare starting at $50 for the round trip including stateroom and meals or $26 from Boston to Charlottetown  ($30 from Charlottetown to Boston to account for the additional time taken through the Bras d’Or lakes)  With a nod to the changing tourism patterns they also advertised transport for automobiles beginning at $16 in either direction.

In 1935 McDonald spoke to the Charlottetown Board of Trade about the service he had established the previous year. He said he considered that the Charlottetown to Boston route had great possibility of additional passengers and freight. He did however, hint that the four months of operation in 1934 had not met expectation noting that the route had  been dormant for twenty years and that the period could be considered “a fair trial.”  He asked the Board of Trade to lobby for a subsidy for the service but at the same meeting a letter was read from the Trade and Commerce Department stating that the route was not being considered for assistance. It appears however that a subsidy was provided with a required number of trips to qualify.

By early November 1935  the Farnorth had been suddenly taken of the route and sailings cancelled without notice, a move that caused concern for shippers as the move left freight bound for Prince Edward Island on the wharves at Boston and other ports. It was reported that the ship had made the required trips to access the subsidy and then ceased service. The following year the Charlottetown – Boston route was dropped entirely but the steamer continued to call irregularly for freight, especially potatoes, for both the Newfoundland and Boston markets for the next few years. Fond remembrances of the Boston boat could not recapture the traffic lost to rails and roads, and even in in the 1930s to air routes.  It is unlikely the more than 100 passenger berths on the Farnorth were ever more than sparsely filled in the 1935 season. The day of the Boston boat was well over.

In 1937 the Farnorth owners were soliciting support for their steamer in a proposal to put her on the Charlottetown – Pictou route, which was being served by the S.S. Hochelega, promising to cut side loading doors in their steamer in order to load take autos, but they were not successful and later that year the ship was sold to Fraser Shipping and seems to have ceased visits to Prince Edward Island. The Farnorth was sold and re-named several more times before finally being broken up in Baltimore in 1952.  Wentworth McDonald continued to have an interest in Prince Edward Island and was one of the original owners of Northumberland Ferries crossing between Wood Islands and Caribou.

Going With the Floe 1876

There are few accounts of winter travel to Prince Edward Island but for those that were published a consistent theme is the iceboat crossing to or from the province.  Seldom routine and often dangerous, the crossing was not for the faint of heart. Lives and limbs had been lost when weather, tides and waves conspired to force crews and passengers to spend the night on the Strait with only the slight protection of an upturned iceboat.(1)

Taylor Manufacturing Dry Styeam Engine ca. 1875

The following account dates from April 1876 and is part of a letter published in the Democratic Advocate in Westminster Maryland by an unidentified correspondent who had spent much of the winter on the Island, apparently as an agent for the Taylor Manufacturing Company which was based in Westminster. The company built portable steam engines for use with sawmilling and working operations running circular saws, planers and band saws. He reported that 15 of the engines had been put in operation over the winter and that they were having a beneficial impact on the construction costs for shipyards,  The account includes a testimonial from shipbuilder James Yeo.

In 1876 communication for the mails and passengers was supposed to have been provided by a contracted steamer, the SS Albert. The Albert, however was not up to the task and so the iceboat service, which had existed since at least the 1830s was the fallback.

On March 2d, we started to cross the Northumberland Strait, which from Cape Travers on the Island to Cape Tormentine on the New Brunswick coast is 9 miles across. These straits are filled at all times from December to March with floating fields of ice, in many instances, acres in size. Waited till Sunday, (which by the way they call fine day to cross) and started. The crossing is made in a common boat, some 15 feet long, made as light as possible, with runners on bottom, so as to haul it on the ice. Each boat has its captain, and 3 men, with places for passengers; each man is harnessed to the boat by means of a strap over the shoulders and breast so in case the ice is bad he can only go through the length of strap; it does not save from a complete wetting, but saves from drowning. This Sunday was not, unfortunately not one of the good days. We left board ice, that is, ice that always stays on each shore, at 9 0’clock in the morning, two boats and 20 passengers, and found no ice bergs but thin ice, which in salt water means very unreliable stuff. Now passengers are taken across at $2.50 a piece, from $5 to $20 for baggage if in much bulk, and they are required to pull, haul and shove the boat along, to work same as boatmen; while if detained a week waiting as your correspondent was, it means from $20 to $30, besides hard work to get over. The first man that took a bath a got the laugh, but before noon the laugh was general, as there were but few who had not had the pleasure of taking a wistful look, with chin just over the gunwale of the boat. At 2 p. m. we were scarcely 4 miles from shore, the wind was starting up, our captains consulted, and decided to turn the boats back for the same shore. We started with the pleasent [sic] news that it looked very bad, and unless we worked very hard we must stay out that night. It had the desired affect. Such shoving and hauling with boat hooks I never wish to participate in again. At 6.30 we struck board ice, completely exhausted, with the whole thing to be done over again. Tuesday we took another prospecting tour on the gulf; out four hours and gave up. Wednesday we started again, came over in fine shape, much open water and struck large bergs of ice with pinnacles higher than church steeples, then flat fields of ice, then lanes of water. The day was cold but no one wore coats or vests, they all had business that kept them warm without extra clothing, and all were very happy to be once more on the main land. Forty miles staging brought us to the Intercolonial Railroad where we took cars, which carried us to a land where travel not so difficult in winter. About May 10th ice will disappear, and steamers and the ships and vessels will begin to trade with Island.

SS PEI at Borden showing iceboat (detail). Image courtesy Phil Culhane

Even after improved winter steamers were introduced they too, proved unable to cope with the ice of Northumberland Strait. Up until  about 1920 the winter steamers carried iceboats so that passengers could be transported to land if the boat became stuck in the ice floes. It was not until the arrival of the SS Prince Edward Island in 1915 that the service became dependable and the iceboats finally stopped running after the completion of port facilities at Port Borden and Cape Tormentine.

(1) An earlier and more detailed account of the crossing can be found in B.W.A. Sleigh’s Pine Forests and Hacmatack Clearings [1853]. The section dealing with the “The Icy Passage” can be found in The Island Magazine  #1, Fall-Winter 1976 p.23-29.