In the winter of 1859, two of the finest vessels of the line were lost, and with them a great number of lives. The winter route of the Allan steamers between Liverpool and Portland ran westward from Ireland to Cape Race, the south-eastern extremity of Newfoundland, thence to the waters between Sable Island and Nova Scotia, the coast of which the steamers skirted for its whole length. After getting clear of Cape Sable, the southerly point of Nova Scotia, vessels had a deep water passage for the rest of the voyage.
The Nova Scotia coast was a source of much anxiety to navigators. The "Columbia," the only vessel of the Cunard line which was lost until this time, was wrecked on this coast, as were also the "Humboldt" of the American line and the "City of Manchester" of the Inman line. It was on this coast also that the two Allan ships were wrecked. On the 29th of November, the "Indian," on her way out from Liverpool, ran ashore on the "Deal Ledges" near the fishing hamlet of Marie Joseph. Parting amidships, some sixty of her passengers were lost. It was made clear that the captain had taken every precaution after leaving Cape Race, but he had been misled by defective charts.
Three months later, on the 20th of February, 1860, the "Hungarian" went down among the rocks off Cape Sable, and not a soul on board was saved.
This steamer was the pride of the fleet. She was a new vessel, and had a record of three consecutive passages in twenty-seven days and twenty-three hours. The facts disclosed by the investigation were few.
But it did transpire that the captain was noted for a certain dash rather than for seamanly prudence. It was said that by his skill in shaving sharp corners and scudding over shoals, and by his recklessness in keeping up a head of steam, he had converted the slowest of the Canadian steamers into the fastest.
News of the disaster to the "Hungarian" soon reached Montreal. It was melancholy news for the city, and public grief was soon followed by popular anger with the Allan Company and with the postmaster general.
Smith was denounced by the legislature as _particeps criminis_ in the destruction of the lives which had been lost on the "Hungarian."
A parliamentary investigation was ordered into the circumstances, and the report[312] of the committee is instructive in the information it gives on the coast lights, and on the problems, which the substitution of iron for wood in the construction of steam vessels raised for those dealing with questions of navigation.
Neither Sable Island nor Cape Sable, on the winter route, were provided with lighthouses; and the lower St. Lawrence was most inadequately furnished with the indispensable guides for sailing by night. From Forteau Bay on the straits of Belle Isle, a vessel ran four hundred and fifty miles before it passed a lighthouse, and it then entered a stretch of one hundred and twenty miles which it was obliged to make without the assistance of lights.
On the comparative merits of iron and wooden vessels, expert opinion was unanimous in favour of wooden vessels. It was considered that, in the event of a vessel being wrecked or stranded, there was less liability of loss of life in the wooden vessel. There was also the effect of the material of which the vessels were built on the working of the compass.
In iron vessels, the compasses were a source of great and continued anxiety.
Before the vessels proceeded to sea, the local attraction from the ship was neutralized by magnets and, thus adjusted, the compasses acted with tolerable accuracy while the vessel was at sea and beyond the influence of land attraction. But when approaching the land the compasses were not to be depended upon. There was, it was asserted, an attraction from the land, but whether the mass of iron in the vessel was first acted upon by the land attraction, was a problem of which the existing state of science did not afford a solution.
The Cunard line at this time--1860--consisted of ten vessels. Only two were of iron; and it was noted that the irregular action of the compass on the iron vessel "Persia," after it left Cape Race, led the vessel into danger which was only averted by unusual care with the soundings.
The committee of the legislature concluded by expressing a fear that, until new light had been thrown on the susceptibilities and workings of the mysterious magnetic forces, it might be necessary to abandon the construction of iron vessels.
Misfortune continued to dog the course of the Canadian steamers. In 1861 two more vessels were lost--both on the St. Lawrence route.
The "Canadian," the second of the name, launched in 1860, set out from Quebec for Liverpool on the 1st of June. Reaching the straits of Belle Isle two days later she encountered a heavy gale and great masses of ice. About eight miles from Cape Bauld, the northernmost point of Newfoundland, the vessel was struck by a sunken floe, which tore a hole in her side under the water-line, and she sank in two hours. Twenty-nine of the passengers and crew were drowned, including James Panton, the mail officer, who neglected the means of safety in his endeavours to save the mail.
The only criticism made by the board of trade court was that the straits route being a perilous one except at the height of the season, the sailing instructions which gave masters a discretion of taking this route after the 20th of May ought to be amended by fixing the earliest date at a month later.
At the end of the season--on the 5th of November--the "North Briton" ran ashore in an attempt to make the passage between the Island of Anticosti and the Mingan Islands. The circumstances that the vessel entered the passage an hour after midnight, with a heavy sea running, were noted by the marine court. But they confined themselves to a censure on the captain for some lack of vigilance, not considering it necessary to deprive him of his certificate.
Again there was a burst of public indignation, and a demand that the government should dissociate themselves from the contract. The postmaster general pleaded that such action would, in the eyes of the foreign governments, be tantamount to a confession that Canadians had lost faith in their route. He assured the legislature that he was bringing effective pressure on the Allan Company to compel them to perform their contract satisfactorily.
The complete immunity from accident during 1862 seemed to indicate that the measures forced upon the company by the postmaster general were successful. But the faith of the Canadian in the superior advantages of their route was soon to be put to further trials.
Between the 27th of April, 1863, and the 22nd of February, 1864--a scant ten months--three vessels of the line were lost. The first of these, the "Anglo-Saxon," which crashed into the rocky coast of Newfoundland, a few miles above Cape Race, gave some point to the observations of the commission as to the disturbing influences operating upon the compasses of vessels as they approached land.
The "Anglo-Saxon" left Liverpool on the 16th of April, and for the first nine days made an uneventful voyage. A clear, bright day on the 26th gave the captain an opportunity to make observations, and ascertain the ship's position; and as the weather was steady, he was able to run under full steam and sail.
Next morning it was foggy; and John Young--a former commissioner of public works, and one of the chief advocates of the Canadian ocean service--asked the captain if it was his intention to make Cape Race.
The captain said it was not, as by noon they would be twenty miles south of the Cape. About eleven o'clock Young's attention was directed to what appeared to be a huge iceberg close at hand. He ran towards the deck, but before he could reach it the ship struck, and he found himself facing a precipitous mass of rock so lofty that in the fog he could not see the top of it.
Instead of being sixteen or seventeen miles south of Cape Race, the vessel was four miles above it. Though they were so close to land that many passengers saved themselves by creeping along the mast to the shore, 238 passengers were drowned, including the captain, whose faulty seamanship had brought about the calamity.
This shore is the most dangerous on the north Atlantic. Besides the magnetic influences, there is an underplay of powerful currents, which makes navigation in these waters difficult and dangerous. The Newfoundland government published a list in 1901 showing that seventy-seven vessels, great and small, had been lost on the Cape or within a few miles to the north or west of it.
Not quite two months later than the disaster of April 27, 1863, while excitement in Canada was still running high, the public were dumbfounded by the news of another disaster. The "Norwegian," a vessel built only two years, left Liverpool on the 4th of June. On the 10th she entered a dense fog which continued at short intervals until the 13th. At noon that day the fog lifted and the steamer put on full steam. At two o'clock in the morning land was sighted, which the captain took to be Newfoundland.
The ship's course was altered in accordance with that view, and although the fog fell densely, speed was not reduced. At seven o'clock there was a cry of breakers, and before the steamer could be checked or turned, she struck heavily upon the rocks of St. Paul's Island, a point in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a few miles north of Cape Breton. The ship's position was so dangerous that the passengers were landed on the island.
Afterwards the cargo and mails were secured.
The public were bewildered by the accumulation of disasters. The captain of the "Norwegian" was especially known as a careful and skilful navigator, and there was a persistent and vigorously expressed demand on the Allan Company for an explanation. To their plea of the danger of the route, the answer was that the "Hungarian," "Indian," and "Anglo-Saxon"
were wrecked on a route over which the Cunard steamers had been passing in safety for years.
Iron vessels accordingly came in for condemnation. Except two, all the Cunard steamers were of wood, and these iron vessels were run only between Liverpool and New York, over a route all the way on the broad ocean.
The wreck of the "African" of the Cunard line on the coast of Newfoundland, which took place about this time, under circumstances similar to those attending the loss of the "Anglo-Saxon," showed, it was claimed, the superiority of the wooden vessels, when overtaken by accident. She was pierced in several places, but was not smashed as an iron hull would have been. Consequently, when the vessel got free of the rocks it was able to reach St. Johns where it put in for repairs.
The remainder of the summer of 1863 passed without incident, and a considerable part of the winter, when on the 22nd of February, 1864, the "Bohemian" in her passage to Portland, struck on Alden's Rock, close to her destination, and overturned, sinking within an hour and a half. The passengers and crew numbered 317 persons, and of these forty-three were drowned by the capsizing of one of the lifeboats. The court of inquiry attributed the catastrophe to the neglect of the captain to take the ordinary precautions, when confronted with a perilous situation, and he was deprived of his certificate for twelve months.
During the period between the wreck of the "Canadian" the first, in 1857, and the sinking of the "Bohemian" in 1864, there were thirteen vessels lost, of all lines engaged in the transatlantic trade, and of these eight were of the Canadian line.
The Canadian government and the Allan Company were subjected to a pitiless condemnation; and, with a change of administration in 1863, the new government lost no time in taking steps to end the contract.
Oliver Mowat, the new postmaster general, on the 12th of August, 1863, presented a report to the executive council recounting the attempts of the Canadian government to establish a Canadian line of steamers from 1853, when the first contract was made with the Liverpool firm of Mackeen, McLarty and Company. The contract with this firm called for a fortnightly service in summer and monthly in winter, with screw steamers of not less than 1200 tons, the subsidy from which was to be 24,000 a year.
In consequence of the default of the contractors, a new contract was made with Hugh Allan. The frequency of the service, and the amount of the subsidy remained unchanged, but Allan engaged to employ vessels of 1750 tons, instead of 1200.
On the 12th of October, 1857, a new contract was entered into with Allan for weekly service to commence on the 1st of May, 1859. The size of the vessels required was again increased, and the new steamers had to be built to 2000 tons. The subsidy was to be 55,000. By 1860, three vessels had been lost, and Allan, having found that the loss in carrying on the weekly service was far beyond his calculations, notified the government of his intention to terminate.
The government, believing that it was essential to hold public confidence in the route, and that this could be best done by enabling the contractor to provide larger and more powerful vessels to replace those which had been lost, determined to offer a much larger subsidy, and to stipulate for vessels of 2300 tons. A new contract embodying these conditions was made, and the compensation was fixed at 104,000.
In brief this was the situation when Mowat became postmaster general, though there had been negotiations between Smith and the Allan Company for a reduction of the subsidy. With the sanction of the government, Mowat cancelled the contract on April 1, 1864, and began negotiations for a new contract.
Mowat perceived that, unless there was to be a lapse in the service on the 1st of April, he must make his arrangements with Allan, since there was no other vessel owner in a position to take up the service on the termination of the contract. Mowat was the less reluctant to renew an engagement with Allan, as he recognized the courage, energy and perseverance of the latter, and was convinced that Allan's experience would give him a great advantage over any other contractor.
The new contract contained provisions which were a confession that the government had been far from blameless for the losses of the several vessels of the Allan line. The mail steamers were expressly forbidden to approach Cape Race when the weather was so foggy or tempestuous as to make it dangerous to do so; when the presence of fog or ice should render it perilous to run at full speed the captain was to be impressed with the duty of slackening speed or of stopping the vessel as the occasion dictated, and the time so lost was to be allowed to the contractor in addition to the time specified for the length of the voyage.
Other precautions were taken by the contractor. The first vessel lost--the "Canadian" in June 1857--was cast on shore by the incompetency of the pilot, and the contractor made it his business to secure the best pilots, instead of taking the first that presented himself, as the practice had been. Another vessel was wrecked on a dangerous shore of the Island of Anticosti. This channel was thereafter abandoned by the vessels of the line.
As a consequence of these provisions and precautions, aided, doubtless, by greater care on the part of the sailing masters, accidents to the vessels ceased altogether. During the twenty-five years that ensued there was but one vessel lost. The outstanding feature of the whole business was the dogged resolution of Allan to justify his faith in the possibility of the Canadian route, and in his ultimate success he rendered an incalculable service to Canada.
FOOTNOTES:
[309] _Sess. Papers_, Canada, 1860, No. 8, contain all the papers bearing on the continental negotiations narrated.
[310] A lengthy review of the papers included in the _Sess. Papers_, No.
8, of 1860, appears in the _Toronto Leader_, the leading government organ of March 8, 1860. The writer notes that "Lord Elgin and Rowland Hill seem to have been firmly convinced, in their own minds, that a Canadian steamer is an American steamer," and observes that "the English officials shifted the grounds of their objections several times, till finally, as rheumatism is said to do after shifting from one part of the body to the other, they vanished altogether before the force of Mr.
Smith's arguments, till nothing but naked obstinacy remained."
[311] P.M.G.'s report to council, December 7, 1863 (_Sess. Papers_, Canada, 1864, No. 28).
[312] _Journals of Assembly_, Canada, 1860, App. 14.
CHAPTER XIX