Maritime History of the Great Lakes

The Novelty and the Compound Marine Engine in Central Canada

Publication
The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord (St. John's, NL), Oct 2009, p. 413-424
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The Novelty and the Compound Marine Engine in Central Canada


The compound marine steam engine, although developed as early as the 1820s, did not see widespread use on the Great Lakes until the late 1860s. This article helps explain why, by analyzing archival resources on the steamer Novelty, which served most of her career between Kingston and the Bay of Quinté in the 1850s. She was the first steamer equipped with a compound engine to operate on the Canadian coasts of the Great Lakes and suffered a series of mechanical failures and other mishaps before her loss in a collision with another ship. Her innovative machinery seems to have gone well beyond the technical capacity of its crew and the Kingston Foundry, the company contracted to keep its machines in working order.