The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

7. Ship of the Month - cont'd. Ault's Ship Yard, Mr. James Morton has a good-sized propellor (the WILLIE NICKLE) ready for launching. Mr. George Ault has built the vessel, and her engines have been refitted at the Kingston Foundry. She looks a very handy boat and among the satisfactory commercial doings of the Kingston M i l l i on aire, will be found both useful and profitable. The CHARLEVOIX steam tug, also hauled out at this yard, is being repaired, and will be ready directly. "Mr. William Bowen, the St. Lawrence Wharfinger, has recently laid down the keel in this yard, of a full sized River Steamer, for himself and the other stockholders of the steamer ST. LAWRENCE (built at Chateauguay, Quebec, in 1848). Many of her timbers are already out, and she will be actively put to gether during the summer and launched in the fall. She is to be a first class vessel, with all the modern improvements, and the lines of her model evince a capacity for great speed, if due power be placed within her. Next spring, she will be a Mail River steamer between Kingston and Montreal. Mr. George Ault, her builder, is famed for the beauty of his craft, as shown in the MAY FLOWER (sic), the handsomest modelled steamboat on Lake Ontario, and that's saying no small things. " The "Whig", of Friday, December 8th, 1854, announced the Thursday, November 30th, launch of a new steamer "of a beautiful model", launched at Ault's Ship Yard, Portsmouth, and christened BANSHEE. A Mr. Perry, described as "an enterprising young gentleman", immediately laid the keel for another freight and package steamer on the ways on which BANSHEE had been built. Launched in 1855, this was BOWMANVILLE, given in the "Globe" 1857 list as 250 tons, Capt. Perry, built in 1855 at Hatter's Bay and owned by Charles Percy (pro bably a typographical error for "Perry"). She was valued at $30, 000. We do not wish to delay getting on with the story of BANSHEE, but we would be remiss if we did not say a bit more about the BOWMANVILLE. She was a very large steamer for her day, and indeed she was too large to fit into the locks of the existing Welland Canal. She ran the route from Montreal to Toronto, Hamilton and St. Catharines. Our records show that she was 176. 4 x 27. 3 x 14. 0, 759 Gross and 521 Net. In 1861, she made a special trip from Toronto and Hamilton to Quebec City with excursionists to see the steamer GREAT EASTERN. Sold foreign, she left the lakes on August 11, 1863, for Havana and reportedly foundered en route. Ault had built the steamer MAYFLOWER in 1848 at Bath, the schooner SARAH in 1852 at Portsmouth, ELIZA QUINLAN at Kingston in 1852, and JAMES LESLIE in 1854 at Colborne. He is then credited with BANSHEE in 1854; the schooner NEW CASTLE at Kingston in 1856; a rebuild of the barkentine GARRYOWEN in 1856 from the bottom of the schooner STORK; the schooner QUEEN OF THE LAKES at Portsmouth in 1858, and the schooner HEMLOCK at Portsmouth in 1864. There is little doubt that Ault was involved in the construction of other vessels as well, but records on the subject are very scarce. Now back to BANSHEE! Her engine, although built in Montreal as previously mentioned, was supplied by the Kingston Foundry. It was not in her when she was launched, although some of her other machinery was in place. Immediately after the launch, BANSHEE was towed down to Bowen's Wharf, at Kingston, where her construction was completed and the engine installed. She was intended for the River Mail Line, to take the place of the steamer ST. LAWRENCE in 1855, in consort with the splendid new iron-hulled steamer KINGSTON, being built at Montreal by Dunbar & Bartley for the Hon. John Hamilton. The ST. LAWRENCE had sunk in 1852 and had been rebuilt later the same year. Bowen & Company also owned the s c h o o n e r BAY OF QUINTE. [10] As far as we are aware, there is no known photograph of the first BANSHEE, but we do have an excellent photo of the second BANSHEE, the sidewheeler. It was taken in 1856 at Bowen's Wharf, Kingston, and is reproduced on our photopage. The earliest known photograph of a Great Lakes ship is a daguer reotype of the steamer SOUTHERN MICHIGAN, which was taken in 1853 and is preserved at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum. Photography was scarcely a decade old (in useful form) when Mr. H. K. Sheldon advertised in the "Kings-