Owen Sound, Schooner Port: Schooner Days MVIII (1008)

by C. H. J. Snider

BEING unable to locate a picture of the Annie Foster, which you showed us recently, or the lumber yard she kept supplied from north shore mills, am enclosing a good picture of Owen Sound harbor in the late Eighties, when steam was young and sail supreme," writes Leon C. Julien of Owen Sound. "This, taken in 1889, showing no less than ten of those grand old windjammers that ploughed the waters of our lakes and rivers in the nineteenth century, yes, and many of them well into the present time. To wit, the Horace Taber.

"We who were fortunate to be down the bay in our cruiser Sunbeam August 15, 1917, secured two snaps of her as she sailed into harbor in a light breeze loaded with coal consigned to a local dealer. This was the last windborne cargo to come to Owen Sound and the last sailing vessel loaded or light, thus writing finish to wind power navigation here.

"Schooner Days gave her a fitting writeup in his unique style, including our snaps, with account of her toss in a storm November 26, 1922, at Four Mile Point on Simcoe Island near Kingston, in February 1st, 1941, issue. Happily there was no loss of life.

"To the best of our knowledge there never was a sailing vessel except pleasure built here, certainly none since 1874. There were many wooden passenger steamers built by the late Captain John Simpson before that date, down to latter part of the century, the Frances Smith being his first and largest, a side wheeler, in the middle Sixties. He also built the fine propellers Ontario and Quebec. There were the Cambria and the Carmona, also, both probably rebuilt, and the City of Midland, City of Owen Sound and City of Collingwood. Lake transportation owes much to Capt. John Simpson.

"Then the Polson shipyard of Toronto located here in the late Eighties, and began construction of the first iron steamers. The CPR Manitoba was launched in 1889 to replace the Algoma, lost November 6, 1885, on Isle Royale in Lake Superior with loss of 37 lives. The Manitoba was fabricated in Britain and put together in Owen Sound.

"We are of the belief the iron passenger and freight steamer Campana that came here in 1881 was originally the North, built in Glasgow in 1873. Quebec Steamships Co. bought her in 1895 and put her on the St. Lawrence route. She was wrecked below Quebec, June 7, 1909. A. M. Smith and others of Toronto owned her before she went to Quebec. She had to be cut in two to pass the canal.

"These three CPR steamers, Alberta, Athabasca and Algoma were built on the Clyde, Scotland, in 1883, brought over and cut in two at Montreal, the sections towed to Lake Ontario to be taken through the old Welland locks, reassembled at Buffalo, arriving here in spring of 1884, equipped with auxiliary sails on both fore and aft spars, introducing a new era in shipping history on the Upper Lakes.

Owen Sound Harbor With Its Elevators and Schooners and the Big Steamer Campana Seventy Years Ago