Canadian Coast Guard
<% else %>A History of the Canadian Coast Guard and Marine Services
by Thomas E. Appleton
Merchant Shipping and
the St. Lawrence Channel
In 1815 the total population of the British North American Provinces numbered about half a million; by 1865 it had reached some three and a half million. Much of the expansion came by way of the Canadian cradle, for the early settlers needed many hands to clear the bush and, simple as was the fare of frontier living, it sufficed to rear many large and well-knit families. Then between 1820 and 1850, with a peak of 52,000 immigrants landing in the St. Lawrence in 1832, the first tide of mass immigration reached our shores, and shipping became a major business with connections on both sides of the Atlantic.
Quebec was the upstream limit of sailing navigation, and that only from May till November, but the facts of geography had presented Canada with the most marvellous highway then in existence. In 1809 the Honourable John Molson established the Accommodation as the first of a line of steamboats between Montreal and Quebec and shortly after the conclusion of the 1812 war, the coming of river steamers quickened the embryo port of Montreal.
By Western Ocean emigrant ship, by steamboat and bateaux to Upper Canada and the Lakes, came the people who would leave their names, or the names of Scots and Irish towns and villages, on the maps of Ontario and Quebec. Down the Ottawa and St. Lawrence, from far into the interior, came rafts of squared timber which would build the wooden sailing ships of mid Victorian Canada and supply the wants of Europe until the steam sawmill, and the opening of the American market, all but cleared our original forests in the succeeding half century.
To handle this traffic the country needed navigable channels and canals, aids to navigation, and a steam towing service to overcome the uncertainties of sail in the strong tides and currents in the reaches below Quebec. As the booming industry of the river attracted thousands of people, either in transit or at work, it also needed legislation to deal with the health and immigration services, water-borne police to handle the rough and tumble among crimps and seamen, and regulations to cover the public safety in newfangled steamboats which were being built in increasing numbers. In short, the shipping revolution was upon us.
The great River itself, billions of tons flowing silently to the rhythm of nature, or building up with awe-inspiring consequence to the ice dams of early spring, had changed but little since Jacques Cartier discovered, by running aground, that the upper end of Lake St. Peter was too shallow to permit of westwards progress for sea-going vessels. The resultant transhipment business between the tiers of sailing ships in Quebec, and the growing urban centre of Montreal, was a profitable operation for lighters and rafts and had tended to delay the prospects of any real improvement in the channel depth. However, in the Session of 1805, the Provincial Government of Lower Canada passed an Act for "the improvement of Navigation between Quebec and Montreal, and the establishment of Trinity House".
The name Trinity House was taken from the English body which, since 1512, has handled the pilotage and lights of England. The original charter, in the time of Henry VIII, was granted under the title of the Guild or Fraternity of the Most Glorious and Undivided Trinity of St. Clement which became, in short, the Trinity House. There was a further threesome in that the Guild was originally divided into three categories, Master, Wardens, and Assistants. The Quebec Trinity House was an autonomous body under the Government of the Province of Lower Canada.
The coming of the Quebec Trinity House, while it resulted in the establishment of lights and buoys, did nothing to deepen the channel. The Legislative Assembly therefore appointed an investigating committee to find out how this could be done, basing their recommendations on a survey of the St. Lawrence then being undertaken by Captain H. W. Bayfield RN, on behalf of the Admiralty. Henry Wolsey Bayfield was one of those to whom the marine services of this country owe much of their early achievement. He held the appointment of Admiralty Surveyor in North America and, in the forty years from commencement of his task in 1817, charted Canadian waters from the Strait of Belle Isle to the Lakehead. He rose to flag rank, becoming a full admiral in the year of Confederation, and his name may be seen on charts today. Admiral Bayfield lived in Quebec for fourteen years and in Charlottetown for forty-four. He died in 1885 at the age of ninety.
In 1844, work commercial in earnest on the channel through Lake St. Peter which, at that time, was limited to a depth of ten and a half feet at low water, in a curved natural channel marked by lighthouses. It was very tempting to cut a straight furrow through St. Peters flats but difficulties intervened and, by one of those decisions which remain to confound a more technical age, the original intention was abandoned and the channel remains curved to this day. At the time, of course, the choice was not an easy one, nor was it simple to raise sufficient capital for such a scheme. In fact the straight channel had been commenced, but had been halted in 1846 from financial difficulties. Captain Bayfield was asked for his opinion and he advised Government to carry on with the straight channel as it had been started but added, rather unfortunately, that his original view would have been to deepen the existing bed. Work was accordingly resumed on the straight channel, but it was again suspended for want of funds in 1847.
By this time, the merchants of Montreal were beginning to realize, as a later generation were to realize in the question of the underground railway, that much money would have to be spent if the port was to live up to the undoubted promise of the age. The Montreal Harbour Commission then approached the Government with a comprehensive scheme by which they would assume responsibility for construction and for financing by a combination of borrowed funds and tonnage does on ships drawing more than ten feet of water. Up to this time the total expenditure had been a matter of some $300,000 and, in the act subsequently authorizing the transfer of the work to the Harbour Commission, they were to borrow an additional $120,000 and to charge one shilling per ton on ships. In there days, when many a country club would think nothing of spending such sums in the improvement of their grounds, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the problems overcome by those who built the assets of this country, often with slender financial resources. Faced with these serious matters, the Harbour Commissioners, after reviewing the whole business, elected to abandon the straight channel for good, and to deepen and widen the natural bed. In 1865, they had achieved a waterway three hundred feet wide, with a least depth of twenty feet. The dredges which carried out this piece of work were built at Sorel.
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