A Century of Sail and Steam on the Niagara River

by Barlow Cumberland

On learning the fact the French turned their attention to this new waterway, but for many a weary decade were unable to establish themselves upon it. In 1678 Father Hennepin, with an expedition sent out by Sieur La Salle sailed from Cataraqui (Kingston) to the Niagara River, the name "Hennepin Rock" having come down in tradition as a reminiscence of their first landing below what is now Queenston Heights. Passing over the "Carrying Place," they reached Lake Erie. Here, at the outlet of the Cayuga Creek, on the south shore, they built a small two-masted vessel rigged with equipment which they brought up for the purpose from Cataraqui, in the following year.

This vessel, launched in 1679, and named the "Griffon" in recognition of the crest on the coat of arms of Count Frontenac, the Governor of Canada, was the first vessel built by Europeans to sail upon the upper waters. In size she so much exceeded that of any of their own craft, with her white sails billowing like an apparition, and of novel and unusual appearance, that intensest excitement was created among the Indian tribes as she passed along their shores.

Her life was brief, and the history of her movements scanty; the report being that after sailing through Lake St. Clair she reached Michilimakinac and Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, but passed out of sight on Lake Huron on the return journey, and was never heard of afterwards.

Tiny though this vessel was and sailing slow upon the Upper Lakes, yet a great epoch had been opened up, for she was the progenitor of all the myriad ships which ply upon these waters at the present day. It was the entrance of the white man, with his consuming trade energy, into the red man's realm, the death knell of the Indian race.

With greatly increased frequency of travelling and the more bulky requirements of freightage this "one portage" route was more increasingly sought, and as the result of their voyagings these early French pioneers have marked their names along the waterways as ever remaining records of their prowess—such as Presquile (almost an island); Detroit (the narrow place); Lac Sainte Clair; Sault Ste Marie (Rapids of St. Mary River); Cap Iroquois; Isle Royale; Rainy River (after René de Varennes); Duluth (after Sieur du Luth, of Montreal); Fond du Lac (Head of Lake Superior).

From here mounting up the St. Croix River, seeking the expansion of that New France to whose glory they so ungrudgingly devoted their lives, these intrepid adventurers reached over to the Mississippi, and sweeping down its waters still further marked their way at St. Louis (after their King) and New Orleans (after his capital), annexing all the adjacent territories to their Sovereign's domains.

The Niagara River Route then became the motive centre of a mighty circum-vallation by which the early French encompassed within its circle the English Colonies then skirting along the Atlantic.

What a magnificent conception it was of these intrepid French to envelope the British settlements and strengthened by alliances with the Indian tribes and fortified by a line of outposts established along the routes of the Ohio and the Mississippi, to hem their competitors in from expansion to the great interior country of the centre and the west. Standing astride the continent with one foot on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, at Quebec, and the other at New Orleans, on the Gulf of Mexico, the interior lines of commerce and of trade were in their hands. They hoped that Canada, their New France, on this side of the ocean, was to absorb all the continent excepting the colonies along the shores of the sea. So matters remained for a century.

Meanwhile the English colonies had expanded to the south shores of the Lakes Oswego and Frontenac, and in 1758 we read of an English Navy of eight schooners and three brigs sailing on Lake Ontario under the red cross of St. George and manned by sailors of the colonies.

In 1759, came the great struggle for the possession of the St. Lawrence and connecting lines of the waterways. Fort Niagara, whose large central stone "castle," built in 1726, still remains, passed from the French under Pouchot, to the British under Sir William Johnson; a great flotilla of canoes conveying the Indian warriors under Ligneris to the aid of the Fort, had come down from the Upper Lakes, to the Niagara River, but upon it being proved to them that they were too late, for the Fort had fallen, they re-entered their canoes and re-traced their way up the rivers back to their Western homes.