The contracts were at length completed and we hastened for home, taking the Guion Line Alaska as the fastest ship on the Atlantic. She held the "record" for the then fastest passage, 6 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes from Queenston to New York.
We had a frightful passage, during one 24 hours making only 52 miles. When the captain of a first-class Atlantic liner enters on his log, as ours did next day, "dangerous sea," one may feel satisfied that something unusual had been going on.
Instead of not over eight days, as had been expected, we took twelve days, much to the alarm of our families, and reached Toronto only three days before Christmas.
So Chicora and her successor had twice run the home-coming festival pretty close.
In 1887 the services were opened by Chicora alone, with Capt. McCorquodale in command.
Construction of the new steamer was begun early in April in the yards of the E. W. Rathbun Company, at Deseronto on the Bay of Quinte, there being then no other shipyard on the shores of Lake Ontario. The facilities here were excellent, in convenience of access by rail to the waterside, and in complete iron and wood-working factories for the cabin construction.
The hull was erected by W. C. White, of Montreal, who also had built the steamer Filgate, and the wood-work done by ourselves and the Rathbuns under the charge of our foreman carpenter, Mr. J. Whalen.
The engines arrived in good shape and were erected in the hull by Rankin, Blackmore & Co., who sent out men for this purpose.
The cabin work was being made in sections in the workshops, so that it could be erected as soon as the decks were ready.
In the early part of the season of 1887 the New York Central completed the extension of its tracks to the shore line at Lewiston, just above the steamer dock. The relief to the traffic was welcome and immediate. The passengers were saved the weary jolting for the mile and a half transfer through enveloping dust, or of red bespattering mud, according to the varying conditions of the weather, and the through time between Niagara Falls and the steamer was also much shortened.