The Montreal Transportation Company, founded in 1868, is the oldest of the existing forwarding companies, and does the largest amount of business. Their fleet consists at present of three steamers, six tug-boats, six lake barges and thirty-two river barges. Two of the steamers, the Bannockburn and the Rosemount, are first-class steel ships, built at Newcastle-on-Tyne, about 250 feet in length, 40 feet beam, with a carrying capacity of 75,000 bushels of wheat. The lake barges play an important part as “consorts” to the steamers. They resemble in appearance so many large dismasted schooners, and serve their purpose economically and well so long as they keep in tow, but when they break loose, as they occasionally do when overtaken by a gale of wind, they become unmanageable and are apt to come to grief. This company with its present equipment handles about 250,000 bushels of grain per month.
The North-West Transportation Company, dating from 1871, and otherwise known as the “Beatty Line,” has two fine passenger and freight steamers, the Monarch and the United Empire, of 1,600 tons and 1,400 tons respectively, forming a weekly line from Windsor and Sarnia to Fort William and Duluth, in connection with the Grand Trunk Railway; they forward about 200,000 bushels of grain per month.
The Hagarty and Crangle Line, running between ports at the head of lakes Superior and Michigan to ports on the River St. Lawrence, has two large steel steamers, the Algonquin and the Rosedale, on the Upper Lakes, and the steamer Persia which plies between the head of Lake Ontario and Montreal. Hamilton has three “Merchants Lines” in the Upper Lakes’ shipping business—Mackay’s, Fairgreaves’, and Thomas Myles & Sons, owning in addition to other lake craft such fine steel and composite steamers as the Sir L. Tilley, Lake Michigan, Arabian and the Myles.
The Calvin Company’s Line, of Garden Island, Kingston, has four steamers, four lake barges, and four tug steamers running between Lake Superior ports, Kingston and Montreal. The Collins Bay Rafting Company has on the same route three steamers, three lake barges, and two tug steamers. The Jacques & Co.’s Line has two steamers running from the head of Lake Erie and one from the head of Lake Ontario to Montreal.
The Great Northern Transit Company, with headquarters at Collingwood, has four freight and passenger steamers—the Majestic, Pacific, Atlantic, and Northern Belle—keeping up a well-appointed service twice a week from Collingwood to Sault Ste. Marie, and having connection with the Northern Railway to Toronto. The Majestic, built at Collingwood, is a steel screw steamer, 230 feet long, 36 feet wide, 1,600 tons register, and cost $125,000. She has compound condensing engines of 1,200 horse-power, and is fitted up internally with great elegance. The North Shore Navigation Company has five excellent steamers plying on the Georgian Bay and northern shores of Lake Huron from Collingwood and Owen Sound to Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac Island, where connections are made with American lines of steamers to Chicago and other ports on Lake Michigan. The steamers are the City of Collingwood, 1,400 tons; City of Midland, 1,300 tons; City of Toronto, 800 tons; City of Parry Sound and City of London, each 600 tons.
Reference will be made hereafter to steamers plying on Lake Ontario and the River St. Lawrence.
The Transportation Business.
In the matter of transportation it may be interesting to learn how a consignment of wheat is “handled” from the time it leaves the field in Manitoba, where it is grown, until it reaches its destination in Liverpool or London. When there were only a few hundred thousand bushels to be sent to the seaboard, the means of transport were very simple and primitive. It was carried on men’s backs from one conveyance to another, and floated down rivers or shallow canals in small boats or on rafts of timber. But when the thousands became millions the problem of cheap transportation became a serious one. American ingenuity rose to the occasion and invented the most marvellous of labour-saving appliances—THE GRAIN ELEVATOR.
