The head office of the Richelieu and Ontario Company is in Montreal. The General Manager is Mr. C. F. Gildersleeve. Mr. Alexander Milloy, the Traffic Manager, who was born in Kintyre, Scotland, in 1822, came to Canada in 1840, when he entered the Montreal office of the Upper Canada Line of mail steamers, and continued his connection with the company, amid all its changes, until May, 1898, when he retired from the service.
On the Ottawa River.
The navigation of the Ottawa differed from that of the St. Lawrence in that its rapids were wholly impassable for boats with cargo. The necessity for canals thus became urgent. The original Grenville Canal was designed and commenced by the Royal Engineers for the Imperial Government, and was completed in 1832, simultaneously with the Rideau Canal. It was enlarged by the Dominion Government a few years ago, but it is not yet of sufficient capacity to allow the free passage of the larger steamers on this route. Travellers are therefore subject to transhipment at Carillon, and are conveyed by railway to Grenville, a distance of thirteen miles, where another steamer is ready to convey them to Ottawa. This little bit of railway is one of the oldest in Canada, and is further remarkable as being the only one of 5 feet 6 inches gauge in the country. It was purchased by the Ottawa River Navigation Company in 1859, and is operated only in connection with their steamers, not being used in winter.
OTTAWA RIVER STEAMER “SOVEREIGN.”
The completion of the Grenville Canal in its original form opened up a new route to the West, somewhat circuitous, doubtless, but with greatly increased facilities for the transportation of merchandise, the immediate effect of which was to transfer the great bulk of west-bound traffic from the St. Lawrence route to that of the Ottawa and Rideau. About this time was formed “The Ottawa and Rideau Forwarding Company,” by leading merchants in Montreal, with Mr. Cushing as manager. A few years later the forwarding business became a lucrative one, and was carried on by a number of prominent firms represented at Montreal, Prescott, Brockville and Kingston. Chief among these were the Messrs. Macpherson, Crane & Co., Hooker & Jones, Henderson & Hooker (afterwards Hooker & Holton), H. & J. Jones of Brockville, and Murray & Sanderson of Montreal. Messrs. Macpherson and Crane were easily the foremost in the enterprise, for they owned a private lock at Vaudreuil and thus held the key to the navigation of the Ottawa, and had complete control of the towage until 1841, when Captain R. W. Shepherd, then in command of the steamer St. David, belonging to a rival company, as the result of a clever and hazardous experiment, discovered a safe channel through the rapids at St. Ann’s, which put an end to the monopoly.
Up to 1832 the long portage between Carillon and Grenville was a serious drawback to traffic, necessitating a double service of steamers and barges, one for the upper and one for the lower reach of the river. The first steamer on the upper reach seems to have been the Union, Captain Johnson, built in 1819, and which commenced to ply the following year between Grenville and Hull, covering the distance of sixty miles in about 24 hours! On the lower reach the William King began to ply about 1826 or 1827, at first commanded by Captain Johnson, afterwards by Captain De Hertel. The St. Andrew followed soon after. In 1828 the Shannon, then considered a large and powerful steamer, was built at Hawkesbury and placed on the upper route, commanded at first by Captain Grant and afterwards by Captain Kaines.
At the height of the forwarding business on the Ottawa, Macpherson & Crane owned a fleet of thirteen steamers and a large number of bateaux and barges, which were towed up the Ottawa and through the Rideau Canal to Kingston, the entire distance being 245 miles. The flotilla would make the round trip, returning via the St. Lawrence, in twelve or fourteen days. The steamers engaged in this service were mostly small, high-pressure boats—commonly called “puffers.” At the first the noise which they made, especially the unearthly shriek of their steam-whistles, scared the natives as well as the cattle along the banks of the river. The passengers were usually accommodated in the barges in tow of the steamers, but as time went on a few of the “puffers” attained the dignity of passenger boats, and, when unencumbered with tows, made the round trip in a week. The writer well remembers making the trip in the early forties on the Charlotte, Captain Marshall, and a very pleasant trip it was, the chief attractions being the long chain of locks at the small village of Bytown—soon to become the beautiful capital of the Dominion; the big dam at Jones’ Falls, with its retaining wall three hundred feet in thickness at the base and ninety feet high; the marvellous scenery of the Lake of the Thousand Islands, and, as the climax, what was then the novelty of shooting the rapids on a steamboat. Captain Howard informed me that the first steamer to shoot the “lost channel” of the Long Sault rapids was the old Gildersleeve of Mr. Hamilton’s line, in command of Captain Maxwell and piloted by one Rankin. That was in 1847, and was considered a daring feat at the time, but it established the safety of the new channel which has ever since been used by the larger passenger steamers. No one, however, can form an adequate idea of the grandeur of this raging torrent who has not made the descent upon a raft; though, speaking from experience, this mode of shooting the “lost channel” is not to be recommended to persons of weak nerves.
It is said that in 1836 a steamboat named the Thomas Mackay plied between Quebec and Ottawa, but its journeyings seem to have been erratic and its subsequent history “lost in obscurity”—a phrase that applies in some degree, indeed, to the early history of steam on the Ottawa. The St. David was the only steamer that could pass through the Grenville Canal in 1841. The first truly passenger service on the Ottawa commenced in 1842 with the Oldfield on the lower route and the Porcupine on the upper. In 1846 the Oldfield was purchased by Captain Shepherd and others who formed a private company named the “Ottawa Steamers Company.” The steamer Ottawa Chief was built by that company in 1848, but she was found to draw too much water, and in the following spring was chartered by Mr. Hamilton and placed on the St. Lawrence route. The Lady Simpson, built in 1850, was the precursor of a number of excellent steamers that have made travelling on the Ottawa popular with all classes. Among these were the Atlas, Prince of Wales (which ran for twenty-four years), Queen Victoria, Dagmar, Alexandra, etc. The reputation of the line is well sustained at present by the Empress, Captain Bowie, and the Sovereign, Captain Henry W. Shepherd, both very fine and fast steel boats of 400 and 300 tons, respectively. Other steamers in commission and employed in the local trade bear such loyal names as Maude, Princess and Duchess of York.