THE ALLAN LINE ROYAL MAIL STEAMERS
The firm now owned a fleet of fast sailing vessels of about three hundred and fifty tons register—full-rigged ships which, with ice-blocks round their bows, pushed their way through the ice, so that sometimes they would arrive in port on the 15th of April. In 1853 Mr. Hugh Allan, who was a man of great tenacity of purpose, and at the same time of remarkable foresight, saw that the time had come for the building of iron ships for the St. Lawrence trade. Besides, there was the consideration that they would run to Portland in the winter time, and connect with Montreal by rail. He enlisted the support of several wealthy men, including Mr. William Dow and Mr. Robert Anderson, of Montreal, and formed the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company. The Canadian and Indian were the first two boats built by the company.
The boats cost about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars each and had a speed of eleven knots.
They were wonders at the time and made a great impression, as the people had not been accustomed to see iron ships. Thus it happened that when about this time the Crimean war broke out, and the government was at its wit’s end to provide transports, the Allans went into the business, and while the war lasted made large profits.
The Canadian Government now made a contract with Mr. Hugh Allan for carrying the mails, paying an annual subsidy of $120,000 per annum. The Anglo-Saxon, a new boat, ran from Quebec to Liverpool in nine days on one occasion. This was thought to be wonderful, as the people had been accustomed to a voyage of forty days on the old sailing vessels. At that time the ships got 30 cents per bushel for carrying grain. Contrast this with the 2 cents of today, or the carrying of grain for nothing, as is done by New York shipping at certain periods of the year, in order to get ballast on an outgoing trip.
The requirements of the service in 1858 demanded more accommodation, and the Allan brothers determined on a weekly service.
Larger and faster boats were introduced. The government paid subsidies to the new service totalling $416,000 per annum. Year by year the Allans launched new boats, always bigger and faster, though speed was never the chief consideration with the company.
In 1861 they had a fleet of over twenty vessels; but a sinister fortune befell the company in the first ten years of its existence. Eight ships were lost in as many years.
In 1857 the Canadian, in 1859 the Indian, in 1860 the Hungarian and the second Canadian, and the North Briton in 1861, and later the Anglo-Saxon, the Norwegian and the Bohemian—all became total wrecks. The river was badly lighted. The tides did not run true. The pilots were incompetent. The compass deviated, owing to some strange local attraction due, it was said, to mineral deposits in the gulf. Anyway, disaster followed disaster, and, as was said at the time, any other man than Mr. Allan would have given up in despair. But that gentleman had something of the firmness of his native granite in his composition, and he never wavered. Difficulties in time were overcome; the Allans began to prosper and from this on their boats were singularly free from accidents.
To show, however, how little even the most perspicacious can see in advance of their time, it may be stated that at the banquet which the citizens tendered Mr. Hugh Allan in 1850, he said that ships of 1,700 tons were the most suitable for the Montreal trade. He lived to see his boats grow to 5,500 tons.