On the 12th of October, 1857, a new contract was entered into with Allan for weekly service to commence on the 1st of May, 1859. The size of the vessels required was again increased, and the new steamers had to be built to 2000 tons. The subsidy was to be £55,000. By 1860, three vessels had been lost, and Allan, having found that the loss in carrying on the weekly service was far beyond his calculations, notified the government of his intention to terminate.
The government, believing that it was essential to hold public confidence in the route, and that this could be best done by enabling the contractor to provide larger and more powerful vessels to replace those which had been lost, determined to offer a much larger subsidy, and to stipulate for vessels of 2300 tons. A new contract embodying these conditions was made, and the compensation was fixed at £104,000.
In brief this was the situation when Mowat became postmaster general, though there had been negotiations between Smith and the Allan Company for a reduction of the subsidy. With the sanction of the government, Mowat cancelled the contract on April 1, 1864, and began negotiations for a new contract.
Mowat perceived that, unless there was to be a lapse in the service on the 1st of April, he must make his arrangements with Allan, since there was no other vessel owner in a position to take up the service on the termination of the contract. Mowat was the less reluctant to renew an engagement with Allan, as he recognized the courage, energy and perseverance of the latter, and was convinced that Allan's experience would give him a great advantage over any other contractor.
The new contract contained provisions which were a confession that the government had been far from blameless for the losses of the several vessels of the Allan line. The mail steamers were expressly forbidden to approach Cape Race when the weather was so foggy or tempestuous as to make it dangerous to do so; when the presence of fog or ice should render it perilous to run at full speed the captain was to be impressed with the duty of slackening speed or of stopping the vessel as the occasion dictated, and the time so lost was to be allowed to the contractor in addition to the time specified for the length of the voyage.
Other precautions were taken by the contractor. The first vessel lost—the "Canadian" in June 1857—was cast on shore by the incompetency of the pilot, and the contractor made it his business to secure the best pilots, instead of taking the first that presented himself, as the practice had been. Another vessel was wrecked on a dangerous shore of the Island of Anticosti. This channel was thereafter abandoned by the vessels of the line.
As a consequence of these provisions and precautions, aided, doubtless, by greater care on the part of the sailing masters, accidents to the vessels ceased altogether. During the twenty-five years that ensued there was but one vessel lost. The outstanding feature of the whole business was the dogged resolution of Allan to justify his faith in the possibility of the Canadian route, and in his ultimate success he rendered an incalculable service to Canada.
FOOTNOTES:
[309] Sess. Papers, Canada, 1860, No. 8, contain all the papers bearing on the continental negotiations narrated.
[310] A lengthy review of the papers included in the Sess. Papers, No. 8, of 1860, appears in the Toronto Leader, the leading government organ of March 8, 1860. The writer notes that "Lord Elgin and Rowland Hill seem to have been firmly convinced, in their own minds, that a Canadian steamer is an American steamer," and observes that "the English officials shifted the grounds of their objections several times, till finally, as rheumatism is said to do after shifting from one part of the body to the other, they vanished altogether before the force of Mr. Smith's arguments, till nothing but naked obstinacy remained."