At the height of the golden age of sail toward the last half of the 1800s, St. Martins’ coastline was home to at least 12 ship yards and was considered a major maritime destination! These ship yards depended on the timber industry, especially from the Big Salmon River location we looked at in the previous post, and on all the businesses that supported those who built ships. Today’s museum highlights shipbuilding in St. Martins.
No one knows quite what “quaco” means, but early maps called this area Quaco, and the area west of the village is still named West Quaco.
St. Martins was settled in 1783 by a detachment of the King’s Orange Rangers, Loyalist soldiers from England. This detachment had been posted to garrison duty across the bay in Nova Scotia at the end of the American Revolution hostilities.
St. Martins was the 2nd largest producer of wooden sailing vessels in New Brunswick and the 3rd largest in the Maritimes. Between 1803 and 1900, over 500 vessels were built and launched in over 12 shipyards along the beaches, coves, and rivers.
Vessels launched from here brought back ideas and architectural designs that captains, wealthy shipbuilders, and mariners used when building their own homes (one is shown at the end of this post). Artisans from abroad were brought in to paint wall and ceiling murals in these homes. At the height of the shipbuilding era, St. Martins was often referred to as “the richest village in the British Empire.”
Now to the museum. We were greeted by Morag (Scottish name) who walked us around the museum and gave us so much information.
More about this fireplace and room its in later in the post.
ship building
See the men standing in front of the ship? Their size shows you how large the ships actually are.
These are many of the tools used in the 1800s. Before a ship was built, a model was made that the shipbuilders used. They measured the model, upped the measurements to what they needed, and started building.
perspective
picture of inside the hull shows you its size
An almost finished sailing ship with men walking around it.
An almost finished ship next to a 3-story house!
caulking material
To make the ship watertight, something like caulk was needed. Women in the workhouse got the job of pulling apart the pieces of rope that would have otherwise been thrown away; the women ended up with the hemp on the left side of the picture. The hemp was really light weight, and for some pounds of hemp (can’t remember the exact amount), the women could buy a meal for herself and her child(ren).
The hemp was then soaked in tar and used as the stuffing (caulk) between boards on the outside of the ship.
shipping “helps”
Any idea what this is?
It’s a hand-operated fog horn, and it really sounds like a fog horn. (I pulled the handle, and we heard that lovely sound.)
This compass was filled with alcohol since it won’t freeze until the temperature is -150 degrees F! These men were so smart. (Info on women during this era is coming soon.)
ships built in St. Martins
model of the Quaco Queen
Info about the Quaco Queen that launched in 1919. It was abandoned at sea in 1929 off the coast of Bermuda. A Bermuda Triangle victim? Notice that dimensions are in feet; helps those of us from the States.
The Prince Victor was built by the Vail and Moran shipbuilding families in 1870. Tonnage was 1221 tons.
This nearly 8-foot tall figurehead is of Prince Victor (we know him as Prince Albert) from the ship of the same name; originally the figurehead was painted all-white. Read on for more information as to why this ship is so important to St. Martins.
Figureheads were attached just under the bowsprit at the bow (front) of the ship.
In this picture of a sister-ship, you can see how small the figurehead is when it’s actually attached to a ship.
Voyages of the Prince Victor
Over 17 years, it had 12 round-the-world voyages that went to Liverpool (England), Burma, India, Ireland, Australia, San Francisco, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Spain, and the Netherlands.
sinking of the Prince Victor
Bound for the port of Sharpness in 1887, an English port in Gloucestershire on the southwest side of England, with a cargo of paraffin from New York, she struck a sandbank in the Severn River, turned broadside, and rolled over on one of the tugs pulling it, crushing it into the sand.
The crew of the tug scrambled to safety, but the captain and his family all drowned. So amazingly sad. Eventually the ship was secured by ropes to a large oak tree on the riverbank, and the cargo was removed. The ship was towed to its original destination. The figurehead was salvaged and spent the next 88 years in a secluded cottage chained to a plum tree.
After the man died who had salvaged the figurehead, a local man convinced the new owners to donate it to the Folk Museum in Gloucester, England, where it stayed in the basement. Eventually the Quaco Museum was able to purchase it and refurnish it so we all could see it. Now it lives just 1/4 mile from where the ship was built and launched.
women during the golden age of sailing
some of the furniture that had been in a captain’s quarters when his wife was with him
Women were the heart of the golden age of sail all around the Bay of Fundy, contributing to the vitality and success of these communities. Wives of captains and seamen kept their families going through months, and sometimes years, when husbands were away.
Extended family units helped keep local shipbuilding going. At least 15 members of the Vaughan family worked in the industry over 4 generations. Husbands, wives, sons, and daughters owned financial shares in family vessels. Even sons-in-law were involved.
Lydia and Daniel Vaughan were some of the 1796 grant holders settling St. Martins. Their son, David, built the first vessel here in St. Martins. While David was away, Rachel arranged for local men to locate and cut timber and then start constructing a vessel. When David got home after an extra 6 months time away because of weather, he wanted to quit shipbuilding and stay home, but she told to keep on building since she had done so much work while he was gone. She knew that this was the way to make money. He went back to shipbuilding.
David launched a 78-ton schooner in 1803 that he named “Rachel” for his wife.
Moran sisters structured kinship networks to keep the economy going.
Margaret Moran married a master mariner, Allen McLean, who was the son of a Loyalist settler. He was a captain and part owner of Moran vessels for at least 25 years.
Jane Moran married William Vail, the Moran’s shipyard foreman between 1830 and 1855. He owned shares in the vessels he built. His sister, Mary Vail, married another Moran in 1829 to further link these 2 families.
Mary Ann married Thomas Vaughan, a member of another shipbuilding family. He helped build and operate vessel in the Vaughan fleet and establish that family’s shipping agency in Liverpool in the 1885s.
Clara and Madeleine Fritz – so many firsts
One sister went to sea with their father and the other didn’t, but both were successful in their adult lives!
Clara sailed with her father in August 1903 to China and was away for a full year. When she returned, she graduated from high school with honors, went to McGill University in Montreal on a scholarship and graduated in 1914. She received the “Maritimer of the Year” award for outstanding proficiency. In 1919, the University of Toronto granted her a Ph.D as as mycologist, Canada’s first woman tree pathologist.
Madeleine has no record of going on any voyages. In 1926 she completed her Ph.D., becoming the first woman in Canada to have ever received that level of degree in the field of geology. In 1955 she became the curator at the Royal Ontario Museum of Paleontology, the first woman to hold this position.
Molly Kool
Born in Alma, New Brunswick, (where we’re going next on our trip) in 1916, Molly became the 1st woman to be licensed as a shipmaster in 1939 when she was 23.
She learned her skills from her father on his 64-ton coastal schooner and ended up being able to repair anything on a ship and do whatever needed to be done to sail a ship. Of course she faced continuous opposition from authorities as she tried to become a licensed master, but she persevered.
Molly traveled the coast of Maine and the treacherous Bay of Fundy as a ship master. She loved making a living doing what she enjoyed.
treachery on the seas
Since we live in Alpharetta, we were drawn to this sign. Alpharetta Keith (a woman) married Captain Benjamin Fownes of the Fownes family in St. Martins. Early in 1890, she sailed with her husband from Philadelphia to Nagaski. They discharged their cargo of case oil and were getting ready to sail back to Puget Sound.
While in Nagasaki, Diaz, a Manila steward, served tea with biscuits early in the morning to Captain and Mrs. Fownes and their chief officer. The second mate took his biscuits with coffee. Within a short time, those who had drunk the tea were seized with cramps and vomiting. A doctor diagnosed the complaints as arsenic poisoning. The tea was analyzed and found to have enough arsenic in it to kill 50 people!
The steward was arrested and immediately confessed to planning to poison officers and crew so he and another could deliver the ship into the hands of natives in some of the islands where the ship would pass. Immediately after this experience, the ship left Nagasaki on September 15, 1890 for Puget Sound.
What scandal, but at least no one died.
St. Martins in the late 1880s
This map of the coastline also shows all the shops on surrounding streets that supported the shipbuilding business. See the harbor on the right side? We saw pictures of this area in a previous post when looking at the low and high tides.
This painting shows the timber industry around Big Salmon River. See the large, rectangular building in the middle of the picture on the first row of buildings? That’s where the visitors center is that we showed you in an earlier post.
At the end of the tour, we saw a couple of extra items that had nothing to do with shipbuilding.
The wooden “comb” is actually for picking blueberries. The iron on the right has a removable handle that can go from an iron (for ironing clothes) that’s cooled off to iron that’s still hot. We’ll see more about these irons when we’re at the Potato Museum on Prince Edward Island (PEI).
china patterns
Moran family china pattern was donated to the museum
love this meat platter with holes in it for the drippings to fall through
tea room
During the summer season, tea is served in the afternoon for museum visitors. The stones in the fireplace are from the beach area. The molding along the ceiling had been old book cabinets that weren’t strong enough now to hold books, so the museum put them up as molding.
Here’s another view of the tea room; which we could have enjoyed tea with Morag, our tour guide!
other buildings in town
Across the street from the museum is the general store that’s still open.
One of the murder mystery book series we like has Chief Inspector Armand Gamache as its main character. He works for the Surete in Montreal, and often is in the small town of Three Pines that author Louise Penny created along the U.S. border. At the bistro in Three Pines, Inspector Gamache often enjoys a licorice pipe as a sweet treat. I thought that if anywhere, this store would have these licorice pipes. The owner knew about them but hasn’t had any for a few years. Yes, I know I can order boxes of them from Amazon, but I only want 1! I did get 1 red licorice cherry twist—my favorite candy.
This painted tin ceiling is original to the building.
One of the shipbuilder’s home that has always been painted pink.
As we walked out to our truck to leave, we saw this “Weather Station.” Today the rock wasn’t moving, so it wasn’t windy—but it was chilly!
Tonight we have tickets to see Downton Abbey at the movie theater in Saint John. Popcorn was great. Can’t wait to see it again!
We’re ready to leave Saint John now for Fundy National Park just north of where we are to see even bigger differences in the low and high tides.
