Since moving to Newfoundland, I’ve been fortunate enough to see a handful of tall ships come through the Narrows into St. John’s; each one an ambassador from their home country with special trimmings representing where they’ve come from, and all of them majestic reminders of a bygone era. Honestly, that awestruck feeling of seeing a tall ship in the harbour never goes away. June 7th, 2016 was no exception when this ship graced our harbour with its presence. Today, I’m writing about the tall ship Simón Bolívar.
Read MoreCruise ship season 2016 continued on Friday with the arrival of the M/V Boudicca of the Fred. Olsen Cruise Line. Constructed in 1973 in the Wärtsilä Helsinki Shipyard, Helsinki, Finland, she has served many owners and operators in the last 40+ years.
Read MoreToday the M/V Balmoral was in St. John’s, kicking off the 2016 cruise ship season! While the weather was grey and dreary (and threatened snow more than once), any passengers I saw around seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their time here. Balmoral arrived around 8:00am, and sailed back out through the Narrows shortly after 2:00pm.
Read MoreHi Everyone! I know it's been awhile so let's just jump right in, shall we? As I've discussed before, and many of you will know, ships were once the only way for people to travel from Europe to North America. In the early years of these routes, ships would be filled as much as they could with passengers, cargo, and crew. Most of the time, these ships would make fairly uneventful crossings. However, when things went wrong, they went very, very wrong. One of these, while en route to Quebec, Canada, ran aground off the coast of Newfoundland with a loss of more than half her passengers and crew. This week, we're looking at the wreck of the SS Anglo Saxon.
Read MoreBritish Columbia has a long list of shipwrecks. Many of them are more recent, including decommissioned Navy ships as artificial reefs (such as the HMCS Annapolis this year), and the sinking of the ferry M/V Queen of the North in 2006. Quite a few of them, however, stem from the turn of the century, when the expansion of the Canadian west was in full swing, and steamships were the way to get people and cargo to communities along the rushing rivers. One such ship was owned by the Hudson Bay Company, and met a quick and unfortunate demise on the Skeena River in 1907. This week, we're looking at the story of the sternwheeler Mount Royal.
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