The Grenfell, built on the Peace River, for the Peace River Trading Company, was the first commercial steamship on the Peace River that was not built for the Hudson's Bay Company. [1]
The impassible Vermilion Chutes divides the Peace River into two navigable sections. The Grenfell operated on the upper reach for only two years before she ran aground 15 miles (24 km) above Fort St. John. [2] She subsequently burned before she could be refloated. [3]
A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. or S/S or PS ; however, these designations are most often used for steamships.
The Peace River is a 1,923-kilometre-long (1,195 mi) river in Canada that originates in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia and flows to the northeast through northern Alberta. The Peace River joins the Athabasca River in the Peace-Athabasca Delta to form the Slave River, a tributary of the Mackenzie River. The Finlay River, the main headwater of the Peace River, is regarded as the ultimate source of the Mackenzie River. The combined Finlay–Peace–Slave–Mackenzie river system is the 13th longest river system in the world.
Fort Vermilion is a hamlet on the Peace River in northern Alberta, Canada, within Mackenzie County.
The Skeena River is British Columbia’s fastest flowing waterway, often rising as much as 17 feet (5.2 m) in a day and fluctuating as much as sixty feet between high and low water. For the steamboat captains, that wide range made it one of the toughest navigable rivers in British Columbia. Nevertheless, at least sixteen paddlewheel steamboats plied the Skeena River from the coast to Hazelton from 1864 to 1912.
The Enterprise was a passenger and freight sternwheeler that was built for service on the Soda Creek to Quesnel route on the upper Fraser River in British Columbia. It was built at Four Mile Creek near Alexandria by pioneer shipbuilder James Trahey of Victoria for Gustavus Blin Wright and Captain Thomas Wright and was put into service in the spring of 1863. Her captain was JW Doane. The Enterprise was the first of twelve sternwheelers that would work on this section of the Fraser from 1863 to 1921. Though she wasn’t large, she was a wonderful example of the early craft of shipbuilding. All of the lumber she was built from was cut by hand and her boiler and engines had been brought to the building site at Four Mile packed by mule via the wagon road from Port Douglas, 300 miles away.
John Henry Bonser (1855-1913) was a steamship captain from Oregon, United States and British Columbia, Canada. He piloted dozens of sternwheelers over his 40-year-long career and pioneered many rivers in the Pacific Northwest.
Hazelton was a sternwheeler that worked on the Skeena River in British Columbia, Canada from 1901 until 1912. Her first owner was Robert Cunningham who ran a freighting business that served the communities along the Skeena River.
The Inlander was a sternwheeler that worked on the Skeena River in British Columbia, Canada, from 1910 until 1912. She was owned by the Prince Rupert and Skeena River Navigation Company which was a syndicate of Skeena River businessmen who planned to use the Inlander as a passenger and freight steamer during the busy years of Grand Trunk Pacific Railway construction.
Victoria Machinery Depot Ltd. was a historic metalworks and shipyard in Victoria, Canada.
The era of steamboats on the Arrow Lakes and adjoining reaches of the Columbia River is long-gone but was an important part of the history of the West Kootenay and Columbia Country regions of British Columbia Canada. The Arrow Lakes are formed by the Columbia River in southeastern British Columbia. Steamboats were employed on both sides of the border in the upper reaches of the Columbia, linking port towns on either side of the border, and sometimes boats would be built in one country and operated in the other. Tributaries of the Columbia include the Kootenay River which rises in Canada, then flows south into the United States, then bends north again back into Canada, where it widens into Kootenay Lake. As with the Arrow Lakes, steamboats once operated on the Kootenay River and Kootenay Lake.
The Coquille River starts in the Siskiyou National Forest and flows hundreds of miles through the Coquille Valley on its way to the Pacific Ocean. Bandon, Oregon, sits at the mouth of the Coquille River on the Pacific Ocean. Before the era of railroads and later, automobiles, the steamboats on the Coquille River were the major mode of transportation from Bandon to Coquille and Myrtle Point in southern Coos County, Oregon, United States.
Lake Washington steamboats and ferries operated from about 1875 to 1951, transporting passengers, vehicles and freight across Lake Washington, a large lake to the east of Seattle, Washington. Before modern highways and bridges were built, the only means of crossing the lake, other than the traditional canoe or rowboat, was by steamboat, and, later, by ferry. While there was no easily navigable connection to Puget Sound, the Lake Washington Ship Canal now connects Lake Washington to Lake Union, and from there Puget Sound is reached by way of the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks.
SS Klondike is the name of two sternwheelers, the second now a National Historic Site located in Whitehorse, Yukon. They ran freight between Whitehorse and Dawson City, along the Yukon River, the first from 1929 to 1936 and the second, an almost exact replica of the first, from 1937 to 1950.
The Mackenzie River in Canada's Northwest Territories is a historic waterway, used for centuries by Indigenous peoples, specifically the Dene, as a travel and hunting corridor. Also known as the Deh Cho, it is part of a larger watershed that includes the Slave, Athabasca, and Peace rivers extending from northern Alberta. In the 1780s, Peter Pond, a trader with the North West Company became the first known European to visit this watershed and begin viable trade with the Athapascan-speaking Dene of these rivers. The Mackenzie River itself, the great waterway extending to the Arctic Ocean, was first put on European maps by Alexander Mackenzie in 1789, the Scottish trader who explored the river. The watershed thus became a vital part of the North American fur trade, and before the advent of the airplane or road networks, the river was the only communication link between northern trading posts and the south. Water travel increased in the late 19th century as traders, dominated primarily by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), looked to increase water services in the Mackenzie River District.
The SS Keno is a preserved historic sternwheel paddle steamer, a National Historic Site of Canada, and a unit of the Canadian national park system. The SS Keno is berthed in a dry dock on the waterfront of the Yukon River in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada.
SS Grahame was a wooden sternwheeled steamship built in Fort Chipewyan, District of Athabasca, by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1882–1883 for service on the Athabasca River, lower Peace River, the Clearwater River, and the upper Slave River.
St. Charles was a small, screw-driven steamboat that serviced the upper Peace River, from 1903 to 1914. She was built from local timber for Brothers of the Oblate Order of Mary Immaculate, using engines and other fittings brought from Peterborough, Ontario.
In the late 19th Century the Oblate Order of Mary Immaculate operated a fleet of steamboats on rivers in the Canadian west. The order is an organization of Christian missionaries. They had established small missions to proselytize to Canada's First Nations people throughout the west. The Hudson's Bay Company was granted a Royal Charter to all the land that drained into Hudson's Bay Company in 1670 - a vast tract of land, known as Rupert's Land. They administered Rupert's Land until the late 1800s, when it was sold to the new Dominion of Canada. The Canadian Pacific Railway had crossed Canada, and other railways had been constructed in the west, but many remote areas were only accessible by riverboat—riverboats operated by the Hudson's Bay Company
Steamboats on the Colorado River operated from the river mouth at the Colorado River Delta on the Gulf of California in Mexico, up to the Virgin River on the Lower Colorado River Valley in the Southwestern United States from 1852 until 1909, when the construction of the Laguna Dam was completed. The shallow draft paddle steamers were found to be the most economical way to ship goods between the Pacific Ocean ports and settlements and mines along the lower river, putting in at landings in Sonora state, Baja California Territory, California state, Arizona Territory, New Mexico Territory, and Nevada state. They remained the primary means of transportation of freight until the advent of the more economical railroads began cutting away at their business from 1878 when the first line entered Arizona Territory.
The Peace River was a sternwheel steamship that provided transportation on the river of the same name. She was 110 feet (34 m) long, and could carry 80 tons of cargo and 25 passengers. The Peace River had navigational difficulties. The Vermilion Chutes was the first impassable barrier, and the Peace River operated on the 500 miles (800 km) between Fort Vermilion and Fort St John.
The Company's vision of providing water transportation on the Peace River took the form of the steamboat S.S. Grenfell. It was to be built in the West Peace River boatyards at Peace River Crossing by George Magar who was to stay on as Captain after the boat's launch in the spring of 1912. The Grenfell was a sternwheeler designed to carry both freight and passengers and travelled the Peace River from Fort Vermilion to Hudson's Hope. Its main competition was the S.S. Peace River, operated by the Hudson's Bay Company.
The Peace River Trading & Land Co., one of a series of lofty promotions organized to develop the wealth of the Peace River country, launched the spunky little sternwheeler Grenfell at West Peace River. The Grenfell possessed few of the amenities of the Peace River but she proved a ruthless rival on the freighting front until, in September 1914, she grounded on a sandbar 15 miles above Fort St. John, caught fire, and burned to the waterline.
The SS Grenfell, built in Peace River town in 1912 plied the river for only two years before running aground above Fort St John and subsequently burning.