MV Kipawo

Last updated
KipawoBow 2011.jpg
MV Kipawo
History
Flag of Canada 1921.svg Canada
NameKipawo
Owner Dominion Atlantic Railway
Builder St. John Drydock & Shipbuilding Co.
LaunchedDecember 5, 1924
StatusPermanently drydocked Parrsboro, Nova Scotia
General characteristics
Tonnage200 Gross Tons
Length123 ft (37 m)
Beam26 ft (7.9 m)
Depth9 ft (2.7 m)
Propulsion Fairbanks-Morse Oil Engine

MV Kipawo is a historic Canadian passenger and freight ferry built to operate in the Bay of Fundy and which later served in Newfoundland and inspired the creation of a theater company. It was the 33rd and last ferry to provide service across Minas Passage, service which had been provided since the Acadian era. [1]

Contents

Construction

Kipawo was launched on December 5, 1924, by the St. John Drydock & Shipbuilding Co., the first ship ever built by that yard. [2] Kipawo was ordered for the Dominion Atlantic Railway and commissioned into service for the railway on April 1, 1926. The vessel's name is a portmanteau of the first 2 letters from three different ports on the Minas Basin: Kingsport, Parrsboro and Wolfville.[ citation needed ]

Bay of Fundy service

Kipawo provided passenger and freight service from the spring to the fall across the Minas Basin. Her sailings were scheduled to connect with Dominion Atlantic passenger trains at Wolfville and Kingsport as tides permitted. The ferry used an innovative sling system to load automobiles.[ citation needed ]

Newfoundland service

During World War II Kipawo was requisitioned by the Royal Canadian Navy and saw service in Conception Bay, Newfoundland as a tender for anti-submarine nets off the iron ore loading piers at Bell Island.

During the post-war years until retirement in 1977, Kipawo saw service as a small passenger and vehicle ferry from Bell Island to Portugal Cove, ending 51 years of service, approximately 45 of those as a ferry and currently the second-longest continuous service as a ferry in Canada (SS Prince Edward Island having operated from 1915 to 1969).

Following retirement from ferry service in Newfoundland, Kipawo saw service as a private tour boat in the waters off Terra Nova National Park for several years. While en route to St. John's one day in the late 1970s, she sought shelter in Bonavista Bay from a storm but ran aground and remained there deteriorating for several years.

Theater use

The vessel was purchased in 1981 by the Kipawo Heritage Society of Wolfville and was returned to Minas Basin in 1982. [1] Not long after returning to the Minas Basin, Kipawo was purchased by the Town of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia for a museum and was deliberately beached in a tidal inlet immediately south of the town while funding arrangements were secured. By 1986 the museum concept was shelved in favour of housing a local theatre, the Ship's Company Theatre, which began to use the Kipawo as their performance centre. In 2004, the theatre company expanded its facilities with an expanded performance hall which architecturally incorporates the Kipawo into the outdoor lobby.[ citation needed ]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Plaskin, Robert (2 Jul 1982). "The Kipawo, the last of the once-proud wooden ferryboats..." UPI Archives. United Press international. Retrieved 29 March 2020. Contrary to the title of this article, the ferry was built of steel.
  2. Shipbuildinghistory.com, "Saint John Shipbuilding, East Saint John NB" Archived 2013-12-04 at the Wayback Machine , Accessed March 10, 2010

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annapolis Valley</span> Economic region in Nova Scotia, Canada

The Annapolis Valley is a valley and region in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. It is located in the western part of the Nova Scotia peninsula, formed by a trough between two parallel mountain ranges along the shore of the Bay of Fundy. Statistics Canada defines the Annapolis Valley as an economic region, composed of Annapolis County, Kings County, and Hants County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfville</span> Town in Nova Scotia, Canada

Wolfville is a Canadian town in the Annapolis Valley, Kings County, Nova Scotia, located about 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of the provincial capital, Halifax. The town is home to Acadia University and Landmark East School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kings County, Nova Scotia</span> County in Nova Scotia, Canada

Kings County is a county in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. With a population of 62,914 in the 2021 Census, Kings County is the third most populous county in the province. It is located in central Nova Scotia on the shore of the Bay of Fundy, with its northeastern part forming the western shore of the Minas Basin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marine Atlantic</span> Independent Canadian federal Crown corporation operating ferries

Marine Atlantic Inc. is an independent Canadian federal Crown corporation which is mandated to operate ferry services between the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Channel-Port aux Basques</span> Town in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Channel-Port aux Basques is a town at the extreme southwestern tip of Newfoundland fronting on the western end of the Cabot Strait. A Marine Atlantic ferry terminal is located in the town which is the primary entry point onto the island of Newfoundland and the western terminus of the Newfoundland and Labrador Route 1 in the province. The town was incorporated in 1945 and its population in the 2021 census was 3,547.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minas Basin</span>

The Minas Basin is an inlet of the Bay of Fundy and a sub-basin of the Fundy Basin located in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is known for its extremely high tides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newfoundland Railway</span> Defunct narrow-gauge railway

The Newfoundland Railway was a narrow-gauge railway that operated on the island of Newfoundland from 1898 to 1988. With a total track length of 906 miles (1,458 km), it was the longest 3 ft 6 in narrow-gauge system in North America.

Terra Transport (TT) was the name for the Newfoundland Transportation Division, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian National Railway (CN), created in 1979 as a means to organize the company's operations on Newfoundland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dominion Atlantic Railway</span>

The Dominion Atlantic Railway was a historic railway which operated in the western part of Nova Scotia in Canada, primarily through an agricultural district known as the Annapolis Valley.

New Minas is a Canadian village located in the eastern part of Kings County in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. As of 2011, the population was 5,135.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia</span> Community in Nova Scotia, Canada

Grand-Pré is a Canadian rural community in Kings County, Nova Scotia. Its French name translates to "Great/Large Meadow" and the community lies at the eastern edge of the Annapolis Valley several kilometres east of the town of Wolfville on a peninsula jutting into the Minas Basin surrounded by extensive dyked farm fields, framed by the Gaspereau and Cornwallis Rivers. The community was made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline and is today home to the Grand-Pré National Historic Site. On June 30, 2012, the Landscape of Grand-Pré was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parrsboro</span> Community in Nova Scotia, Canada

Parrsboro is a community located in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ship's Company Theatre</span>

The Ship's Company Theatre is a professional theatre company based in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.

Saint John Shipbuilding was a Canadian shipbuilding company located in Saint John, New Brunswick. The shipyard was active from 1923 to 2003.

Kingsport is a small seaside village located in Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the shores of the Minas Basin. It was famous at one time for building some of the largest wooden ships ever built in Canada.

Kings County was a four-masted barque built in 1890 at Kingsport, Nova Scotia on the Minas Basin. She was named to commemorate Kings County, Nova Scotia and represented the peak of the county's shipbuilding era. Kings County was one of the largest wooden sailing vessels ever built in Canada and one of only two Canadian four-masted barques. At first registered as a four-masted full-rigged ship, she was quickly changed to a barque after her June 2 launch. More than three thousand people from Kings and Hants counties attended the launch. She survived a collision with an iceberg on an 1893 voyage to Swansea, Wales. Like many of the large wooden merchant ships built in Atlantic Canada, she spent most of her career far from home on trading voyages around the world. In 1909, she returned to the Minas Basin for a refit at Hantsport and loaded a large cargo of lumber. In 1911 she became the largest wooden ship to enter Havana Harbour when she delivered a cargo of lumber and was briefly stranded. She was lost a few months later on a voyage to Montevideo, Uruguay when she ran aground in the River Plate. Too damaged to repair, she was scrapped in Montevideo where her massive timbers were visible for many years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windsor and Annapolis Railway</span>

The Windsor and Annapolis Railway (W&AR) was a historic Canadian railway that operated in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.

The Flying Bluenose was a Canadian luxury passenger train operated by the Dominion Atlantic Railway between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia from 1891 to 1936. It was a boat train scheduled to connect with passenger steamships to Boston and ran only during the summer months.

<i>Canada</i> (1891)

Canada was a full-rigged ship built in 1891 at Kingsport, Nova Scotia on the Minas Basin and was the largest sailing ship operated in Canada when launched in 1891. Canada was built and owned by Charles Rufus Burgess of nearby Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Despite the decline in wooden shipbuilding, Burgess saw that there was still potential for very large wooden sailing ships to make profits in the twilight days of the wooden sailing ship era. He had built the barque Kings County, the previous year, the largest four-masted barque ever built in Canada. Burgess planned to make Canada to be the largest sailing ship ever built in Canada, but damage, during harvesting, to a timber intended for the keel caused her length to be trimmed by ten feet making Canada slightly smaller than the ship William D. Lawrence built in 1874. However, as the William D. Lawrence had been sold to Norwegian owners and renamed in 1883, the ship Canada still claimed the honour of being the largest sailing ship under the Canadian flag at the time of her launch. Between 75 and 150 men were employed in building the ship. Canada was designed by master builder Ebenezer Cox who was in charge of the Burgess Shipyard in Kingsport where he had built ships since the 1860s and was regarded at the time to have built more ships than any man in Canada. The construction cost $111,000. Her interior included a finely outfitted captain's cabin, finished in walnut, ash and rosewood with a full dining room, office and bathroom. Her launch at noon on July 6, 1891 attracted 5,000 people from all across Western Nova Scotia, brought by multiple special trains run by the Cornwallis Valley Railway. It was regarded as the biggest event in the history of the village. A tug took the completed hull of Canada from the launch at Kingsport to Saint John, New Brunswick where the masting, rigging and outfitting was completed at the Customs House Wharf. Her immense size attracted hundreds to the Saint John waterfront to see Canada depart on September 1, 1891 for her maiden voyage, carrying with a cargo of lumber worth $144,109 bound for Liverpool, England. Classed A1 by Lloyd's Register for 14 years, Canada made several fast passages between South America and Australia. However by 1900, the ship was facing stif competition for cargoes from the growing numbers of general cargo steamships. Canada was converted to a gypsum barge in 1910, carrying gypsum from Windsor, Nova Scotia to Staten Island, New York for the Gypsum Transportation Company of New York. She was towed a final time from New York to Portland, Maine in 1926 where she was broken up.

MV <i>Abegweit</i> (1982) Former Marine Atlantic ferry

MV Abegweit were icebreaking railway, vehicle, and passenger ferries which operated across the Abegweit Passage of Northumberland Strait, connecting Borden-Carleton, Prince Edward Island to Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick. There were two vessels named Abegweit that serviced this route between 1947 and 1997.

References

45°24′02.5″N64°19′42.5″W / 45.400694°N 64.328472°W / 45.400694; -64.328472