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Steaming to Metis – The Gulf Ports Steamship Company Service to Metis

Sepia photograph of a two-funnel paddle steamer moored at a wharf. The medium size steamer has two funnels. On the rear deck is stored the lifeboats; some passengers are present on the front deck.

Photograph

Side wheel paddle steamer at Plant Line Wharf, Charlottetown, P.E.I, 1893

H. B. Sterling

Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island

 

Steamships brought passengers to Metis intermittently in the 1860s and 1870s in what was promoted as saltwater cruises, des voyages aux eaux salées.

The arrival of regular steamship service in 1878 was the Metis equivalent of a gold rush. The Quebec Morning Chronicle Herald described the launch by the Quebec Gulf Ports Steamship Company:

The tourist who…leaves Quebec on a Tuesday at 2 p.m. will be landed at Metis the following day at 9 a.m. by disembarking per a substantial sail boat (steered by Mr. Ferguson, the agent of the Company) which puts out from Ferguson’s point to meet the steamer. On stepping on to the rocky shore vehicles in abundance are found ready to take the traveller anywhere or everywhere.

J.C. Grant built a hotel at the point, eager to turn a buck on the tourists arriving at his door. But the absence of a wharf sank the initiative. When James Morgan Jr. was left stranded at the point with his family in 1883, he was one of several disgruntled Montrealers who initiated court proceedings against the steamship company. The captain had opted not to put in near the shoals of Lighthouse Point on the return voyage to Montreal for fear of endangering the lives of the passengers already on board. The company made an out of court settlement. The service was suspended and never resumed. Thereafter steamships passed by Metis at full speed without leaving or collecting passengers.