QUEST FOR LOST STEAMSHIP
Discovery of shipwreck at Britannia Bay could be a crucial piece of Ottawa history
It was the first official royal visit to the Province of Canada and an appropriate ship was needed.
The year was 1860, and Ottawa had recently been selected by Queen Victoria as the permanent capital.
Her Majesty would never visit Canada herself; it was said she despised travelling on water due to seasickness. Instead, she sent her son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, to make the trip.
The 18-year-old prince would visit Newfoundland, the Maritimes and the Province of Canada, later Ontario and Quebec, and open the Victoria Bridge between the Island of Montréal and the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. The future king would also visit Ottawa and lay the cornerstone for the Parliament Buildings.
The Prince then boarded a steamship named Ann Sisson.
Owned by Brewster & Mulholland, from Montreal, the 139-foot side-wheeler steamship had been outfitted for the prince and his entourage, who boarded in Aylmer to tour north on the Ottawa River.
As evening approached, the royal party decided to stay overnight in Quyon. The next day, she docked in Pontiac and the prince boarded a horse railway to take Edward on the remainder of his Ottawa Valley Tour.
That was it, really, for the steamship’s moment in the royal spotlight.
The vessel was returned to its duties as a lumber steamer. Later strengthened, it would become a passenger steamer in 1863, transporting people between Aylmer and Pontiac for the Union Forwarding and Railway Co.
Records show that the ship once good enough for a prince was stripped and abandoned in the Ottawa River in 1871.
That’s where I come into this story. I had become intrigued with this piece of Ottawa history and decided to embark upon a quest of my own making to find it.
After 147 years underwater, would there even be anything left of the old river steamship?
THE HISTORY
Britannia resident Mike Kaulbars wrote extensively about the ship on his blog Britannia: A History. His research deduced that the ship had been abandoned somewhere in the vicinity of Britannia. I contacted Mike and began to collect research materials that would hopefully lead us to the shipwreck.
The steamships of choice for the Ottawa River in the 1850s were side-paddle wheelers that had somewhat flat bottoms and shallower draughts than other steamships of the era and were powered by low-pressure, single-cylinder steam engines fuelled by the plentiful wood supply along the banks of the Ottawa River.
It was one such steamship, the Ann Sisson, that was built in Aylmer and plied the waters of the Ottawa River, taking passengers and lumber back and forth between Aylmer and Pontiac.
According to the book A Foregone Fleet: A Pictorial History Of Steam-Driven Paddleboats on the Ottawa River, by Andrew E. Lamarinde and Gilles L. Seguin, the Ann Sisson was built in 1857. It had a wooden hull braced internally with a series of built-up longitudinal timbers, and the massive iron steam engine weighed 108 metric tonnes. The keel of the ship had to be strengthened to prevent the engine from breaking through the bottom of the hull. Iron fasteners held the wooden planks.
When the Prince Of Wales arrived in Ottawa for his grand tour of North America, Ann Sisson was only three years old. After the departure of Prince Albert and the royal hoopla surrounding his visit, Ann Sisson was further strengthened and continued to work as a lumber vessel, hauling timber back and forth until 1863, when it became a full-time passenger steamer captained by Denis Murphy. Murphy would later form a partnership in the D. Murphy and Company, which mainly transported lumber and coal on the Ottawa River and Rideau Canal. In 1902, Murphy would represent the riding of Ottawa in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a Conservative member, serving until 1904.
Having fulfilled its duties on the Ottawa River, records show that the Ann Sisson was unceremoniously stripped of all its valuable hardware and components, abandoned and burned, left to sink somewhere in the very waters it once travelled.
THE SEARCH
In Carleton Saga, a book by Harry and Olive Walker, it was said that a lighthouse keeper at Britannia named Robert Winthrop navigated in a boat around what he said was the wreck of a “famous boat of the Ottawa Valley fleet, the Ann Sisson.”
The ship was apparently beached and burned near the lighthouse. Mike Kaulbars also uncovered that a wreck was found in Britannia waters during the summer of 1962, but it was misidentified as the steamship Albert, which was almost identical to the Ann Sisson in both construction and size. (An article in the Ottawa Journal in 1898 alludes to the rebuilding of the Albert … that date is 27 years after the Ann Sisson sank at Britannia. Definitely not the Albert!!)
Our search, it seemed, was leading us to Britannia Bay, just west of downtown Ottawa.
ZEROING IN ON A WRECK
Using photographs from 1928 onwards, we can see the city as it once looked from the air. Using these old photos, I was able to find the earliest aerial photo for the Britannia region, which happened to be 1958. The photo showed a curious-looking shape under the waves, one that to my eye resembled a ship.
Using the scale of the map and comparing its size to the approximate 140-foot length of the Ann Sisson, it seemed a perfect match. Overlaying that 1958 position with a 2018 aerial map did not show any evidence that the shipwreck was still there, so I decided an in-person visit was in order.
THE DISCOVERY
I contacted two local archeologists, Ben Mortimer and Nadine Kopp, who are part of the Paterson Group consulting service. Kopp’s specialty is “underwater archeology,” so her knowledge of 19th century ships and marine construction was most welcome.
Our team assembled, we headed out to Britannia Bay. Leaving the shoreline, we headed onto the river. Heading toward the GPS co-ordinates of the target location, something soon caught our eye beneath the waves.
With much of the bottom of the Ottawa River being strewn with old lumber from its days as a conduit for timber rafts, perhaps it was just a collection of old logs. Following the submerged timbers, though, led to other squared timbers, iron fasteners, hull planking and the telltale remains of a ship.
Kopp quickly examined the wooden planks and hull pieces strewn about and assessed that these were indeed the remains of a ship. Further study showed they were from a mid-1800s ship. Lying underwater, out of view hidden for decades, the ship’s charred wood suggested it had been burned and left to sink into the sand. Iron truss work also lay strewn at the bottom, possibly part of the extra support structure needed for the Ann Sisson’s heavier engine.
We documented the materials as best as we could, making sure not to disturb them in hopes that a proper archeological study might be done later. Kopp explained that, without definitive proof, it was impossible to confirm that what we had found was actually the Ann Sisson.
Cross-referencing the construction of the wreck with blueprints would verify it, but those blueprints may be impossible to find. In the meantime, a shipwreck of mid-1800s design and construction sits at the bottom of Britannia Bay, where it was reported the Ann Sisson was laid to rest.
What could be a very important piece of Ottawa history remains underwater, undisturbed, but hopefully now it can be properly studied and identified. Perhaps the City Of Ottawa, the Bytown Museum or even the federal government will step in and help preserve and bring up what’s left of the lost ship. If this truly is the Ann Sisson, her story should be told for all to enjoy, a hidden connection to an important piece of our city’s, and our country’s, history.
If this truly is the Ann Sisson, her story should be told for all to enjoy.