A driving force behind the city
Countless people have derived their livelihood from Hamilton’s harbour and shipping industries. Early journals and newspapers devoted considerable attention to shipping developments.
HAMILTON’S large natural harbour, unrivalled on the Great Lakes for its modern facilities, has been the driving force behind the city’s industrial growth from the beginning.
Pioneer visionaries saw it as a vital link to the future. Modern-day builders and the men who administer it feel its biggest contribution is yet to come.
Its history reaches beyond memory, before the Indians who plied the waters of the landlocked bay for generations in their birch bark canoes.
The changes came with the white man. The first is said to be a French explorer on a mission for Champlain in the early 17th century. Jesuit missionaries followed and in September 1669, the first recorded visit was made by La Salle.
Then, for more than a century, the waters lay unrecorded. Finally, at the dawn of settlement by the English, Peter Campbell, a traveller on a visit to the area in 1792, wrote of a small lake which the white residents called Geneva.
He described the head of this Lake Geneva as “a small sheet of water of triangular form, six miles one way and five the other. The snow was about 10 inches deep on the ice. Here, I saw several Indians of the Messessago nation fishing for pickerel, mashanongy, pike, and other kinds of fish.”
Campbell, who was on his way to the Grand River, stopped off to visit Richard Beasley in his log cabin situated somewhere in the vicinity of what is now Dundurn Park.
More settlers arrived within a few years and with them came shipping.
Water route doomed
Lack of a proper channel at the Beach prevented larger vessels from putting in at the bay, although smaller craft made frequent landings along the bay shores.
The end of the War of 1812 brought an era of progress and expansion for the district at the Head of the Lake, as Hamilton harbour was then called. Immigrants poured into the area by way of Hamilton, bringing with them severe epidemics of cholera.
Hamilton quickly took its place as a prospering community, but for many years was overshadowed by Dundas and Ancaster. It was from these thriving mill towns that much of the commerce for Hamilton harbour came.
Dundas, with its Desjardins canal, was responsible for the Beach canal development, which in turn opened Hamilton to lake shipping.
But as a port and later as a railway centre, Hamilton was soon to overshadow the valley town.
The Desjardins canal was begun in 1826 with the purpose of making Dundas a lake port, but its progress was fitful.
Its future, doomed from the beginning, was terminated a few years later. Now, only a narrow of water winding through the weeds marks the route of this early waterway.
A very different future awaited Hamilton harbour’s other canal — the Beach canal. Built in 1831, the canal cut through the shallow outlet from bay to lake and did for Hamilton what the Desjardins canal was expected to do for Dundas.
The traffic was so great through this canal that a new, deeper, and wider channel was built in 1846 to accommodate larger steamer and sailing vessels that were making Hamilton a regular port of call.
The harbour also owes a debt to another great link in the inland waterway, the Welland Canal. It also came into its own in 1846 with the completion of the St. Lawrence River canals.
Several boat-building firms sprang up along the bay shore during the latter half of the century. Some of the builders are still remembered — Tom and Dick Ray, Phalen, Stalley, Dalton, Thompson, Bastien, Jutten, and Askew. The bulk of their work was in pleasure craft, but this industry, as with many others, died with the coming of the automobile.
Yachting became a popular bay sport in the 1850s. The Royal Hamilton Yacht Club was founded in 1860 and, later, the Victoria Yacht Club, at the foot of Wellington Street. Rowing also enjoyed a wide following and regattas drew ardent throngs.
The number of persons who derived their livelihood from shipping was large, and early journals and newspapers, reflecting the interests of their readers, devoted considerable attention to shipping developments.
Birth of commission
One such report in 1846 notes that Capt. James Sutherland was planning to run an iron steamship from Hamilton to Lachine. This same captain, of the steamer Magnet, was a victim of the Desjardins Canal disaster in 1857, along with Edwin Duffield, mate of the steamer, Europa. Both men, who had lived through a thousand perils afloat, died when the train in which they were riding plunged into the waters of the old canal.
Pleasure steamers also made their appearance during the period, such as the Lillie Mason and Maggie Mason, which operated from the foot of Simcoe Street to Bay View, Brown’s Wharf, the Brant House, and other holiday spots on nearby shores. Later came the Corinthian, the Mazeppa, the Modjeska, and the Macassa, brought across from Britain by Capt. Hardy, a well-known nautical figure in Hamilton.
The dawning of the great industrial harbour of today came at the turn of the century. The city fathers, in whom control of the bay waters had been vested by the Crown in the deeds of incorporation of 1846, carried on their duties for the first decade of the new century, but by 1912 the task had become too complex for year-to-year direction. It needed a broader outlook, a continuity of executive management, and in that year, the federal government inaugurated the Hamilton Harbour Commission at the city’s instigation.
A sign of more to come
When the commission assumed the mantle of responsibility, the first harbour docks and the warehouse at the foot of Catharine Street had been constructed, and in 1912 the revetment wall at that point had been begun. This wall made the commission’s first great land reclamation project possible, adding many more acres of shore land at what is now Eastwood Park.
Private shipping needs became acute in 1924 when the commission built a second warehouse on the Wellington Street dock. Three years later, natural growth of the harbour’s commerce demanded another warehouse on the Wellington Street dock.
A new impetus came with the completion of the Welland Ship Canal in 1932. At the same time, the Beach canal had been widened and deepened, opening the harbour to the largest vessels sailing in the lakes and even large ocean ships.
These developments caused the Steel Company of Canada Ltd. and the Hamilton Byproduct Coke Ovens to construct large docks to accommodate the huge iron ore and coal vessels which now had access to the harbour.
By 1935, the increase in harbour tonnage demanded the construction of an addition to the Catharine Street warehouse. At the same time, a large turning basin for freighters was dredged in the Ottawa Street channel.
Fat dividends
Within a year, the commission undertook one of the most ambitious enterprises in the harbour’s history — the construction of a new dock east of Wellington Street. With its revetment wall, the new dock added more than 51 acres of waterfront lands and furnished a new deep channel along the industrial waterfront. This project represented an investment of more than $2 million but it has since yielded fat dividends in the industrial development of the city.
In 1938, the commissioners provided a marine railway and dockyard to look after repairs, refitting, and winter storage of small, privatelyowned vessels. In the same year, it also undertook to provide a proper dock at the foot of James Street and to dredge the adjacent channel.
With the coming of war and new and heavier demands on harbour facilities, the new development east of Wellington Street was completed in 1940. A new terminal dock was built and in 1941, rail sidings, roadways, and services were supplied and the dock from Catharine to John Streets expanded.
Ocean ships from Europe enjoyed a rapid recovery in the immediate postwar years, and, by 1948, had reached such proportions that added warehouse facilities were required to accommodate the cargos brought into Hamilton by British, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and other foreign registry vessels.
About 17 acres of valuable waterfront lands were reclaimed in 1949 at a cost of $1.2 million. In the same year, a service wharf was built at the rear of the marine dockyard building. Other expansions were also undertaken to improve existing facilities.
Tonnages in and out of the harbour have risen dramatically over the past 50 years. In 1922, for example, the port handled 60,000 tons; in 1929, 1,064,689 tons; in 1934, 2,105,151 tons; in 1939, 2,433,380 tons; and by 1950, 4,580,746 tons.
With the advent of the Seaway, use of the port by ocean-going freighters rocketed.
So have tonnages. In 1959, tonnages rose to 6,430,076, and by the end of 1966, they topped 10,650,000.
The coming of the Seaway also sparked a 10year expansion program that has resulted in the construction of almost two miles of Seaway depth berthage, creating five new commissioned-owned wharf structures. A sixth, currently under construction for lease to CSL, will add another 1,500 linear feet.