The Francis Smith: Palace Steamer of the Upper Great Lakes, 1867-1896 (review)

To have lived a life that encompassed the major growth, business, and political developments of a region is a story to be told. To do it successfully by outliving the odds of survival is an accomplishment worthy of record.

The Francis Smith was extremely well built by Simpson in Owen Sound. As was the case of many steam-powered vessels, she carried in her belly the source of her eventual destruction in 1896, a roaring fire surrounded by a wood hull. She sailed in some of the most dangerous and spectacular waters in Canada. There were few navigation aids. Every ship-handling decision was based on visual observation and an acute sense of hearing. The chief enemy of ships is seldom towering seas. It is usually an unscheduled contact with the land. Georgian Bay with its 30,000 Islands on the east side and the North Channel thoroughly challenged the early nineteenth-century hydrographer Henry Wolsey Bayfield. Visiting ports on Lake Superior was always a calculated risk. To add to the drama, docks were usually tucked in behind rocky islands, behind shoals, or at river mouths (such is the experience of this reviewer).

Luck plays an important part in the life of any ship. The first few years of her service were difficult and the 'word-of-mouth' opinion about her operation was made worse by a grounding on an exposed shoal near Key Harbor. The ship's good construction kept her intact over the winter until the following April when she was released by sensible salvage technique and good seamanship. As in any life, it takes years to establish a reputation. More important than luck are the managers ashore and the captains and mates chosen to crew the ship. The environment was changing rapidly with the onset of new rail lines and competition from the United States. The level of business intelligence needed to survive was high – the owners and in particular the captains, really businessmen afloat, were constantly picking up and sharing information. Entrepreneurship was the order of the day, not the usual conservatism attributed to the shipping industry. Scott Cameron excels in describing these relationships at the personal level and writ larger, at the political level. Cameron could easily be a disciple of Gordon Boyce, who treats this subject in depth in Information, Mediation and Institutional Development: The Rise of Large-Scale Enterprise in British Shipping, 1870–1919.

The scholarly apparatus that accompanies this book does not in the least interfere with just having a good read. The appendices runs from A to G with complementary background information, while the notes for each chapter will be found useful in promoting further investigations by students and historians. The appendices include a list of ships identified in the text, a kind of dramatis personae. The resources – articles, books, museums, and archives – are listed, and there is a good index.

This book is a first-class case study of transportation and industrial development that has modern parallels within the Canadian shipping industry. There is rapid industrial development, significant changes in communications and control mechanisms, competitive forces that always threaten to overwhelm, a rapidly changing market, and the ever-present danger of simply going bump in the night. Frances Smith can be read for pure enjoyment, but it can also serve as a useful text for anyone teaching social history (see the chapter 'Aboard a Palace Steamer'), regional development, and transportation studies. Most of all, Cameron, is sensitive to the character of the heroes and rogues who make the decisions and populate the story. To paraphrase the first sentence of Appendix C originally written in 1867, 'We your fellow townsmen' (readers) 'beg to say that we participate in the pleasure which you must this day enjoy, in the successful completion of a project, which for some time has been the object of your ambition.'