The Frances Smith: Palace Steamer of the Upper Great Lakes, 1867–1896

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

Scott Cameron has written a thoroughly satisfying life story of the
Frances Smith. He begins with a short treatise on Upper Great Lakes
steamboating in the mid-19th century, and follows with chapters on
Captain William Henry Smith, his nautical and marital connections in
what was soon to become southwestern Ontario, his recognition of a niche
opportunity to operate a substantial passenger and freight vessel
between Owen Sound and the railway terminus of Collingwood, and the
construction in 1867 of the Smith, named after his wife, Frances. We
then follow the ship and its owners’ fortunes as they exploit
opportunities on Georgian Bay; take part in transporting troops and
matériel for the Red River Expedition; follow up possibilities beyond
the Bay into Lake Superior; forge relationships with the railways, the
steamship companies, and the Canadian Post Office; struggle to maintain
the vessel’s structural integrity and market viability through
economic changes and challenges; and, finally, succumb to sale, name
change (to the Baltic, in 1888), final layup (in 1893), and destruction
by a fire of mysterious origin in 1896.

Throughout, the author skilfully manages to combine a kinetic narrative
with a series of arresting topical analyses. Along the way, he subtly
persuades his readers that in addition to the ship itself, its builders,
owners, hands, passengers, and that amorphous group that we today call
“stakeholders” (the community of Owen Sound, for example) are an
inextricable part of the biography. Readers will be shocked by the
number of times that Captain Smith put his ship hard aground, sometimes
at speed in rock-infested waters and conditions of poor visibility. The
man combined a number of strong traits—affability, bellicosity,
graciousness, rudeness, generosity, and arrogance verging into hubris.
Individual behaviour and social norms remind us of frontier America as
described by Mark Twain in Roughing It. Cameron’s book is far more
than the story of a boat. It is an intimate introduction to life as our
great-grandparents lived it on Ontario’s northwestern frontier.