The River Palace.

Gordon Turner is the author of Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific’s
Greatest Ship and the editor of SeaFare, a quarterly newsletter on sea
travel.

In 19th-century Canada, lakes and rivers were major highways of commerce. The sailing ships and steamboats that plied the waters of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River were, for the most part, plain and functional. Once in a while, though, an owner ordered a ship with elements of luxury. One such was the 1855-built Kingston, whose elegant appointments led to her being selected to convey the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) from Quebec City to Montreal, Brockville, Kingston, Cobourg, and Toronto on his 1860 visit to Canada. Like most vessels of that period she carried cargo as well as passengers.

Over the years, her voyages took her to many towns on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, and if she appeared to be accident prone, that was also the lot of many vessels of that era. The River Palace describes the groundings, collisions, and fires that occurred from time, some of them requiring expensive repairs.

Eventually Kingston was sold and twice renamed, but her lengthy career in passenger and cargo service did not end until 1911 when she was renamed Cornwall and converted to become a salvage vessel, a role that she filled until 1925. Some years later she was stripped down and deliberately sunk near Kingston, there to lie at an unmarked position until 1989 when divers located her remains, which have since become a popular dive site.

The authors have done a remarkably thorough job of research and they write with an enviable knowledge of 19th-century ships. The appendixes are particularly informative, supplying statistical information on Kingston’s construction, biographies of several of her captains, and stories of her successes and misfortunes as a passenger/cargo ship and her accomplishments as a salvage steamer. Notes on sources have been carefully compiled. The illustrations complement the text effectively. A more rigorous copy editing would have improved the text. The River Palace provides a comprehensive account of a noteworthy steamboat and in a broader sense it gives an interesting picture of water transportation in those bygone days.