A tale from the world's smallest harbour
When W. D. Withrow came to Wolfville in 1920, the smallest harbour in the world was still thriving. Because he had a lawyer’s memory for detail, he could recall many aspects of Wolfville’s past as a port.
Sixty years ago the road across Mud Creek was approximately 30 feet south of its present location. Withrow noted that Wolfville's original settlers crossed the creek closer to where the tourist bureau is located now. “Their ships would lie north-south with their bowsprits over the road, he said.” “A load of hay couldn't get under them.”
But when Withrow arrived in Wolfville much of the shipping activity had moved from the upper reaches of the creek. A cluster of small shops were still located in the vicinity - Tom Kelly's cobbler shop and Andrew Delahunt the blacksmith - but docking facilities were removed to the area behind the Wolfville fruit company or today's waterfront park.
As a history buff, Withrow felt nostalgic about the site of the first port, so in 1940 as president of the local Chamber of Commerce he attempted to secure the land adjacent to the mouth of the creek as parkland. After much title searching and letters to Ottawa, the property was deeded to the town, only to be sold to the Nova Scotia Power Corporation for their offices.
In the late 1930s W. C. B Harris, a wholesale merchant, had a business and a wharf located close to where Waterfront Park now sits and where Rafuse Building Supplies used to be. The federally maintained government wharf was adjacent, but closer to Front Street.
During the 30s a three-masted ship called the Roseway attempted to berth at the Harris wharf with a load of coal.
“She didn't make the dock. There wasn't enough water that tide and she dropped to the harbour bottom. Broke her keel and planking,” he recalled.
Eventually the cargo was hoisted out and the Roseway was warped against the Harris Wharf. Then the legal wrangling began, while the boat floated and sank on each successive tide.
After a time he placed an ad in the Halifax paper for bids on the Roseway. The following morning Withrow received a call from a fellow who called himself, Captain Pegleg MacKenzie. He asked what was wrong with her and I told him the Roseway wouldn't float he didn't seem to think having a broken back, as they called it, was very serious, he said.
It wasn't very long afterwards that lawyer Withrow heard a thumping coming up the stairs to his office and Captain MacKenzie had arrived to take ownership of the Rose way. He was a Jolly tar too, Withrow recalled
After paying for the vessel, the intrepid captain went about on a tractor collecting 250 empty oil drums. He loaded them inside the Hull of the Roseway. Still she wouldn't float, so MacKenzie collected another 250 drums and the boat finally floated. Then the captain hired two strong tugs to tow the Roseway out of Wolfville harbor.
“I think the two tugs were pulling too fast. They opened up her seems more,” said Withrow. However, the tug operators managed to send the boat up on Kingsport beach where the next day they refloated the Roseway and got her to Parrsboro from mending.
There was a sequel to the tale of the Roseway. “One day in the early 1950s I turned on the television,” said Withrow, “and who should I see talking with Gordon Sinclair on Front Page Challenge but old Pegleg MacKenzie. He was telling them how he lost his leg in a storm.”
Apparently the Roseway and her new captain sailed the high seas for years after that eventful sinking in Wolfville's harbour.
Back in the winter of 1935 the newspaper put out by students at Wolfville High School was called The Glooscap. I was gifted a copy because my Dad was a student then. One article by Victor Farris, titled 'Wolfville as a Shipping Port,' includes some more Roseway history:
Wolfville at this time of year is not navigable as a port on account of the ice, but when the harbour is navigable, small steamers are able to dock. A passenger and car ferry runs between Parrsboro, Kingsport and Wolfville. This motor vessel makes one and sometimes two trips a day.
The freight boats run from St. John, N.B. to Wolfville and other ports on the Minas Basin. These freighters carry flour, feed and hardware of all kinds. Small two-masted vessels occasionally bring loads of coal. Little fishing boats call at Wolfville to obtain markets for their catch during the fishing season.
On a sunny Sunday in summer, if one were to go to the wharves, he would see two or three old sailors. These men would be telling some hair-raising tales of the sea.
When I was a boy of ten, three-masted and four-masted vessels used to bring fertilizer from New York and other ports in the USA to discharge at Wolfville. Some would load pulp for foreign ports. I have seen as many as five three-masted vessels in Wolfville at once. But nowadays there are only two wharves at which a vessel could be discharged, while in those days there were three, and one to tie up to, temporarily.
No very large vessels can come in now for the harbour has become very shallow on account of sediment settling in the centre, and the forming of a great mud bank. But one old timer told me if the harbour were properly dredged, the larger ships would come to Wolfville rather than to Port Williams, and I believe this to be true.
The wharves are now in ruins, but when the former owner had them, they were all in good shape.
I remember one time when a large two-master came with a load of molasses. When this molasses was unloaded on the wharf, the bees came in countless numbers and sang all day around the puncheons.
Another time a three-master came in the harbour on a very low tide and being loaded with coal could not make the wharf. The vessel’s master had been advised to ‘lay her off’ in the harbour, but he had it his own way and pulled as close as he could with the windless.
An old sailor went aboard and told the captain that he had docked his vessel directly over a slate rock reef, that when the tide went out she would strain herself and the next tide she would not float. When the tide went out the vessel did just what the captain had been told she would do.
The next tide was in the night and the sailors soon crawled out of the bunks, for the water was pouring in the door. Next day the crew started unloading the cargo, but they could only work between tides, and had to stay at a boarding house at night.
That vessel, whose name was ‘Roseway,’ stayed all the next winter and in the early spring was filled with airtight kegs and towed to Port Greville where she was repaired. The last I heard of her she was being held in New York by the police for rum running.
For more from the Nova Scotia Museum: https://novascotia.ca/museum/wrecks/wrecks/shipwrecks.asp?ID=2578&fbclid=IwAR2m5Sgcn3dUEXoOKnqN1NrclGrfgEB7DFf3o4Ji8ootBBTtn-WD5R8tI2Q
Interesting piece, Wendy - and great pic of the muck carvings! Hard to imagine a ship sailing in there these days. Thanks!
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