See GC3HWQ3: Historic Saint John Series - County Courthouse for the first in the series.
Saint John is a city steeped in history. Commonly referred to as ‘the Loyalist City’ as well as ‘Canada’s Most Irish City,’ Saint John is Canada's oldest incorporated city (1785). Saint John is home to this country's oldest museum and farmers market. Saint John also established Canada's first police force. This city has been welcoming people from Eastern Europe, England and Ireland for centuries, with each group of immigrants leaving their unique imprint on Saint John culture, architecture and language.
For this geocache, the container is a cammoed peanut butter jar. Cache should be accessible year-round, however it isn't wheelchair friendly.
PARKING: You'll find a parking lot adjacent to the cache site, but please avoid using it, as it's a private, reserved parking area. Instead, you may want to use a nearby retailer's lot!
The original contents of the cache container include:
- Notepad
- Pencil sharpener
- New Brunswick pin
- Canada pin
- Blue mini flip-flop
- Purple mini clothespin
- Red mini clothespin
- Mini dalmation
- And a prize for FTF - a 2.00 Tim Horton's Gift Card. Hmmm...I wonder if YNDS drinks coffee...lol
For this location to make sense, I want to take you back in time - over 150 years back, to a time before the causeway was built, back to a time when this humble marsh was a teeming waterway!
The location of this cache container was once part of the property owned by shipbuilder, James Smith. His house was situated near the current day Telegraph Journal building with his property running the length of current day Crown Street. You may not recognize his name. But his accomplishments are famous. Once you've found the cache, the land on which you're standing produced the fastest clipper ship the world had ever seen. A ship known as 'The Marco Polo'.
Ironically, this infamous ship had a less than stellar introduction to the world...
On the 17th of April, 1851, a ship was launched from the yard of James Smith. She was the largest ship the yard had ever built and they named her the MARCO POLO. Her lines and construction echoed the forward thinking in design and shipbuilding skills of her builders, a justifiable pride which had evidenced itself in New Brunswick-built ships that have sailed the world's oceans from the days of the first settlers through to the present. The MARCO POLO was of a unique design combining the underwater body of a clipper, sharp entrance and clean run, with the midship sections of a cargo carrier. She was one of the first ships built in New Brunswick whose framing consisted of tamarack and pitch pine, with stout planking of tamarack, pitch pine, and oak. From the very beginning, she was determined to display the swiftness that would bring her much fame. At the time of her launch, before the cheering crowds, the great ship flew down the ways and into the water with such purpose that she could not be held in check. Unfortunately, the keel struck the mudflat and the vessel fell on its side, and in the process, injuring several workers. It was floated free on April 22, apparently suffering little damage. However, due to its large size, it again grounded itself in Marsh Creek. She sat there for two weeks before the crew were able to get her afloat and set her free once again. The distortion, however, in no way detracted from her sailing abilities. In fact, many believed it to be the secret of her speed. It has been speculated that during one or maybe both of these incidents, the vessel's keel was affected in such a way that contributed to its later fame as the world's fastest clipper ship.
Certainly, the maiden voyage attested to her good manners and capable performance, for, fully laden with fine New Brunswick timber, and under the command of Captain William Thomas of Saint John, she romped effortlessly across the North Atlantic to Liverpool, England in just fifteen days. Afterwards, she would ply the Atlantic, under the command of Captain Amos Crosby from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, carrying cotton from Mobile Alabama to Liverpool. Captain Crosby was so enamoured of his magnificent command that he commissioned a portrait of her upon which he could forever gaze with pride.
The year 1852 was to mark the lady's coming of age. For gold had been discovered in Australia and enterprising Liverpool ship owners were seeking vessels with an eye to turning a profit from carrying passengers to the land of opportunity. One such owner was James Baines, of the Black Ball Line of Australian. In the MARCO POLO, he saw the potential for her to become not only the Queen of his fleet but the Queen of the Seas, leading his company down the road to a tremendous fortune. With this in mind, she began a transformation to a passenger ship.
Several months later, she emerged from the dock refitted as a luxurious passenger vessel, a lady destined to become Queen, resplendant in her newly acquired finery of maple panelling, crimson velvet upholstery, stained glass doors, and circular glass hatchlights.
On Sunday, the 4th of July 1852, under the command of James Nicol "Bully" Forbes from Aberdeen, Scotland, she began a new chapter; bound for Melbourne with 930 passengers and 60 crew. As he walked the decks of his ship, Captain Forbes could feel the stirring within her as she sped away from the land and he knew that in the high southern latitudes, when squared away before the sweeping gales which blew strong and true from the west day after day, this magnificent ship would fly. And fly she did. For at 11 a.m. on the 18th of September, 1852, just 76 days after leaving Liverpool, the MARCO POLO proudly sailed through Port Phillips Head and into Melbourne. By comparison, previous voyages had taken 100 to 120 days. As Forbes had predicted, while running the southern latitudes, she had covered 1344 miles in four days, her best day's run being 364 miles. She set sail again, homeward bound for Liverpool, on the 11th of October. Her course lay to the south of New Zealand and across the cold heaving expanse of the Southern Ocean to Cape Horn, that bleak and barren outcrop of rock marking the southernmost tip of South America. Then she headed northwards up through the two Atlantics and the Irish Sea to the River Mersey. So it was that on the 26th of December 1852, just 76 days out of Melbourne, and 5 months 21 days after starting out in Liverpool. Stretched between her fore and main masts was a giant banner snapping in the breeze. On it, painted in bold letters, for all of Liverpool to see was the proclamation "Fastest Ship in the World".
The MARCO POLO was the first ship to circumnavigate the world in less than six months (5 months and 24 days). Thousands of people came to see this New Brunswick-built ship as she lay in the Salthouse dock, to stare with wonderment at her towering masts and massive hull. For here was history in the making. Here was the ship that had knocked the thrones from under every queen of the seas. This was the MARCO POLO. Queen of Queens, the ship that had shrunk the world by making it less than six months round. She continued to prove time and time again that her first great voyage had been no fluke, and repeatable navigated the oceans in record time.
Little by little, however, wind and sea began to take their toll. But although her outer skin was starting to show the lines and creases of age, that youthful spirit still lingered in her heart. For with head held high and proud as befits the Queen she was, her last voyage to and from Australia in 1867 finished much like her first. Fifteen years and thousands of passengers may have passed but the trip took 76 days from Melbourne to Liverpool. Whenever she was sighted, sailors would line the rails and raise a salute to this grand old lady of the seas. But with the passing of each year, and with every voyage weakening her already fragile body, the sailors knew that soon they would be raising the last salute.
The last salute came in July of 1883, as she sailed painfully out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence from Montmorency, Quebec, laden with timber for Europe. Water soaked and strained, she was held in shape by chains wrapped around her hull; water sucked in through her seams and out again through her pumps that worked day and night to keep the sea at bay. But she lumbered on gallantly with little complaint, until a summer gale sprang up, creating short vicious seas that pummeled her hull, pushing and twisting it without mercy. Finally, as eventually it always has and always will, the sea won, her pumps could no longer keep up with the thrush of water and soon one of the chains let go. Within her weary bones, the MARCO POLO knew, as did her captain, that the end was near. Perhaps the only chance to save the crew was to drive for shore. To do this required all sail, but the question was, could the ship stand the added strain? There was no choice. As if she knew what was required of her and the consequences if she failed, the MARCO POLO rallied every last ounce of strength she had. With a great billowing cloud of sail towering above her deck, set square and taut before the wind, and with a bone in her teeth, she drove for shore at Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. On she flew without faltering until she could fly no more. When she hit, the crew cut away the masts and rigging to prevent her from drifting out to sea again. But she did not move. So on that 25th day of July 1883, the MARCO POLO, Queen of the Seas, had carried her charges safely to shore for the last time. Not one member of the crew was lost. Within a month she had slipped away, silently beneath the waves.
Did the legend reach it's end at Cavendish that day, or does it live on? Will the MARCO POLO be forgotten? Indeed, not. It was said best by Rev. James Buck, of Liverpool, England, who said in one of his sermons: "Some ships, like men, seem as though they would not and could not be forgotten. The public is never allowed to forget their names or their deeds. Such a ship is the MARCO POLO.