From 1775 to 1899, a maritime historian investigates more than a century of adventure and tragedy on the waters off Prince Edward Island.
The wooden sailing ship was a vital transportation link along Canada’s Atlantic coast in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Self-sacrifice, bravery, skill, wreckage, and rescue are all part of the history of these ships and the villages that knew them. Local maritime historian Robert C. Parsons documents all of this in Shipwrecks and Sailors of Prince Edward Island with extensive research and vivid prose.
The legacy of sailing tales from Prince Edward Island is extensive. There’s the wreck of the immigrant-laden Elizabeth at Cascumpec, where the castaways were rescued by a Native, and the well-known story of Jessy, who was thrown onto the dangerous shores of St. Paul Island. Then there’s the strange story of Rival being caught in the “Yankee Gale” and the SS Quebec sinking in East Point’s death-dealing tides.
PEI ships were involved in mystery, mayhem, and wrecks in virtually every part of the North Atlantic: gripped in the sandbars of Sable Island, plundered on Newfoundland’s rugged coasts, drifting with no crew off Ireland, wrecked on Nova Scotia’s shores, stranded on the Magdalenes, and “Lost with Crew” in the vast North Atlantic.
About Author Robert Parsons
Robert C. Parsons has been described as one of the most popular and prolific writers on the subject of ships and ship disasters in Atlantic Canada. He has written more than thirty books. His work has also appeared in Downhome, the Telegram, the Newfoundland Quarterly, and Newfoundland Lifestyles, among other publications.
Robert, who has retired from teaching, spends much of his time researching, writing, and promoting the sea-going history of Canada’s eastern provinces, as well as the ships and people who sailed them.
