The Last Voyage of Nipissing
1914 was a significant year around the world and also in Muskoka. The year was marked by the outbreak of the First World War and the sinking of the ocean liner Empress of Ireland. And it was also the last time the ship we now know as RMS Segwun sailed under her original name, Nipissing.
The iron hull for Nipissing, the last side-paddlewheel steamer of the Muskoka Navigation Company fleet, was originally fabricated in the shipyards of Davidson and Doran on the Clyde estuary near Glasgow, Scotland in 1887. The hull was shipped in sections across the Atlantic and assembled at Gravenhurst. She was meant to replace the unlucky original Nipissing which burned to the waterline while docked at Port Cockburn on Lake Joseph in August 1886. The original ship built in 1871 was not a total loss. Her walking-beam engine and boiler were salvaged from the wreck and installed in the iron hull of the new steamer. The second Nipissing was in service by June of 1887. Usually, she plied the route from Gravenhurst to Rosseau village every day, leaving the Bala and Lake Joseph runs to her sister ships. She was then the flagship of the fleet until the stately Kenozha was launched in 1883.
By the summer of 1914, Nipissing had been in service for 31 seasons, which was roughly the average lifetime for many of the ships. By then the Company had nine steamers in service. Next to Sagamo, Nipissing was the most commodious of the lot, capable of carrying 400 passengers on her broad decks, which encompassed her paddlewheels and paddleboxes.
Sadly, by the early 1900s the ship’s aging low-pressure engine was starting to cause trouble and probably for that reason she was assigned a relatively light schedule plying the eastern side of Lake Muskoka daily from Point Kaye to Gravenhurst via Beaumaris. In late August 1908 a piston broke while she was sailing near St. Elmo and she had to be rescued and taken in tow to Gravenhurst by Cherokee. Four years later she was again put out of service for a few weeks with a broken shaft. Later still, the head of her steam cylinder jerked while she was cruising past Buck Island, south of Beaumaris, leaving her immobilized.
The last straw came one day in August 1914. Nipissing was backing out from Milford Bay and the captain had just signalled ‘forward engines when the walking beam or rocking arm set about the hurricane deck snapped and broke, probably due to metal fatigue. This meant that the motion of the engine-piston engine could no longer be transferred to the paddleshaft, leaving the vessel helpless. Nipissing began to drift towards the rocks. Captain Charles Edward Jackson could only sound the distress signal with the whistle.
Help came from a most unlikely source. A boy named Francis Fowler, whose family lived along the strait behind Beaumaris, came out in a tiny four-horsepower gas boat to investigate and began pushing the big steamer away from the rocks. The passengers, aware that something was wrong nervously crowded to the stern to watch with some amusement. Then young Francis Fowler and his little boat took the steamer in tow, heading towards Beaumaris at a speed of perhaps three miles per hour. Nipissing was still whistling for help, and Islander came along, took the disabled ship in tow, and returned her to Gravenhurst. That proved to be the last voyage for Nipissing. Whether young Master Fowler received any thanks for his assistance is not known.
Nipissing languished at the Gravenhurst dockyards for the next ten years, though sometimes she was used as a dormitory by the yard crews. Not until July 9, 1925, would she return to the lakes, by which time she had metamorphosed into a new two-propeller ship named Segwun.
In 1987, when Nipissing (Segwun) reached the age of 100 years, a gala birthday party was held in her honour at Gravenhurst, climaxed by a dazzling fireworks display. And appropriately, on August 20th of 2014, while conducting her last Millionaire’s Row Cruise of the season, Captain Leo Schreiber steered Segwun into Milford Bay to visit the scene of the Nipissing mishap of 1914.
Richard Tatley, Archives Volunteer
