2-888-020 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The "Earl Cathcart" Steamer aground among the Islands of the River St. Lawrence, [Canada], 1850. Steamship '...with troops on board from Montreal to Port Stanley, en route to London, Canada West...It was one of the most beautiful passages of American scenery - the Lake of the Thousand Islands...There was considerable consternation...exhibited on discovering that we had lost our course, and that we were either aground, or on shore, or on a reef of rocks - the mist was so thick, it was impossible to say which...Fortunately, a small flat-bottomed sloop, with a slip-keel, approached, in answer to the flag lowered to half-mast. A quantity of iron ballast, and some of the baggage, was now removed; and, after protracted haulings on cables, and tuggings of ropes, and energetic workings of paddles, to our great joy, she was once mere afloat.' From "Illustrated London News", 1850.