In addition to the lighthouses, a humane establishment for assisting shipwrecked persons would be established on each island. Paul Island and one lighthouse on the eastern point of Scatarie Island. The Imperial Government agreed to cover the cost of constructing the lighthouses, if the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Lower Canada would cover the annual maintenance.Ĭommissioners from the four provinces met at Miramichi in 1836 and decided that Nova Scotia would be responsible for overseeing the construction of two lighthouses on the north and south extremities of St. Paul Island and Scatarie Island, citing examples of how the lack of lighthouses was impacting ships from Great Britain. Nova Scotia appealed to the Imperial Government in 1834 for funds to construct lighthouses to mark St. When the workers left the island in January 1832 and returned to Sydney, they took with them the sole survivor of the crew of twenty-nine of the Great Britain that had wrecked on the island on December 2, 1831. After the house had been erected, workers cut a road across the island and discovered a small lifesaving establishment on the western shore that the government of New Brunswick had built and staffed with two men and their families. Paul Island and the loss of lives in almost every instance of shipwreck finally compelled the government of Nova Scotia in 1831 to place a frame house and provisions at a cove on the southeast side of the island to relieve shipwreck victims. Paul Island to retrive the bodies of those who had perished. Mackay, and a vessel was dispatched to St. The man was released, after relinquishing money found on Mr. Police were notified, and the man explained how he and others had visited Paul Island in the spring, as fishermen often did, to pursue seal and salvage shipwrecks. She pulled the cloak open and found her husband’s intitials that she had sewn into the lining. Mackay spotted someone in Charlottetown wearing what she thought was her husband’s cloak. The loss of the Jessie gained notoriety in the fall of 1825 after the widow of Mr. Twenty-three people had managed to escape drowning in the strait, only to suffer the agonies of exposure and starvation on St. His last entry was made on March 17, eleven weeks after being shipwrecked. Mackay, the owner of the Jessie kept a journal of the sufferings endured on the island, and the gradual loss of life. The survivors built great fires to attract the attention of residents on Cape Breton or passing vessels, but with the strait becoming blocked with heavy pack ice, nobody could come to their rescue. The crew and passengers were able to reach the island, clutching what provisions and posessions they could carry. Paul Island during a snowstorm on January 1, 1825, a week after having left Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island. The three-masted barque Jessie wrecked near the southwest tip of St. Paul Island has earned the nickname “The Graveyard of the Gulf.” The changeable weather and prevalent fog in the strait have contributed to the wrecks of over 300 ships on the island’s rocky cliffs. So many ships have been wrecked on its rocks that St. Paul Island, situated roughly twenty-four kilometres off the northern tip of Nova Scotia, is a dangerous obstacle for mariners passing through Cabot Strait, the passage that runs between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
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