1. Balance of Power, 1850

The Lake Ontario Region: Principal Transportation Features, 1857

By 1850, seven different individuals or firms were interested in the Royal Mail lines. Of these the predominant force was once again John Hamilton. From his financial difficulties in the early 1840s Hamilton had made a strong recovery. Having disposed of the aging Canada, Hamilton's control extended over three vessels, his own Passport (representing the largest investment of an individual in a steamboat in the region), and two leased vessels, Gildersleeve's New Era and the Ottawa, owned by some Montreal interests.(3) None had seen more than three season's action. In addition, Hamilton controlled the winter mail contract between Montreal and Prescott, and was president of the Commercial Bank.(4)

Reinforcing Hamilton's position was the solid support he received from the two largest forwarding companies on the upper St. Lawrence. Both Samuel Crane of Macpherson and Crane and Alfred Hooker of Hooker and Holton were sureties for Hamilton's performance of the river mail contract.(5) Both firms had been engaged in a major rebuilding program, replacing those vessels designed for the Rideau Canal route with the larger capacity steamboats admitted by the St. Lawrence canals.(6) While these newer vessels may still have lacked many of the trimmings of those designed specifically for the passenger trade, their basic design was compatible. It would be a simple matter for the two firms to fill out any line which they, together with Hamilton, might promote.

Of those proprietors who had been operating on the lake only the Magnet's backers had not undergone a major organizational change. Although a dream of an entire line of iron vessels based in Hamilton once haunted these men, this had dissipated rapidly as the Magnet struggled valiantly to take and maintain a place in the Lake Mail line. Even the sustained opposition of Bethune for much of her career had not negated the attraction of a portion of the mail contract he had so unexpectedly recaptured. Captain Sutherland and his backers wanted a secure base for their operations in future and would support any group which might provide it. What they feared most was the possibility of being "cut out" and left in independent opposition.(7)

The partnership of Captain Thomas Dick and Andrew Heron jr., which had consistently backed Bethune throughout most of the previous decade, had recently dissolved. They had united in the building of the City of Toronto, launched in 1841. Later the partners had both taken shares in the Chief Justice Robinson, control of which was secured from the Bank of British North America's agent after he foreclosed on Bethune's shares.(8) In the division of their affairs Dick took the City and Heron the Chief. While the latter was established on the Toronto-Niagara River trade, Dick was fearful of being left out of the mail line because of the age of his vessel.(9)

Finally there was Donald Bethune and Company, whose general partner and manager was the current mail contractor on a route which had been extended from Kingston to Hamilton. The firm, with its 82 partners and upwards of £20,000 in capital, had arranged to buy Bethune's shares in his boats back from his creditors.(10) Having regained possession of his aging stock for the second time Bethune discussed a rapprochement with Sutherland of the Magnet and opened serious negotiations with the American boats for support on the river.(11)

The American firm, the Ontario and St. Lawrence Steam Boat Company, was the single most powerful opposition outside the Royal Mail lines before the opening of the Grand Trunk Railway. Formed in 1848, it was an amalgam of the Oswego based Ontario Steam and Canal Boat Company and the St. Lawrence Steam Boat Company of Ogdensburgh. With a capital of $750,000 it operated eleven boats on several routes, the two principal being the Express line, serving Ogdensburg, Toronto and Lewiston, and the Mail Line between Ogdensburg and Lewiston via the south shore ports.(12) A brother-in-law of one of the Ogdensburg directors, Captain Lucius Moody, operated a connecting line from Ogdensburg to Montreal under British registry.(13) On the whole relations between the American interests and the Canadian proprietors had been quite smooth on the river, but this might not necessarily always be so.

As a factor in the balance of power in the region, the Ontario and St. Lawrence Steam Boat Company was taken seriously but as a alternate form of line organization there is no evidence it was even considered. Joint stock navigation companies were an innovation which Canadians would first test in the ocean trades. The solution to the prospect of renewed opposition on the lake and upper river was both more traditional and more complex.

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Chapter 5 appeared in FreshWater.