The Sinking Of The Mayflower

A tragic story from an Ontario lake

When we think of shipwrecks, what comes to minds are huge disasters on the high seas, or in the Great Lakes. Everyone knows the tales of the Titanic, Lusitiania or the Edmund Fitzgerald, but what about shipwrecks like the Mayflower?

The tale of the Mayflower begins across the country in Yorkton, Saskatchewan where John Brown died in an unfortunate gun accident. The decision was made to deliver his body to family at Combermere, and that would lead to his transportation on the Mayflower in November of 1912.

The ship was built in Combermere and launched into service in June of 1904. Measuring in at 77 feet with a flat wood bottom, it was perfect for navigating the shallow shoals of the area. When it launched, it had a crew of three. Captain John Hudson, who also owned the boat, pilot Aaron Parcher and engineer Tom Delaney.

The ship had already travelled into Barry’s Bay, Ontario and was done for the night on Nov. 12 before William Boehme, the city councilor for Combermere, persuaded Hudson to make a second trip with the body of his brother-in-law, John Brown. The body was coming from the Grand Trunk Railway station in Barry’s Bay, and it was hoped to bury the body before the worst of winter set in. The ship set out at 7 p.m. and the snow began to fly by 9 p.m.

Without warning, the ship began to sink beneath the waves between, what is now Mayflower Island and the shore. The water was about 25 feet deep, and before long the ship was beneath the waves as the winter storm began to rage. The ship went down so fast that there was no time to put on any lifejackets.

A total of nine lives were lost, including all three original crew members, with only three people surviving. The three survivors, Joe Harper, Gordon Peverley and John Imlach, stayed afloat in the water and were able to get to an island thanks to John Brown, or at least thanks to his casket that they were able to hang onto and make their way to Parcher Island, 500 feet away. There was a fourth survivor who held onto the casket as well, Paddy O’Brien, but he died of hypothermia upon reaching the island. The three other men would be rescued the following day. The man who initiated the trip, Boehme, would also lose his life in the disaster.

The boat would quickly be located by searchers and the attached a wire from their boat to the Mayflower that was under the waves. They found that the smoke stack was only 18 inches beneath the water level and they estimated that if the ship could have made it only a kilometre further, it would have been in shallow enough water for everyone to wade out to safety.

This disaster would be the largest loss of life in an inland waterway for many years and it would leave an indelible mark on the area.