My uncle Angus had the brigantine Nora. He sailed it to Auckland, New Zealand. She’d be built by, owned by, Holman ’s in Summerside. Only was 99 days going out. And he traded out there for four years with her. I wouldn’t know the size. She must’ve been a pretty fair—sized ship to go out there. He was 101 days coming back.

So, after he come home from that work, then he was on another ship, the one he was lost on. Angus, Captain Angus, was lost in Newfoundland, him and his brother Sandy, in 1890. In the Gale of Newfoundland, 1890. Angus was 33 and Sandy was 22. All hands were lost. Murdoch Gillis ’s uncle was with them. He was lost at that time.

The Big Ice

There was a lot of factories going then. You take all down through Pinette, Flat River there. You ’d hear them coming down on the ice here early in the morning... . Coming down all from Pinette, running across what we call the Big Ice.

Well, we always called it the Big Ice. I suppose it was more out in the Straits. It’s along the strip, you know what I mean. The lifeline. Everybody would say, “Well, we’re crossing the Big Ice.”

If there was good ice you could go across [to Charlottetown]...in an hour and a half. But sometimes it would take, you know, longer. Get heavy travelling, you couldn’t trot very much... . But, oh, you’d walk to keep yourself [warm], or jog after the sleigh. You wouldn’t sit in the sleigh to freeze. You’d get out and run.

I had a lot of experiences, made a lot of trips on [the Big Ice]. We used to go out to what we called Cameron’s Island. We’d take the bushes1 into Corish’s Shore and we’d cross the land, go out at Southport Wharf, cross to Prince Street Wharf. We used to mostly keep the horses then on King Street, down at Bobby Wood’s. He used to keep the livery stable. All the people from this part of the country always kept their horses there. . .. You ’d have your oats and stuff for your horse there, you know, and they’d feed your horse, and it’d be a quarter, see?

We’d get our meals at the boarding house across the street and you’d get a good meal for a quarter or 50 cents. Everything’d be piled on the table; meat and potatoes, whatever you wanted. [It] used to be kept by F inlayson people first, in my day, and then it was, later on, it was taken over by a Mrs.

1. Each winter, area residents cut a number of small spruce bushes and stuck them into the ice to mark a safe route from shore to shore.

John Alex Murchison 149