After World War I, Wilbert and Guy McInnis returned home from combat duty

serving with the 105th Infantry Battalion in France during which time Guy was severely wounded. The McInnis brothers bought a boat called the “Angeline”

from Captain John Perry, who had built the schooner at a slip just above Skinner’s Pond.

Wilbert sailed on the “Angeline” until 1922 when he went to western Canada where he remained for eight years. In the meanwhile, a third brother, Raymond, who had been working on the schooner, left in 1922 to be married and to work in New Brunswick. Guy McInnis continued to sail the “Angeline” until 1930, despite poor health resulting from his war wounds. In 1930, Captain Wilbert McInnis returned from the west and took over the command of the schooner until he was married in 1932, at which time the “Angeline” was sold.

The “Angeline” was a trim, forty-five foot craft of twenty tons with sleek lines, two masts, and five sails. Its builder, Captain John Perry, had a well-deserved reputation as a master ship builder.

The typical rigging for a schooner such as the “Angeline” consisted of two masts which were fore and aft rigged, the main mast being abaft of and taller than the fore mast, a main sail, fore sail, stay sail, standing jib, and a flying jib. The “Angeline” boasted a finely-turned wooden railing which later was taken off and sold in New Brunswick.

An average trip in the coastal trade between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick involved the “Angeline” sailing from Miminegash Harbor to Black Bridge on the Mill River to take on a load of 3,000 bushels of oats in the hold, and then docking in Alberton Harbor to receive a deck load of bales of hay.

Leaving Alberton I-Iarbor, the destination of this twenty ton schooner was one or two of the ports of the Miramichi, New Brunswick, such as Chatham, Newcastle, Neguac, Burnt Church, or perhaps farther up the coast at Tabusintac. Since those were the days of the great lumber camps in the Miramichi area, it was only natural for the “Angeline” to be loaded with as much as 45,000 feet of lumber for the return passage to Miminegash, Alberton, and Black Bridge. All this was taking place near the end of the thriving coastal trade of the Maritimes during the exciting times of the ships with sails, both great and small. Unknown to the brave, hard-working, mer- chant sailors of that period, changes in methods of trading were about to take place that would make the trading schooners with their sails unprofitable for their owners with the advent of the wide gauge railroad.

The “Angeline” was only one of many of the schooner class that were being built and sent down slips in various coves and inlets all around Prince Edward Island and in particular, locally, from Tignish to West Point, at such places as Skinner’s Pond, Big Miminegash, Little Miminegash (Roseville), Campbellton, West Cape, and West Point. The ship building tradition has been present in this area for over one hundred twenty-five years due to the genius of such men as Thomas Rix who in 1866 at West Point was building a juniper brig of about two hundred and fifty tons to class seven years for James Duncan and Company, and George Farley who was,

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