Captain W. L. Waring, the Inspector of Steamboats in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, claims that the invention and application of the compound steam-engine, which has done so much towards the increase of power and lessening the amount of fuel for its production, belongs rightfully to Canada. Though experiments had been made in using steam twice for the same engine, it was only in 1856 that John Elder, of the Fairfield Ship-building Company on the Clyde, reduced it to a practical success in Britain, and it was not until 1870 that it came into general use. Captain Waring states that the steamer _Reindeer_, 129 feet 9 inches long, 13 feet 8 inches wide and 8 feet deep, was built by Thomas Prichard at Fredericton, N.B., and launched April 20th, 1845, and that she was fitted with compound engines, the diameter of the high-pressure cylinder being 17 inches, of the low-pressure cylinder 32 inches, and the length of stroke 4 feet 9 inches. “This,” says Captain Waring, “was the pioneer steamboat with engines using steam the second time. For the first four or five years she was not a success. While the principle was good, the machinery was defective, and between the incredulity of the people and the defects in the machinery she was near being laid up as a failure. After a thorough overhaul, it was demonstrated on her trial trip—the writer being on board—that she was a success, in proof of which the owners of the steamers on the St. John River bought her at an advance of four times what they offered for her in the fall.” It is added that the _Reindeer’s_ machinery was placed in a new boat called the _Antelope_, which proved a great success, being very fast. It was next placed in the _Admiral_, where it now is, the original compound engine of 1845.
_Honour to whom Honour!_ Mr. Barber states that the first steam fog-whistle in the world was started on Partridge Island, at the entrance of St. John harbour, in 1860, under the superintendency of Mr. T. T. Vernon Smith. “The whistle was made by Mr. James Fleming, of St. John, in 1859.”
The smallest of the provinces of the Dominion and the last to enter Confederation, in 1873, has long been noted for its marine enterprise, its ship-building, and its fisheries. As many as a hundred sea-going vessels have been built there in a single year; but iron and steel in these days have so largely superseded wood, this branch of industry has greatly decreased in Prince Edward Island, which modestly claims not much more than 2 per cent. of the registered steam tonnage of the Dominion of Canada.