Canada Steamship Lines

In 1845, Jacques-Félix Sincennes and other Montreal businessmen founded the Richelieu Navigation Company; the company operated river boats on the Saint Lawrence River in general commerce. In 1875, the company merged with Sir Hugh Allan's Canadian Navigation Company to form the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company (R&O). The business grew with the expansion of the canal system on the upper St. Lawrence River (the precursor to the Saint Lawrence Seaway) and a new Welland Canal connecting to the upper Great Lakes.

In 1911, R&O merged with James Playfair's Northern Navigation Company. A special shareholders meeting on June 26 authorized the directors to raise issued stock from $5 million to $10 million. The money raised the new issuance was used to buy Northern Navigation and the Inland Lines. R&O added five more directors, with Playfair as vice president and managing director. The companies continued to operate under their respective names. In 1912, R&O bought the Niagara Navigation Company; Niagara Navigation had previously bought the Hamilton Steamboat Company and the Turbine Steamship Company. R&O began using the tag line "Niagara To The Sea" to advertise passenger service from the Niagara to the St. Lawrence regions.

Northern Navigation's Noronic was launched at Port Arthur, Ontario on June 2, 1913. A large number of R&O directors, including Playfair; the dignitaries travelled from Sarnia aboard Hamonic to attend the event. Playfair's wife was intended to christen the ship. Playfair was notified of his father's death shortly after Hamonic entered Lake Superior; he transferred to an R&O freighter about 80 miles (130 km) from Sault Ste. Marie and returned to Toronto by special train. Noronic was christened by E. Bristol, the wife of another director.

On June 19, 1913, a special shareholders meeting at the R&O office in Montreal convened to ratify the sale of the company to Canada Transportation Lines, a new company that would also include the St. Lawrence River Steamboat Company; Richelieu And Ontario Navigation Company of the United States; Quebec Steamship Company; Canada Interlake Line; Ontario and Quebec Navigation Company; Merchants' Montreal Line; SS Haddington and the Thousand Island Steamboat Company. In early December, it was announced that Canada Transportation Lines would be renamed to Canada Steamship Lines.

Operations

CSL Group Incorporated operates Canadian (Canada Steamship Lines) and international (CSL International) subsidiaries. In 2001, they overtook Asia Pacific Marine Container Lines, also a Canadian shipping company, becoming the world's largest fleet of dry-bulk self-unloading vessels.

CSL fleet

These lake freighters are all in the 700-footer class which are between 729 and 739 feet (222 and 225 m) long:

Self-unloading vessels

Baie Comeau, Baie St. Paul, CSL Assiniboine, CSL Laurentien, CSL Niagara, CSL Tadoussac, Frontenac, Rt. Hon. Paul J. Martin, Thunder Bay, Whitefish Bay, Nukumi

Gearless bulk vessels

CSL St-Laurent, CSL Welland, Spruceglen, Oakglen, Ferbec

Growth and disaster on the Great Lakes

CSL's growth through the industrial booms of both world wars was largely tied to the increasing importance of the steel industry in Ontario, where mills were built, or soon to be built, in Sault Ste. Marie, Hamilton, and Nanticoke. CSL also tapped into the last of the remaining coal traffic from Pennsylvania across the Great Lakes to railways in Canada. Following railway dieselization, subsequent coal traffic would be moved by CSL to large fossil-fuel burning electrical power plants.

In addition to its cargo shipping, the company expanded its overnight passenger shipping traffic as well. Most notably the popular Hamonic, Huronic and Noronic of the old Niagara Navigation Company 1902–1912 lineage (roughly 6,000 GRT and 350 foot a piece). Their last passenger ships, however, came out in 1928. They were the cruise ships St. Lawrence, Quebec and Tadoussac; all built at the Davie Shipbuilding and Repair Co. in Lauzon, P.Q. "St. Lawrence" was built in 1927, and Quebec and Tadoussac were identical sister ships of 1928. They ran together with Richelieu, the former Narraganset (1913) of Long Island Sound, which was purchased by CSL about the same time the other three were built by Davie. The three ships were all 350 feet in length, had a breadth of 70 feet, and were 8,000 tones GRT; Richelieu was slightly smaller. They sailed on the St Lawrence and Saguenay Rivers, departing from Montreal and stopping at Quebec City, Murray Bay and Tadoussac (where the company owned hotels) and up the Saguenay to Bagotville (La Baie). Richelieu was able to go on to Chicoutimi because of her shallower draft. Quebec burned at Tadoussac in 1950 with the loss of seven lives, and the other three ships continued on the route until 1965. After the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, Tadoussac's bow was modified to make her able to make a few trips into Lake Ontario, and even made occasional trips through the updated Welland Canal to Buffalo and Detroit in the early 1960s. With the Yarmouth Castle fire in 1965 near the Bahamas, stricter coast guard safety regulations in the form of the new international SOLAS program put an end to the three ship's long careers. The Richelieu, St. Lawrence, and Tadoussac were all sold to Joseph de Smedt of Belgium. Tadoussac was renamed Passenger No. 2 and Richelieu, Passenger No. 3. Passenger No. 2 and the old St. Lawrence were eventually scrapped after serving as accommodation ships in the early 1970s, while Passenger No. 3 was sold to Danish interests and was renamed St. Lawrence 2 and served as an accommodation ship for Eastern Bloc refugees before being sold to Arab interests in 1975 as workers' barracks in Sharjah, UAE, where she became half-buried in sand by 1981, and scrapped down by 1990. The earlier Hamonic had burned due to a dock side fire in 1945 at Point Edward and was later scrapped. Huronic had already been converted to carry only freight by 1944, was retired and scrapped in 1950.

CSL was found responsible for the disastrous September 1949 fire and destruction of its ship the SS Noronic in Toronto Harbour. The fire swept through the ship killing 118 to 139 passengers (many as they slept), but no members of the crew. Inadequate alarm, passenger evacuation plans, and neglected extinguishing systems are found at fault. The captain was suspended one year for abandoning the ship before ensuring crew and passengers were safe. She was demolished in 1950.

No new passenger ships were built by this line or most other shipping lines due to the declining passenger ferry trade. To date, and despite something of a resurgence in passenger traffic on the Great Lakes in recent years, CSL has no known plans for a cruise ship service on or off of the Great Lakes.

Flag of convenience controversy

Throughout the 1990s, CSL Group Inc. oversaw the reflagging of several former Canadian-registered vessels which were placed under the shipping registries of nations commonly referred to as flags of convenience, where safety and labour laws were relaxed to be more business-friendly. Canadian crews were replaced with cheaper Ukrainian ones.