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Issue 9 - A rollercoaster ride of a life

History & Heritage

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Scotland Magazine Issue 9

Scotland Magazine Issue 9
July 2003

 

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A rollercoaster ride of a life

HORATIO HAMILTON ROSS WASN'T YOUR NORMAL SORT OF HERO, BUT HE ESTABLISHED A MASSIVELY SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS, LEFT A TRAIL OF MARITIME DISASTER, AND WAS LOVED BY HIS FRIENDS. ANTHONY DALTON REPORTS

A rollercoaster ride of a life (Issue 9)
He arrived in Medicine Hat, Alberta, quietly enough aboard his prairie launch, a small vessel that had carried Horatio Ross from Calgary on the Bow River – a distance of some 200 miles. He had planned to continue across the vast prairies on the South Saskatchewan River to Winnipeg, but he liked the look of dusty Medicine Hat. Ross’s planned one-night stop turned into a long party and the beginnings of an impressive business. It also began an era of nautical mayhem for the young Scot.

Horatio Hamilton Ross was born a gentleman in 1869. His parents, Sir Charles and Lady Ross, of Rossie Castle, had no inkling that the chubby infant would make such a spectacular mark in a distant land.

Ross ran away to sea as a boy and experienced the terrible storms of the Southern Ocean rounding Cape Horn on a square-rigger. In booming San Francisco, he witnessed the results of the frenzy of the California goldrush: images which stayed with him.

The restless young man, however, could not yet be held by any one town. He trekked north into the Canadian Rockies with a wagon. The wide-open spaces apparently agreed with Ross – by the time he was 25 he’d been a cowboy, looking after cattle on huge ranges, and he’d shown his horsemanship playing polo in Calgary.

He had adopted Canada as his new home. Medicine Hat, a way-station for the Klondike gold rush of 1898, brought out the entrepreneur in him. As gold-seekers arrived in town, purchased supplies, and continued north, Ross invested $30,000 in a hotel in the centre of Medicine Hat.

His grand opening party lasted a full two weeks, and afterwards the hotel was usually filled with paying guests.

With a successful lodging to maintain his lifestyle, a restless Ross turned his thoughts back to the river. In 1903 he launched a stern wheel paddle-steamer, the Assiniboia. At 70 feet overall, her role was to be that of a freight carrier on the South Saskatchewan River.

With little cargo available, however, she became a party boat – taking Captain Ross and friends on leisurely river cruises.

Two years later, a party set off to follow the river and lakes to Winnipeg – a voyage of well over 1,000 miles.

The expedition wandered as far as Cedar Lake, where shallow waters trapped the vessel on sandbars as winter approached.

Leaving a couple of Cree Indians to guard his ship, Ross took his passengers to the closest railway station by dogsled.

He then took off to spend winter in Egypt. While he was gone, drifting ice wrecked his ship and much of it was swept away. When Ross returned, he found the two Cree still guarding what was left of the Assiniboia.

Undaunted, Ross went back to Medicine Hat and began work on a new ship.

Supervised by a Scottish boat-builder, a sixman crew created a 130-foot stern-wheel paddle steamer over the winter of 1906 /07.

Christened the City of Medicine Hat, the sternwheeler was launched amid great fanfare. Her role was to be that of freighter, taking drilling equipment and supplies 30 miles down river to Bow Island.

On weekends she became more of a party boat, taking city-dwellers on river excursions, captained by Ross himself.

Those weekend trips in the summer of 1907, with 100 passengers aboard, enlivened by an orchestra, alcohol and fine cigars, were Ross’s favourite outings.

In June 1908, Ross and crew set out with a cargo of flour and other freight bound for Winnipeg. But a Saturday night in Saskatoon ended what should have been a successful commercial voyage. Suffering following a night of excess in river-front bars and brothels, Ross and crew found themselves faced with a rapidly rising river and a vicious current. Saskatoon boasted a fine array of bridges, most of which, in view of the flooding, were too low for the huge sternwheeler to slide under.

The ship slammed into the 19th Street bridge and began a terminal roll while the crew fought to climb to her driest parts. The crippled wreck’s momentum caused her to climb the bridge until she came to rest at an acute angle.

A newspaper described it as “the greatest marine disaster in the history of Saskatoon.”

Unperturbed by the loss of his flagship, Ross purchased a tug on Ontario’s Georgian Bay. Two years later, he bought another from the same shipyard. When full cargo loads for both vessels began to interfere with Ross’s river parties, he is said to have complained:

“O’ hell, I’ll just have to go and buy another boat.”

He did just that, and named her O’Hell.

Within a couple of years, Ross had bought two more boats. They carried freight and towed other ships and barges, towed log booms – anything to make money for the company. And there were still parties.

The advent of the Great War saw Ross working for the British Government in China, where he had been sent to determine the possibility of sending a fleet of sternwheelers up the Yangtze River.

But he missed Canada and hurried back well before war ended. By 1917, Ross Navigation could claim to be the major transportation force on the Lower Saskatchewan River.

Ross had a new ship too, the 90-foot sternwheeler Nipawan – a double-decker. She was a luxury steamboat, one expert said.

Competition was closing in, however. New syndicates vied for space on the rivers. New entrepreneurs tried to emulate the flamboyant Scot’s style.

None was truly as successful. None carried his indomitable enthusiasm, his sense of humour, or occasion.

One winter’s evening, the 56-year-old Horatio Hamilton Ross, who said he was afraid of guns, sat cleaning a rifle in his office.

Somehow the rifle discharged, and he shot himself in the stomach. He died soon after.

His friends and his acquaintances had this inscribed in Christ Church at The Pas:

To the memory of Captain Horatio Hamilton Ross of Rossie Castle, Scotland. Died in The Pas February 11th, 1925. A tribute from his friends.