Sail the Gulf of St. Lawrence with Henry Bayfield

Welcome to a new GeoREACH Lab project: Sail the Gulf of St. Lawrence with Captain Henry W. Bayfield, 1831-1853.

With students in the UPEI GeoREACH Lab, we extracted hundreds of named places from 2,500 entries in Captain Henry W. Bayfield’s journals (edited by Ruth McKenzie and published by the Champlain Society in 1984-1986), and we created an animated map of where his surveying vessel the Gulnare most likely was on each day in the summers of 1831-1853. There are a few gaps as Bayfield’s journals were missing in the late 1830s and from 1849-1850, but viewers can see the main thrust of the St Lawrence Survey over two decades. We also include the location of more than a dozen lighthouses (and 1 floating light at The Traverse) that he promoted early in his career.

The result shows both detailed journeys and broader trends in the Gulf’s history. For instance, the location of the Gulnare shows how the Survey’s attention (and Bayfield’s home base) move to the Southern Gulf in the early 1840s. Lighthouses appeared in strategic locations and detailed navigational charts were constructed for over a hundred bays and rivers (see GeoGulf below).

Click here to visit Sail the Gulf with Bayfield

Visit the website and click “Play” to board the Gulnare, join the St Lawrence Survey, and sail the Gulf of St. Lawrence with Capt. Henry Bayfield.

This project is made possible by the Canada Research Chairs Program, the SSHRC Partnership Development project “Ecologies, Knowledge, and Power in the Gulf of St. Lawrence Region” co-designed with the late Dr. Elizabeth Mancke, and many graduate and undergraduate students from UNB’s History Department and UPEI’s GeoREACH Lab. For more on lighthouses and navigational safety initiatives see the work of Zachary Tingley (Z. Tingley and E. Mancke, “Intercolonial Cooperation and the Building of St. Paul Island and Scatarie Island Lighthouses, 1826–1840,” Acadiensis (Autumn 2022).

GeoGulf: The Gulf of St Lawrence Historical Map Viewer

The GeoREACH Lab is also pleased to share GeoGulf: The Gulf of St Lawrence Historical Map Viewer. GeoGulf is a web application for viewing historical maps of The Gulf of St Lawrence. It was created as part of the Ecologies, Knowledge, and Power in the Gulf of St Lawrence Region c.1500-Present, project, at The University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI). In this version, the maps include 149 charts and surveys drawn by Captain Henry W. Bayfield as part of the St. Lawrence Survey (1826-1856). More than ninety of the maps were scanned by and supplied courtesy of the McGill Library Special Collections Division (see the Admiralty collection). All of the remaining maps are copies of the versions available at Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

Click here to access GeoGulf: The Gulf of St Lawrence Historical Map Viewer