Port Saint John

On June 24, 1604 (Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day ), French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed up the Bay of Fundy into the mouth of what was shortly thereafter named the St. John River. Champlain's visit is the earliest written record of the port's history.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, a fur trading company from Boston (Simonds, Hazen and White) was established in the harbour. It was not, however, until the American Revolution ended that the region now known as the City of Saint John became heavily populated and settled. Displaced American colonists who chose to remain loyal to the British crown (Loyalists) were offered land to settle in this region and began arriving in May of 1783. Just two short years later, in May of 1785, the City of Saint John was established by Royal Charter.
The Loyalists soon recognized the value of New Brunswick's forests and developed a shipbuilding and lumber trade based at the Port of Saint John. Through the early and middle 1800s, New Brunswick lumber was highly prized throughout Britain and the shipbuilding, shipping and lumber trade flourished at the port. In the middle of the nineteenth century.
Saint John was the largest shipbuilding city in Canada and the four largest in the British Empire. Simultaneous to the economic growth of the early and mid-nineteenth century was an immigration boom, especially from the British Isles.
The port was extremely active during this period, in the 1850s a wharf was built at Reed's Point (now part of Lower Cove Terminal) to serve passenger steamships and a steam ferry provided service between the west and east sides of the harbour.
By the end of the nineteenth century steel-hulled ships were replacing wooden vessels and the wooden shipbuilding boom had ended. Population expansion had also begun west of New Brunswick as Canada became home to European immigrants seeking a new life. Because of the westward expansion, railways were becoming extremely important transportation vehi

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