Low water levels on Beothuk Lake are revealing long-lost artifacts from the region’s past.
Among them is the wreck of a vessel used by the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company – also known as the A.N.D. Company – which was involved in the region’s pulp and paper industry in the first half of the last century.
Lew Osmond of Come By Chance was visiting the Mary March Wilderness Park on the shores of Beothuk Lake when he decided to send his drone up to have a look at the lakebed exposed by the receding water.
The wreck of the Fleetway at Beothuk Lake (photo by Lew Osmond)
That’s how he captured images of a wreck that he’s since learned was the Fleetway, part of the inland flotilla owned by the A.N.D. Company.
He’s learned that the Fleetway, which was a tug used to move logs around on the lake, sank in 1928. “She was at her moorings in the wintertime,” says Osmond of what he’s since learned “and I guess when she settled, it settled on a rock or a stump, and at any rate, it punctured the hull and she sank in place but they didn’t take her up.”
Osmond says he’s been overwhelmed by the responses he’s received from people with stories of the Fleetway since posting his pictures to a number of Facebook pages.
He says one woman told him that her father was the captain of the Fleetway, and he had made a swing for her sister who was born in 1930 from the door of the vessel. “I didn’t expect this kind of feedback,” says Osmond, but he thinks it’s cool to be learning so many interesting tidbits about the boat.
