The Sunbury
The Sunbury was built in Lancaster for D. D. Glasier & Sons and was launched in 1863. Her length was 122 feet, and her beam 24 feet, and she had a capacity of 108 tons. She was a side wheeler with two boilers, two furnaces and originally two smokestacks side-by-side. Later one stack was removed.
She was placed on the Saint John to Fredericton route. Late in the afternoon of Friday, November 13, she sailed from Indiantown with a load of heavy freight and over fifty passengers, as well as a schooner named Ino in tow. When nearing Oak Point, the captain blew the whistle, a signal for a small rowboat to come out from Flewelling's Wharf (later Oak Point wharf) to receive a passenger or a few packages
of freight from Saint John. This was done and just as the small boat was cast off, a terrific explosion occurred, the noise of which was heard by passengers on the Forest Queen at Purdy's Point, some fourteen miles downriver. One of the boilers on the Sunbury had exploded, a portion of which went through the steamer's hull below the waterline. Many of the passengers were thrown into the water and those remaining on board soon found themselves struggling in the water as the steamer sank immediately in about thirty feet of water.
The quick actions of the officers and the crew of the Ino are credited with preventing a great loss of life. However, Eleven people lost their lives, but practically all rescued were pulled out of the water in the darkness and were taken aboard the schooner.
One of the rescued was a man who had been sitting on a barrel of flour. The story goes that the explosion left him surrounded by steam, flour, and water, with the result that he was hauled aboard the schooner completely encased in dough.
The Sunbury was raised soon after the disaster, taken to Saint John, placed on blocks, thoroughly repaired, and made ready for the following season.
On November 12, 1865, while on her way to Fredericton in a heavy snowstorm, the Sunbury ran hard aground on the shore in Upper Sheffield. The steamer was unable to free herself, so word was dispatched to the Glasier office in Lincoln. At this time of year there was grave danger of being caught by the new ice then forming around the steamer. Glasier immediately sent a crew of men with rigging down to Burton on the opposite side of the river. A rope was made fast to a tree and the other end taken across the river by boat to the Sunbury. Several turns of this very long rope were then taken around the main shaft (between the engine and one paddle wheel) so that when the engine was reversed, the rope would wind up on the shaft and thus assist in the action of the paddle wheels in re-floating the steamer. This proved very effective, and in a short time, the Sunbury was backing away in deeper water and leaving a track in the ice that had formed around her, and which in a few hours would have held her captive for the winter and in grave danger of the run of heavy ice in the spring.
The Sunbury was one of the vessels that laid up during the winter freeze-up at Swan Creek, a tributary of the St.John River located in the Parish of Burton above Gagetown. This spot provided a better "bedroom" than either Fredericton or Indiantown. Swan Creek is virtually a lake, and a portion of it is also called Swan Creek Lake. The water is deep and the creek well sheltered. From the early years of the steamboats, Swan Creek had been used as winter quarters for many of them. Sometimes as many as four passenger steamers and multiple tow boats and sailing vessels would tie up there for the winter, with a watchman being left to look after the fleet. Here, the boats were safe from the breaking up of the ice on the main river, and the ice was nearly always gone from Swan Creek before it was out of the St. John.
The Sunbury continued this service for a number of seasons and then, for a few years, was used by Glasier as a tugboat, before being dismantled in 1879 and her engine placed in the Lilly Glasier.