What is a wharfinger?
(Or, An Introduction Pt.2)
Wharfinger is an uncommon word I first remember encountering in the City of Saint John’s Royal Charter, written in 1785. I certainly wasn’t familiar with the word before that, and since I expect that the same is true of many readers, it seems appropriate to explain why I’ve co-opted it for this blog’s title.
Being an archaic word that’s fallen out of common parlance, I hope I will be forgiven for commandeering and re-interpreting the word for my own purposes. When used as intended, wharfinger refers to someone who owns or is appointed to maintain and operate a wharf. The Lower Wolastoq’s wharfingers in particular were appointed to collect duty and taxes applied to all goods landed or taken on at a given wharf by the steamers. I confess that this definition does not apply to me — I do not own or operate any steamboat wharves, although any wharf owners interested in selling one are encouraged to reach out. My aspirations as a wharfinger are instead the maintenance of the wharves’ history.
As it turns out, there isn’t much written about the wharves. Like many New Brunswickers born after 1980, my introduction to the steamboats of the Lower Wolastoq and its tributaries was Donald Taylor and George MacBeath’s Steamboat Days: An Illustrated History of the Steamboat Era on the St. John River 1816-1946. Although their book is quite comprehensive and provides detailed catalogues of the steamboats active in the region as well as their promoters, owners, operators, managers, captains, pursers, engineer, stewards, stewardesses, cooks, and shipbuilders,1 almost no attention is paid to the wharves. Beyond a few passing references to individual wharves as the setting for anecdotes, the wharves’ only prominent mention is the following observation:
Today, the aging concrete wharves that dot the river’s banks are a silent witness from those earlier times when the steamboats were such an important and exciting part of life. Back and forth they would go across the river, steaming along from wharf to wharf, with whistle blowing as if anticipating the happy welcome from those crowded at the landing. There was a hustle and bustle to it all, and it adds colour to our heritage.2
I do not begrudge Taylor and MacBeath for their focus on the steamboats over the wharves. Despite my obvious obsession with these arcane pieces of infrastructure, I still understand that idea of steam-powered paddle boats chugging up and down the river is tantalizing and cool. I also appreciate that recording the history of the Wolastoq’s steamboats was a matter of some urgency for Taylor and MacBeath. By the 1980s, the steamboats had already been gone for decades and personal accounts of this period were also becoming rarer.
By contrast, the wharves and their history seemingly lacked any sense of urgency. At the time, most concrete wharves were still being actively maintained by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans under their Small Craft Harbours program. Even decades after the wharves were divested by the federal government, these stubborn structures are still more or less intact. Their preservation is mostly due to the incredible efforts of non-profit groups and municipal governments, but even wharves that have been left to languish since the late 1990s are still pretty recognizable today as wharves. This sense permanency and perceived mundanity has left the wharves understudied.
Despite this physical permanence, it is difficult in hindsight to get at the history of these structures unless you’re willing to dig. Although I’ve been able to piece a lot together, the evidence is quite fragmented. Community histories will often highlight their local wharf, but these sources aren’t frequently compiled and put into conversation with one another. In addition to the fragmentation of sources, the sheer number of individual wharves makes the undertaking all the more time consuming — there is a dedicated folder on my hard drive for each of the wharves identified on the Digital Fieldguide.
As a contemporary Wolastoq Wharfinger, my intention is therefore to maintain and manage the history of these wharves. The first year of my fixation on these wharves was spent physically searching for these structures and travelling around the Lower Wolastoq region. The following three years have been spent searching through archival material. I find both to be fulfilling forms of exploration, but I appreciate that for most folks the former is more engaging than the latter. Although I will leave the physical maintenance of the wharves to more capable hands (for now), there is utility in aggregating and maintaining the history of the wharves as well. These structures value as built heritage is reinforced by visitors’ ability to place them in their historical context. Without that, we risk undermining the case for preserving them for future generations. Accessible historical narratives transform what is objectively a big chunk of ballast, rebar, and concrete into a tangible link to the past.
George MacBeath and Donald Taylor, Steamboat Days On the St. John 1816-1946, (St. Stephen: Print N’ Press Limited, 1983), 158-166.
MacBeath and Taylor, 2.