About the Cable Ferries Route

The cable ferries that join communities on either side of the St. John River are among the great practical pleasures of travel in the Lower River Passage. On one hand, they function as small, stable drive-on-and-off platforms, convenient floating links in a highway system in which bridges would be unfeasible. On the other hand, they offer the excitement of any waterborne trip: a series of unique perspectives up-river and down, and the thrill of a gradual approach to an unknown shore. Most are free, courtesy of the Province of New Brunswick. Ferries of some type have been used to cross the St. John River for hundreds of years. Late 18th and early 19th century ferries were often privately owned and operated. The early ferries ranged from rowboats, equipped to transport only a few people at a time, to large flat-bottomed scows, cap- able of carrying a horse and buggy or two, as well as foot passengers. Some were propelled with sculls, or poled in shallow water, while others were pulled across the river with ropes.

Drawing ferries from shore to shore by ropes is an ancient technology. The Lower River Passage’s under- water cable ferries, however, are the innovation of early 20th century New Brunswick engineer and inventor William Pitt. In Pitt’s unique design, a long slack wire cable stretches from one shore to the other, passing in a special channel through the bottom of the ferry, below deck. A diesel engine powers the ferry to pull itself along the cable like a person climbing a rope. Cable ferries quickly spread throughout the St. John River region in the early 1900s, though they were sometimes replaced in winter by ice roads, making for risky crossings at the start and close of the season. These ferries are specially engineered to cope with New Brunswick’s winter and early spring runs of river ice, followed by the annual flood or “freshet,” when water levels sometimes rise metres above seasonal norms.