Fishers, sailors, shipbuilders, and lighthouse keepers—and the families whose lives were shaped by the sea.

On this page

• Shipwreck Point
• Making a living
• The Asia
• Local losses
• The Yankee Gale
• Keeping the light
• Work ashore
• Sources

Along the north shore, the sea offered food, wages, trade, and a route to the wider world. It also brought sudden loss. The history of work on the water belongs beside the history of the cemetery: some of those who earned their living at sea rest here, and others are remembered through the parish families they left behind.

A name still on the map: Shipwreck Point

At Naufrage, Shipwreck Point is a familiar place name with a sombre meaning. Naufrage is French for shipwreck. The harbour, the lighthouse, and the Gulf beyond it bring the maritime past into a landscape people still recognize.

Lighthouse historian accounts place the light west of the harbour entrance. They also preserve an oral tradition of shipwreck survivors coming ashore in 1719. That early story should be understood as oral history; the later wreck of the Asia gives us a more specific connection to named victims and St Margaret’s Pioneer Cemetery. ¹

Making a living from the Gulf

There was no single maritime occupation. A fishing boat needed people to handle it, set and retrieve gear, and land the catch. A sailing vessel needed a master and crew. On shore, other workers built and repaired boats, handled supplies, processed fish, and moved products to market.

For some households, farming and fishing were complementary livelihoods. The parish family material records James Ronald McDonald of Selkirk as both fisherman and farmer. His example reminds us that a family’s livelihood need not fit neatly into a single occupation. ²

Captains and sailors

Captain Stephen Hugh McDonald (1833–1881), remembered in the Pioneer Cemetery, was a mariner and businessman based at Souris. His working life belongs to the history of a port where seafaring and commerce met. A captain’s title, however, does not by itself establish ownership of a vessel or service in a navy; those details require their own evidence. ²

Most crew members left fewer written descriptions of their work. Their names may survive in a shipping notice, a family account, a death record, or a gravestone. Reading these sources together helps restore the people behind the larger history of vessels and trade.

The Asia: a shipwreck remembered in the cemetery

On 13 September 1839, the schooner Asia, associated with Newburyport, Massachusetts, was wrecked at Naufrage. The cemetery’s historical account records an unmarked communal grave for the captain and crew. These victims form a direct connection between the Pioneer Cemetery and the dangers of the coastal fishery. ³

Research supplied by Violetta Starr, drawing on the Newburyport Herald of 4 and 8 October 1839, identifies Captain Rufus Baston among the dead. Baston is the corrected surname; earlier local retellings used other spellings. The newspaper research also names Samuel Donnell, Seward Lee Jr., Arthur Post, Stephen Lunt, and Woodbridge Cook. ⁴

There were family ties within that loss. The supplied research identifies Samuel Donnell as the brother of the captain’s wife, Mary Donnell, and Arthur Post as Seward Lee Jr.’s uncle. The wreck therefore took relatives as well as shipmates, carrying its consequences back to households across the Gulf. ⁴

The cemetery tradition establishes the local burial connection. The newspaper research helps recover identities, but a list of those who died is not a separate identification of every body buried here. Other names preserved in the older cemetery account remain less securely identified.

The Asia story shows why this cemetery’s history reaches beyond parish ancestry. Men who came from elsewhere to work on the water became part of this place through catastrophe and burial.

Losses within parish families

The Asia was not an isolated reminder of danger. Jenny McQuaid’s parish genealogy preserves several accounts of local people drowned while fishing or travelling at sea.

Hugh MacIntyre and the 1845 fishing accident

McQuaid records Hugh MacIntyre as drowned off Big Cape with six neighbours during a fishing excursion. The same parish material identifies Patrick MacDonald, known as “Long Paddy,” as a survivor of the 1845 accident. Remembering the survivor beside those who died gives the event a human dimension that a list of deaths alone cannot convey. ⁵

Michael McCormack, setting nets

Michael McCormack (1854–1871), recorded in the Pioneer Cemetery, drowned while setting nets off North Rustico, according to McQuaid. His short life connects a named person in the cemetery with the ordinary work of fishing. Danger did not require an exceptional storm or an ocean crossing. ⁵

Brothers lost in a gale

McQuaid also records brothers John and Daniel Robertson as drowned off New London during the same gale. The recovered account does not establish that this was the Yankee Gale of 1851, so the two events should not be equated. Their story stands as another family loss in its own right. ⁵

These accounts show how maritime loss could touch a neighbourhood, take more than one member of a family, and remain part of local memory for generations.

The Yankee Gale: when the fishing grounds became a disaster

Your earlier historical account of the Yankee Gale places it within this wider story of maritime danger. Beginning on 3 October 1851, a violent storm battered vessels fishing off Prince Edward Island. Many were New England schooners working the mackerel grounds, which explains the name by which the disaster is remembered.

Surviving reports describe vessels driven ashore, dismasted, or overwhelmed at sea. Islanders helped survivors reach land and faced the recovery and burial of the dead. Early reports were confused: some vessels first feared lost were later reported safe. The varying totals in later histories reflect the difficulty of reconstructing a disaster spread across many vessels and communities. ⁶

The gale belongs here as an illustration of how quickly a livelihood could become a struggle to survive. No confirmed Yankee Gale burial in the Pioneer Cemetery is needed to make that danger relevant to the people who worked these waters.

It must nevertheless remain distinct from the Asia wreck of 1839. The Asia supplies the direct cemetery connection; the Yankee Gale reveals the larger scale of risk in the same maritime world.

Keeping the light at Shipwreck Point

A lighthouse was also a workplace. At Shipwreck Point, its history brings together public service, family responsibility, and the hazards of fishing. The first lighthouse opened in 1913; a concrete replacement entered service in 1967. ¹

Frank MacKinnon: a connection to the parish families

Frank MacKinnon (1876–1917) is named in McQuaid’s parish genealogy as the son of Joseph MacKinnon and Julie Robertson of Big Cape/Monticello. Her account identifies him as the first Shipwreck Point lightkeeper, records his marriage to Sarah Gallant of St Charles Parish, and says he drowned off Naufrage. The combination of occupation, wife, location, and death agrees with the lighthouse history: this is a supported connection to a person already represented in the parish research. ¹¹

Sarah MacKinnon Gallant and her family

Francis “Frank” MacKinnon, the first keeper, drowned on 12 May 1917 while setting lobster traps. Sarah (Gallant) MacKinnon then served as keeper until 1922.

The PEI Lighthouse Society preserves a family account of their eight-year-old son Neil helping his mother learn to tend the light after Frank’s death. Another family story recalls the rotating mechanism failing during a storm. Sarah maintained the light’s identifying pattern by hand through the night, while Neil brought food, tea, and warmth. A captain later credited the light with preventing a dangerous mistake in his position.

Preserved as family history, the story makes visible the effort behind a familiar coastal landmark. ⁷

LighthouseFriends records Sarah’s marriage to Gus Gallant in 1920, during her service as keeper. She consequently appears in lighthouse accounts as Sarah MacKinnon Gallant. This extends the story of Frank’s family beyond his death: Sarah continued to hold responsibility for the light before leaving the position in 1922. Gus is documented as her husband; he is not listed as a keeper. ¹

Daniel O’Henley: another parish connection

McQuaid also identifies Daniel O’Henley as a Shipwreck Point keeper and a First World War veteran, using the name Daniel L. O’Hanley elsewhere in the account. This is an explicit occupational connection in the parish genealogy. The lighthouse sources name Daniel Leonard O’Henley and place his service between 1939 and 1955. ^{11 7}

Peter MacKinnon and Hugh MacDonald

The lighthouse histories identify Peter J. MacKinnon as Sarah’s successor and Hugh Boniface MacDonald as the final keeper before automation. Their service establishes their place in this community’s working history. Their precise connections to the families represented in the cemetery research still require identification; a shared name alone is insufficient to attach them to a particular family or burial. ⁷

The succession of keepers

Keeper	Years at Shipwreck Point
Francis MacKinnon	1913–1917
Sarah (Gallant) MacKinnon	1917–1922
Peter J. MacKinnon	1922–1939
Daniel Leonard O’Henley	1939–1955
Hugh Boniface MacDonald	1955–1966

⁷

These names give the lighthouse a history of working people as well as a history of buildings. Sarah’s place in the sequence also reminds us to look for women’s work when older summaries concentrate on male officeholders.

The shore was part of the workplace

The maritime economy extended inland from the landing place. The 1863 Souris directory lists Thomas Hellyer as a block maker and Jeremiah McCarthy as a blacksmith. A block maker produced the pulley equipment used with ropes and rigging; metalworking supported a much wider range of local needs as well as marine work. ⁸

Shipbuilding on the Souris River and elsewhere created work in timber, construction, fitting out, and supply. Its decline affected more than the men building hulls. Fishing and processing created other forms of employment, though they did not replace every lost livelihood.

Writing in 1982, the parish historian remembered fishing from numerous small coastal ports and three lobster canneries at Naufrage. The account also recalls the processing and curing of cod, herring, mackerel, hake, and haddock. Those descriptions belong to the historical periods being remembered, rather than a count of boats or businesses today. ⁹

Herman MacDonald’s lobster factory at Black Bush, later Hermanville, and Matthew and McLean’s canning enterprises connect this working world with the history of local merchants. Boats, stores, factories, and households were parts of the same coastal economy. ¹⁰

Women’s work deserves attention both in its own right and within those households. Sarah MacKinnon is a named example of paid responsibility for navigation. Processing work, household production, and the management of family life during absences at sea are further subjects to develop as photographs, employment records, and family accounts identify the people involved.

A maritime history rooted in people and places

Shipwreck Point remains on the map. The Asia victims remain part of the cemetery’s history. McQuaid’s accounts preserve individual losses, while the keepers’ names recall work intended to make the coast safer. Together, these stories explain what working on the water meant: skill and opportunity, demanding labour, and consequences felt far beyond the boat.

Sources and further reading

1. LighthouseFriends: Shipwreck Point Lighthouse, lighthouse history, location, and oral tradition concerning 1719.
2. Supplied parish family and cemetery research: Captain Stephen Hugh McDonald and James Ronald McDonald. Occupations are retained with their source context.
3. Old Site Content Compiled, supplied historical document dated 12 July 2026, section on the 1839 Asia wreck and the cemetery’s unmarked communal grave.
4. Violetta Starr’s supplied research (2026), citing the Newburyport Herald, 4 October 1839 and 8 October 1839, page 2, and Seward Lee Jr.’s death record. Research identifies Baston’s corrected surname and the family connections described above.
5. Jenny O’Hanley McQuaid, Genealogy of St Margaret’s Parish (2022), Chapters 2 and 3; recovered parish research notes concerning the Robertsons, Hugh MacIntyre, Patrick MacDonald, and Michael McCormack.
6. The Yankee Gale of 1851, supplied document dated 12 July 2026; checked against T. W. Stewart’s collection of contemporary newspaper reports, Island Register.
7. PEI Lighthouse Society: Former Shipwreck Point Lighthouse, keeper dates and the MacKinnon family stories. These stories are presented as family history.
8. 1863 Lake Map business directories, Souris listing, Island Register.
9. Roddie J. MacDonald, History of St Margaret’s Parish (1982), transcribed by Fran MacDonald MacPhail.
10. McQuaid, Chapter 13, printed page 164, Herman MacDonald; Matthew and McLean Heritage Building, Canadian Register of Historic Places.
11. McQuaid, Genealogy of St Margaret’s Parish, Chapter 3, printed page 37 (chapter page 4), Frank MacKinnon; Chapter 6, pages 82/87 as located in the recovered research notes, Daniel O’Henley. These accounts support parish-family connections; they do not establish burial in the Pioneer Cemetery.