A Fine Day On Clothes

Blogging was, well, non-existent yesterday because of a day trip on Conception Bay to Wabana, Bell Island. Once home to 12-thousand people and the largest iron ore mine in the world. Where four ore ships were torpedoed by U-Boats in 1942. Where an errant German torpedo blew up a section of ore dock making Bell Island the only place in North America that took fire from the Germans. When the mines closed in 1966 10-thousand people moved away. About 3-thousand people still live there.

Here's a photo from Portugal Cove just above the ferry dock. A chimney top presides over the washing like a Swiss Guard.

Our stout ferry, the MV Beaumont Hamel. The twenty-minute ride costs C$6.25 for a car and a driver and $2.25 per passenger. That's round trip. It is one of the unknown deals of the century.
















This is the waterfall just above Dominion Pier where the oar boats docked. Virtually nothing remains of the huge conveyors and gigantic scaffolds and gantries that used to be here.

Not far from Dominion Pier is massive Scotia Pier, circa 1930.



















Here's another view that really shows the scale of the operation there. This is from the 1950s. Click on the photo for more from BellIsland.net. The navigation needs help though, so edit the URL as needed.

The iron mines extended for miles out under the Bay making this the largest submarine mine in the world.

Here's a photo-site of an underwater expedition into the old iron mines.

And here are some photos from the WW-II shipwrecks. More here.


From the other direction this is all that's left of Scotia Pier today.

I am amazed at how few people in St. John's have ever been to Bell Island. It is a great day-trip with a short but magnificent ferry ride.

Don't miss the Wabana Mining Museum where you will see massive scale photographs of the mining operations taken by the renowned Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh.

You can also take a tour down into the mine to where the water has risen. Fascinating.