Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/179

known as Lynch's yard in later years, the blacksmith shop being at the foot of the narrow thoroughtare known as Chapel street. When a ship was on the stocks, its bow would be about where are now the steps which go down from the street by the Kelly & Murphy factory. Here, in the summer of 1841, was built a fine copper fastened, iron-kneed ship of 900 tons, which the firm intended to name the "Jane Duncan." It was to be launched at the full tides which came at the first of September, and by Thursday, August 26th, but little remained to be done to fit the craft to leave the ways. The lower masts and top masts were in place, with much of the standing rigging, and the hull was fully graved and painted. In the work of tarring a bottom, more or less tar was always to be found spattered around among the chips and shavings with which a shipyard was littered, and the Owens & Duncan yard was no exception in this respect. There had been very dry weather for some time at the date named, and as a result the whole surface of the yard in the vicinity of the ship was a bed of most highly inflammable material.

Mr. Owens, whose name is perpetuated today in the Owens Art Institution at Mount Allison University, took an active interest in the details of shipbuilding, and gave his personal supervision to the work. As noon approached on this particular day, the 26th of August, the rigging was being set up. It was found that the lanyards would not pass through the dead-eyes where the standing rigging came down to the ship's rail, and Mr. Owens decided to have this remedied at once. The dinner hour had arrived and the men were leaving, when he called one or two of them to remain a little while and do the job. One of these men was John Doherty, then quite young and now living in Main street, North End. Mr. Owens directed Mr. Doherty to go to the blacksmith shop with a boy and