Historique des phares à la Traverse de Saint-Roch

Since 1805, navigational aids in the South Channel at the Traverse de Saint-Roch were steadily improved at a dangerous stretch of the Saint Lawrence River located 6.7 km off Saint-Roch-des-Aulnais, where the channel narrows to 0.4 km between shoals and tidal currents are the river’s strongest, with ebb currents reaching 7 to 8 knots and flood currents 6 to 7.5 knots. Early aids were modest: a buoy was placed on the Saint-Roch shoal on May 23, 1807, and in spring the Superintendent of Pilots set out a black buoy and a white buoy to mark the entrance to the southern passage for ascending ships; on April 7, 1818, tenders were called to place buoys at Pointe Saint-Roch and on the middle shoal. On April 25, 1830, pilots gained a lightship in the downstream part of the traverse: Le Brillant, a wooden schooner fitted with a lantern of 16 reflectors on each mast, showing fixed white lights visible for 16.6 km; commanded by Captain J. Gourdeau, it was the first lightship on the Saint Lawrence and was struck by the barque Miramichi on May 20, 1841. In 1904 this downstream lightship was replaced by a pillar, but in 1911 the structure was carried away by ice and another lightship took its place; in 1915 the Artic, commanded by Captain Joseph-Elzéar Bernier, served as the lightship, and in 1923 the trawler St-Éloi was rigged as a lightship at the same site. In the 1960s, technological progress brought replacement of lightships by automatic buoys and lighthouse pillars. Upstream, a second lightship, the schooner New England, was anchored in 1871 at the upper end of the traverse 1.5 km from the first; in 1899 it was replaced by a pillar on the channel edge, topped by a white rectangular wooden lighthouse with a red roof, and this pillar was also carried away by ice in 1937.

Quebec · Canada