Francis Patrick Armstrong (circa 1859–1923) was a steamboat captain in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia. He also operated steamboats on the Kootenay River in Montana and on the Stikine River in western British Columbia. Steam navigation in the Rocky Mountain Trench which runs through the East Kootenay region was closely linked to Armstrong's personality and career. In addition to being a steamboat captain, Armstrong was also a prospector, white-water boat pilot and guide in the Big Bend country of the Columbia River.
Early life
Armstrong had been born in Sorel, Quebec about 1859. He moved to Winnipeg in 1881, and then came west working with a Canadian Pacific Railway surveying crew in the Columbia Valley from Cranbrook to Golden.
Character
Lewis R. Freeman, a journalist, adventurer, movie-maker, and football coach, came to know Armstrong well in 1920 during a boat trip down the Columbia. Freeman described Armstrong, and as "one of the most picturesque personalities in the pioneering history of British Columbia":
Beginning of steam navigation
In 1882 Armstrong homesteaded on the east side of Columbia Lake and planted potatoes, with the plan of selling them to the workers building the CPR downriver at Golden. He built two flat-bottomed boats, (called "bateaux") to transport his crop on the river. Armstrong decided a steamboat would be a good way to tow the bateaux back upstream. He arranged to have steam engines shipped west from a steam ferry built in 1840 that operated at his home town in Quebec. Once the engines arrived, and a boiler could be located, Armstrong assembled a steamboat from miscellaneous planks and timbers that were lying around at an old sawmill. The result was the Duchess, launched in 1886 at Golden. Two early passengers wrote that her appearance was "somewhat decrepit" and Armstrong himself later agreed that she was "a pretty crude steamboat."
Building the second Duchess
Duchess sank at least once, but Armstrong was eventually able to raise her from the river. He then applied the odd-shaped steamer to make enough money in 1887 to have a new sternwheeler built, also called Duchess. Armstrong hired the veteran shipbuilder Alexander Watson, of Victoria, BC to build the new steamer, which although small, was well-designed and looked like a steamboat. Armstrong also had built a second steamer, Marion, which although smaller than the second Duchess, needed only six inches of water to run in. This was an advantage in the often shallow waters of the Columbia above Golden, where as Armstrong put it, "the river's bottom was often very close to the river's top".
The Baillie-Grohman Canal
A curious feature of the Rocky Mountain Trench is that two of the major rivers that flow through it, the Columbia, flowing north, and the Kootenay flowing south, are separated by only about a mile of low marshy prairie at a place now known as Canal Flats. As the name implies, a shipping canal was built across Canal Flats by William Adolf Baillie-Grohman, a European adventurer and promoter from wealthy and privileged background. The canal was completed in 1889, but it was only used three times by steamboats, every time under the command of Captain Armstrong.
In 1893, Armstrong built Gwendoline at Hansen's Landing on the Kootenay River, and took the vessel through the canal north to the shipyard at Golden to complete her fitting out. By this time it appears that the canal had been damaged or deteriorated to the boat where at least some of the transit of Gwendoline had to be accomplished by pulling the vessel of the water, partially dismantling the boat, and pulling her along on rollers. Over the winter, Armstrong, it is reported, was able to prevail on the provincial government to expend funds to repair the canal. In late May 1894 Armstrong returned the completed Gwendoline back to the Kootenay River, this time transiting normally the rehabilitated canal.
The canal remained unused until 1902, when Armstrong brought North Star north from the Kootenay to the Columbia. The transit of North Star was only made possible by the destruction, by dynamite, of the lock at the canal.
Mining boom on the upper Kootenay River
A mining boom along the upper Kootenay river in the early 1890s led to a demand for shipping to transport miners and supplies into, and ore out of, the region surrounding the river. The Great Northern Railway at Jennings, Montana was the nearest downriver railhead for upper Kootenay shipping.