Diving in to Musquodoboit Harbour

The luckiest place on earth

Capt. Farquhar, Seated

Captain James Augustus Farquhar was born in Musquodoboit in 1842. He moved to Sable Island after a wild business adventure of his father’s failed. He became one of the world’s earliest and richest hard hat salvage divers (in our region rich with sunken treasures of all sort). He successfully bridged the transition from Sail to Steam as a handsome young Captain. He started his own shipping company, taking full advantage of an era of technological advances, eventually retiring to sail the world on his custom yacht with his wife Jesse Anderson, the love of his life.

It’s an inspiring story where almost every remarkable success is preceded by some sort of big failure that set things in a different direction.

Later in life, he loved Monte Carlo and all the European cities like Rome, where he had a life-sized marble statue of himself commissioned that you can see today at the Maritime Museum, near the wharf where he often did business. He also has an impressive headstone at his grave in Camp Hill Cemetery. A beautiful place to visit.

I have a much-cherished rare copy of his journal, which he called Farquhar’s Luck, it's been an inspiration to my diving work all my life, and I can't help but think stories heard around Musquodoboit Harbour of Farquahar's treasure hunts and shipwreck salvage must have inspired the Ritcy and Lonhes's to found their Dominion Diving empire.

I just discovered the book is now available in the Internet Archive Library with a free subscription. If you love Musquodoboit Harbour and the area around, you will LOVE this book. It’s filled with nostalgia of a golden age, charm, adventure beyond Hollywood imagining, and writing of astonishingly high quality.

Capt. Farquhar returned to Musquodoboit Harbour many times, which he considered the luckiest place in the world, even today you will recognize many of the places and family names from his journal. And the ‘luck’ he lives by is a deep philosophical notion that everything comes in balance and each person must, in their own life, continue to press on no matter what.

I’ll put the library link to the archive here. I hope it inspires you to dive for your life's treasure that may be lost and hidden, waiting and whispering to you, right in Musquodoboit Habour.

Here’s a couple short excerpts from the book: His description of the first time he ever headed for Halifax… and adventure, and falling in love with his future wife at a dance in Musquodoboit Harbour.

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Summer – 1849

I can remember as well as if it were yesterday that August morning in 1849 when we started for Halifax.

We had to get up long before it was light, in order to reach the city in one day; and, with our few belongings and some straw to sit on, all eight of us - mother and my four sisters, my two brothers, and I - were packed into a big hay wagon. Uncle drove - Uncle Jim Crookshanks, of Upper Musquodoboit, (my father's sister's husband.)

It was a red-letter day for seven country children who had never been from home before. Every unfamiliar glimpse (through the sides of the old hay wagon) was a revelation of a new universe.

The sun did not come up until we had left Meagher's Grant behind us. My mother was sad, for Meagher's Grant meant friends and relatives, and before her was a wilderness. We children took friends and relatives for granted, and before us was the world.

All day the wheels squeaked and rumbled. The sun which had come up upon new scenes went down on other new scenes, and still our horses plodded. The motor car has brought Meagher's Grant within an hour of Halifax, but eighty years ago it was a long day's journey; a very long day's journey.

After dark the lights of Dartmouth twinkled, and we jolted on into the little hillside town, and down to the lapping water. Across that water, as in another continent, gleamed the oil lamps and candles of Halifax - a modest illumination, it is true, but to us a galaxy of stars.

The tired horses dragged our rolling home onto the broad-decked ferryboat.

"In good time for tomorrow's market, boss," laughed the ferryman to my uncle. "How many lambs have you in that wagon? And what are they worth?"

"Oh," said Uncle Jim, "They're not for sale I've brought them in for export."

How we all laughed! Though it was at the end of a very long day.

This crossing of Halifax harbour was the first of many thousands of miles I was destined to log on salt water.

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Fall - 1875

This talk about Monte Carlo and Scotch lords is, I am afraid, running away with the string. My spun-yard will be getting badly tangled. I must bring myself up with a round turn and not get ahead of my story.

And here is where most particularly do I wish Sable Island had had greater facilities for education, for what I am about to set down is the most important fact in my life, and I would that I could do it justice. Yet were I never so adroit with the written word I could not treat the subject properly.

In the fall of '75, after a fair season, I promised myself a little holiday. I would go down to Musquodoboit and have some shooting. Partridge, rabbits, duck - it didn't matter. I wanted a rest from hunting wrecks.

I had a chum of like mind, and we went together. He had an uncle at Musquodoboit Harbour, Mr. George Anderson, and we were lucky enough to be put up at his hospitable home.

Lucky? Indeed we were.

This was my greatest piece of luck.

There were two girls in the family, Jessie Almena and her sister Eliza. Both were pretty.

Jessie had rosy cheeks and brown hair and laughing eyes.

They had been invited to a party. They invited us, in the comfortable sociable way people have in the country. Would we go? We would, if we might take them. Partridge, rabbits, ducks, and wrecks might go hang.

He took Eliza. But I was taken by Jessie.

That is to say, her grey eyes gathered me up completely, - and they have never let me go. They sang to me through the throbbing of the violins. They danced to me through the patter of the polka. Here, I knew, was my prize of prizes, the greatest treasure I should ever spy, afloat or ashore. If I could but bring her into a happy haven the world was mine - and hers.

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