Nova Scotia's Spencer's Island Company, 1880--1895: A case study in post-confederation entrepreneurial success

The Spencer's Island Company (SIC) was established in 1880, following the collapse of the hamlet's sole shipbuilding and storekeeping partnership. Its members were highly community oriented, and their greatest manufacturing capability was the transformation of trees into ships.;New York merchants, led by J. F. Whitney and Company, were an important source of capital for ships built by SIC, and others in the region. Their investments, facilitated by mortgages registered against shares officially owned by members of the British Empire, contributed to this sub-region's divergence from the Atlantic Canadian norm.;The company's development coincided with Atlantic Canada's rapid retreat from the maritime sector, a trend which intensified following the National Policy's introduction in 1879. Other Minas Basin entrepreneurs also expanded their fleets during the 1880s, to such an extent that the Basin accounted for more than a quarter of all oceangoing vessels registered in the Maritimes by the early 1890s.