# How did people get to Montreal in the 18th century? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 22, 2016, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-get-to-montreal-in-the-18th-century/743864 "2016-01-22T06:06:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-get-to-montreal-in-the-18th-century/743864/21 "2016-01-22T22:48:34Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > If I may steer this thread back to the original question: okay, so suppose we’re passengers headed to clerk for the North West Company in Montreal. We’re taking the Hudson-Lake George-Lake Champlain route in 1795. What sorts of boats are we taking? Barks? Schooners? Something else entirely? Google indicates that Benedict Arnold had several 57-foot gunboats (sailboats) to defend Lake Champlain against possible British invasion from the north - one of which was sunk and found intact on the bottom recently. James Fenimore Cooper in Last of the Mohicans describes that even in the 1830’s you could find ladders in the bush constructed during the war (French-Indian? Revolutionary?) intended to scale the wall at the fort near Oswego. I assume this area was slowly being settled and not horribly unpopulated. I knew some people who at one time owned a farmhouse supposedly built by the Dutch not far from Albany - which means that area was being settled well before the 1790’s. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-get-to-montreal-in-the-18th-century/743864/22 "2016-01-22T22:59:23Z")
[Here’s a diary of a Tory who fled from Albany to Montreal in 1777](http://www.62ndregiment.org/A_Journey_to_Canada_by_Cartwright.pdf). I’m not sure that’s a particularly useful answer to your question though, since its twenty years to early and the fact that he was traveling through a war zone presumably altered his travelling options. But in anycase, he travels overland to Ft. George, by boat up the lake, takes a small boat up from Ft Ticonderoga, and that at some point gets on a schooner the rest of the way up Champlain up to the St Lawrence. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-get-to-montreal-in-the-18th-century/743864/23 "2016-01-22T23:05:45Z")
Three cheers for schooners! We love schooners! ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-get-to-montreal-in-the-18th-century/743864/24 "2016-01-24T06:15:32Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > So really no one was coming from western New York up the St. Lawrence river? The first europeans arrived by boat, and used boats to trade fur… “By 1685, Ville-Marie was home to some 600 colonists, most of them living in modest wooden houses. Ville-Marie became a centre for the fur trade and a base for further French exploration.” Travel by land was perilous at the time, for various reasons, including the risk of being done in by the natives, and the Brits… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-get-to-montreal-in-the-18th-century/743864.md?page=1)