Cavendish Dunelands Trail/Cavendish Sentier Dunelands

25 July, 1883. Thanks to a weekend of violent storms there is a heavy sea running. A few farmers watch with astonishment as a magnificent sailing vessel, driven by a mountain of canvas, slams onto the Cavendish sandbars. The air iš alive with the sound of snapping wood and shrieking metal., Marco Polo made her last landfall. , Marco Polo was built in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1851 by James Smith. Many were quick to dismiss the unusually shaped ship, but her innovative design combined the speed of a clipper and the cargo capacity of a barque. The vessel's maiden voyage silenced her critics as she sailed from Saint John, New Brunswick to Liverpool, England in fifteen days, a record time. Marco Polo spent the next fifteen years as a passenger carrier on the lucrative Liverpool to Melbourne, Australia route, where she set many speed records and carried thousands of immigrants., Once dubbed "Queen of the Seas” and "Fastest Ship In The World,” by 1883 the Marco Polo was well past her prime, working as a lumber carrier for a Norwegian firm. After a bout of stormy weather in the Gulf of St. Lawrence she began to take on water and to avoid sinking in deep water was driven ashore here at Cavendish. People from the community opened up their homes and hearts to the stranded sailors., In 1990, the career of Marco Polo was declared to be of national historic significance by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. A monument and plaque were erected in Saint John, New Brunswick to commemorate the building of the great ship. What remains of the Marco Polo lies in shallow water not far off this shore. The wreck must be left undisturbed if we are to preserve this fragile and important piece of our heritage, -