'The boat left with him': Wreckage of classic Quebec schooner mysteriously swept away upon captain's death

The mysterious disappearance of ship wreckage upon the death of its former captain has left some people convinced that he took it with him when he left this earth.

Captain Éloi Perron built the M.P. Émelie in 1956 and piloted it along the St. Lawrence River until 1975.

The ship had multiple owners afterward, eventually ending up stranded on the shores of Baie-Saint-Paul, 90 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.

Its wreckage has been sitting lifeless for almost a decade — the sight of which would upset the old captain whenever he passed by, his son Michel said.

Then 95-year-old Perron died in his home Feb. 15, and within a week, the wreckage was gone too.

"Now everything is settled. He left, and the boat left with him," Michel said.

"There are things in life you just can't explain."

The M.P. Émelie was one of the last remnants of Quebec's schooner industry, which exploded in the 1950s.

Called goélettes, the Quebec version of the Atlantic schooners, had flat hulls which allowed pilots to moor near the many towns along the St. Lawrence River that didn't have wharves.

The goélette always has special significance for Perron, because not only did he build it himself, but he named it after his mother.

"For him it was always the M.P. Émelie," Michel said, despite the fact that it was named L'Accalmie after being sold.

Captain Benoit Lavoie, now 83, often boarded the M.P. Émelie to chat with Perron when their routes crossed paths. 

"It was an incredible period. There were goélettes all along the St. Lawrence in every small town," said Lavoie.

Hundreds of the wooden boats were built mostly in the Charlevoix region during that era, until steel-hulled boats took over the market in the late 1970s, he said.

'It really upset him'

After selling the M.P. Émelie in 1975, it changed hands several times.

Its latest owner, a local artist, planned to restore it but the work was never done. The ship was left to rot on the shores of a bay behind Baie-Saint-Paul, its home since 2009.

The sight of the decaying wooden structure became a popular photography spot for tourists, but bothered its former captain.

"He'd always go by to see the boat when we'd be in Baie-Saint-Paul. It really upset him," said Michel.

In 2015, a fire accidentally set off by a thief trying to solder through the copper in the boat's hull destroyed what was left of it, leaving only the frame.

"My father always said 'I should never have built it.'" 

'Extraordinary coincidence'

Lavoie said the news of M.P. Émelie's disappearance caught him off guard when someone approached him in the grocery store to tell him it had vanished.

"They said 'Hey Captain, the goélette is gone!'" Lavoie said.

He calls the situation "an extraordinary coincidence."

"Almost an impossible one," he admitted

'The boat couldn't have gotten out of there'

Michel is trying to deal with the loss of his father, who he said remained lucid until the day he died and served as a living encyclopedia.

One of the questions Perron would have liked to ask is how the boat, which hadn't moved in years, was swept away despite the tide being lower than normal that day.

"Deep down in my heart, [with a tide of] 4.9 metres, the boat couldn't have gotten out of there."

He thinks his dad would probably be comforted to know the M.P. Émelie was back at large.

"It's a relief ma'am. For him and for me." 

Perron said his father's legacy is still very much alive at the inn he built on Isle-aux-Coudres in 1968, that Michel now owns.

He also built the Musée des Voitures d'Eau which tells the story of the goélettes of the St. Lawrence River.

"He leaves an immeasurable legacy for the continuation of his world," Perron said. 

The M.P. Émelie was one of the last goélettes in existence.

Two others, the Jean-Yvan and the Saint-André, are both at the Maritime museum in Charlevoix.

​Only one goélette, the Grosse-Île, is still seaworthy.