Канада 20 долларов 2002 Транспорт третье издание 

Корабль William D. Lawrence

William D. Lawrence (ship) и его создатель Уильям Доусон Лоуренс (16 июля 1817 – 8 декабря 1886) был успешным кораблестроителем, бизнесменом и политиком. Его корабль, построенный в 1874 -Уильям Лоуренс Д., был самым большим деревянным кораблём, когда-либо построенных в Канаде(Два больших деревянных парусных барка были построены в Квебеке, Барон Ренфрю и Колумбус, в 1824 и 1825, но они были предназначались для односторонних путешествий через Атлантику ) и третий по величине в мире на то время. Уильям Д. Лоуренс был хорошо оснащенным парусным судном, построенным в Мэйтленде, Новой Шотландии, 263 фута длиной(80м) и названо в честь своего строителя. После нескольких прибыльных лет эксплуатации, корабль был продан норвежским владельцам в 1883 году, и переименован в "Kommander Svend Foyn". В 1891 году село на мель в Манш,после преобразовано в баржу, впоследствии отгружено в Дакар, Африка.

On October 27, 1874, the largest wooden-hulled ship built in Canada was launched at Maitland, Nova Scotia. Named after her builder and owner, William D. Lawrence, she was 2,459 tons with a keel length of 244 feet 9 inches. One of the most intriguing questions about this vessel is why William D. Lawrence, a well-established and highly respected shipbuilder and shipowner, would risk all his wealth and considerable reputation to build a vessel so large that many of his contemporaries openly described it as folly.

In response to one of his critics, Lawrence claimed that one large ship would be more profitable than two smaller ones.

Lawrence was not merely content to build a large vessel: he intended to build "the largest vessel ever placed upon the stocks in the Dominion or in British North America"; moreover, he stated his objective publicly in the Acadian Recorder of February 21, 1873.2 It seems clear that Lawrence wished to give himself and Nova Scotia a permanent place in the marine history of Canada. His reasons for doing so have a great deal to do with the man himself and the era in which he lived.

Compared to many other maritime shipowners of the mid-19th century, Lawrence's efforts were rather modest. Beginning with the successful operation of his first vessel, the 170-ton brigantine St. Lawrence, built in 1852, he owned, usually in partnership with other investors, a total of five vessels during the next twenty years. Often one vessel was sold to pay for a new one. His commercial success sprang from his ability to manage his vessels in a very competitive business fraught with periodic declines in freight rates.

The period between 1840 and 1880 was one of unprecedented commercial prosperity in Nova Scotia and in the Maritime Provinces generally. Spurred by the expansion in world trade, shipping tonnage owned in the Province increased from 80,000 tons in 1830 to 400,000 tons in the late 1860s.