For centuries, the river served as an early "highway" for the native inhabitants, who referred to the LaHave as Pijelooeekak, meaning "having long joints," in the Mi'kmaq tongue.

 The river connected native settlements in the interior with those along the coast, and one well-known route involved descending Pijelooeekak by canoe and then portaging across the intermittent lakes and waterways to known summer camps.

 One of the more popular annual encampments was believed to be near modern day Bachmans Beach near the end of Second Peninsula. There, native leaders from across the region could trade and celebrate with each other, as well as the occasional European who ventured into the area.

 By the mid-18th century, European settlers had begun en masse colonization along the banks of the LaHave River and the powerful waterway became an important element in the development of local shipping and shipbuilding.

 With navigable waters and direct access to the Atlantic, the LaHave connected Bridgewater, New Germany and other interior settlements directly to popular shipping routes.

 Because of its location and size, the LaHave River saw its fair share of shipping over the first 150 years of permanent European settlement along the river. But because of the sheer volume of traffic, the LaHave River was also witness to its share of marine accidents over the years, none of which was more memorable than when the S.S. Mount Temple ran aground near the mouth of the river in December of 1907.

 The Mount Temple was built by Sir W.G. Amstrong, Whitworth & Co. in New Castle, England, for Beaver Line Steamers. In total, the vessel measured some 485 feet in length and was 8,790 gross tons.

 Launched on June 18, 1901, the steamer was first used as a troop transport between Britain, New Orleans and Cape Town, South Africa, during the Boer War. Following transport duty, it was converted back to a passenger steamer, cruising between New Orleans and the British Isles until 1903.

 That year, control of the Beaver Line was assumed by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and the vessel was employed to bring a new wave of immigrants from Europe to Canada.

 When the Mount Temple made its first voyage on its London-Antwerp-Saint John run in March of 1904, she was equipped with space for 14 cabin-class passengers and more than 1,200 third-class passengers.

 For several months, the Mount Temple made its trans-Atlantic treks without trouble. But, in the evening hours of December 1, 1907, somewhere off the coast of Nova Scotia, the Mount Temple found itself in a terrible way.

 Miles off its course for Saint John, New Brunswick, its instruments, crew and captain, H. Boothby, rendered useless by an intense snowstorm, the Mount Temple meandered unknowingly closer and closer to the coastline until it eventually came to a lurching rest on Shag Rock, 500 feet from the shoreline of West Ironbound Island, at the mouth of the LaHave River.

 Charles and Fred Wolfe, the father and son team who maintained the Ironbound lighthouse, ventured out to try to help the vessel, but seeing the size of the Mount Temple, they realized that a full rescue effort would have to wait until the storm had passed the following day.

 In the morning, rope and cable lines were run from the steamer's mast to a tree on the island and a breeches buoy attached to the line was ultimately used to transport members of the crew and the 600 passengers on board ashore.

 Upon inspection, it was clear to Capt. Boothby that the Mount Temple wouldn't be going anywhere quickly. With the vessel wedged so firmly on the rock, the passengers took up temporary quarters in basements and in barns across West Ironbound. Mrs. Wolfe, in a very generous gesture, even opened up her own home to the 16 mothers with infants who had been stranded by the accident.

 In the meantime, food and blankets were unloaded from the Mount Temple to sustain her stranded passengers until alternate plans could be made, and the crew got to work at removing the vessel's cargo in the hope that she could eventually be floated off the rock.

 But it was not to be a short stay for the Mount Temple's crew. After five months, on April 15, 1908, the Beazley Brothers Salvage Firm out of Halifax had to resort to the use of compressed air and a small armada of tugboats in order to get the stranded steamer off Shag Rock.

 During the Mount Temple's unplanned five-month stay near the mouth of the LaHave, some of the valuables on board the vessel found their way into a number of nearby homes. Marine equipment, china and dinnerware were among more popular "souvenirs" salvaged by the more brazen locals.

 After the Mount Temple was floated and freed from the confines of the mouth of the LaHave, she went on to have a rather interesting, if unlucky, career.

 On April 14, 1912, the Mount Temple was one of the closest ships when the hull of the RMS Titanic met its fate with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Just under 50 miles away, the Mount Temple was in range to aid in the rescue effort and perhaps prevent additional deaths.

 The crew tried desperately to find its way through the surrounding ice field to the Titanic's passengers, but had little success.

 By the time the Mount Temple arrived on the scene hours later, those Titanic crew and passengers who had survived the perils of the frigid waters had already been plucked to safety by the Carpathia; those who weren't so lucky had already perished.

 The Mount Temple also briefly served again as a troop carrier at the outset of the First World War, but by 1915 she had returned to work as a commercial steamer.

 Ironically, on December 6 of 1916, after the vessel had ceased to operate as a troop transport, the Mount Temple was captured by the German raider Moewe, en route to Brest, France, from Montreal. Four crew were killed and the other 105 people on board the vessel were taken back to Germany and held as prisoners.

 The Mount Temple and its cargo, which included 700 horses and 22 crates of dinosaur fossils exhumed from Alberta's soils, was sunk by the raider, bringing to an end an unlucky career which began a downward spiral after the ship ran aground on West Ironbound Island nearly a decade earlier.

 Sources: The Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic; "The S.S. Mount Temple Project," www.ssmounttemple.com; The LaHave Islands Marine Museum; Chambers, Sheila, Joan Dawson and Edith Wolter, "Historic LaHave River Valley: Images of our past."

Written and researched by Patrick Hirtle.