Battle Harbour
National Historic District Of Canada; The Restored Saltfish Station That Was The Unofficial Capital Of Labrador For Two Centuries, On An Island Reachable Only By Boat · Battle Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador
For two hundred years the saltfish trade ran Labrador, and Battle Harbour ran the saltfish trade. A cluster of wooden stores, stages, houses and a church on a small island off the southern Labrador coast, it was the largest settlement on the coast and effectively its capital - merchants, a hospital, a telegraph. In 1909 Robert Peary came here to wire the world that he had reached the North Pole, and gave his first press interviews from the loft of a fish store. THE COD FISHERY COLLAPSED, the community was resettled in the 1960s, and the buildings should have gone the way of every other abandoned Labrador outport. Instead a trust took them on, and what stands today is the most complete surviving saltfish station in the world, a National Historic District where visitors sleep in the restored merchant houses, eat what the kitchen cooks, and walk a settlement with no cars, no shop and no way off until the boat comes back.
Battle Island, Labrador Straits, southern Labrador, Battle Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
SEASONAL, SHORT AND BOAT-ONLY. Battle Harbour operates ROUGHLY LATE JUNE TO EARLY OR MID SEPTEMBER and is closed entirely outside that window. THERE IS NO ROAD: access is by the trust's PASSENGER FERRY FROM MARY'S HARBOUR, about an hour each way, running to a published daily schedule in season and SUBJECT TO WEATHER, which regularly delays or cancels sailings. DAY TRIPS ARE POSSIBLE but the island really wants an overnight, and ACCOMMODATION AND MEALS ARE PACKAGED AND MUST BE BOOKED IN ADVANCE - there is no shop, no restaurant to walk into and nowhere to buy food on the island. Guided tours of the buildings are included and run daily. Getting to Mary's Harbour itself means the Labrador coastal highway, and that is a long drive or a flight into Blanc-Sablon or Goose Bay.