The Marco Polo: Queen of the Seas

When gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, the owner of the Black Ball Line in Liverpool, James Baines, bought the Marco Polo, a huge cargo-carrier built in Saint John, New Brunswick, and had it refitted for passenger travel. On its first voyage, it circumnavigated the globe in the record-shattering time of under six months. In seventeen subsequent voyages it delivered more than 15,000 people to Australia. Using archival footage, dramatizations of journals kept during the ship's voyages, and a written account of her ignominious end by Lucy Maud Montgomery, her story is told by the ghosts of her builder, James Smith and her Captain, "Bully" Forbes. Local community leaders in Saint John have plans to build a replica of the ship; if they succeed, the Marco Polo may sail again.