I decided to cover this ship because of Shirley. You will meet Shirley halfway through the article. The SS Fleurus disaster was a remarkable rescue in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. In 1963, a converted passenger and freight ship carrying the Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers Circus caught fire at the wharf and began sinking. Town residents, firefighters, and circus workers suddenly found themselves trying to rescue not only people, but elephants, lions, horses, zebras, and other animals from a burning ship.
Fleurus was built in France in 1926 for Canada’s Anticosti Shipping Company. She was launched on March 28, 1926, and completed the following month. Long before her unusual career as a circus ship, she carried passengers and cargo through the Gulf and along the St. Lawrence, including service to Anticosti Island.
In 1963, the Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers Circus bought the aging Fleurus and refitted her as a floating base for a Canadian coastal tour. Instead of moving everything overland, the circus could sail its performers, equipment, and animals directly from one port town to another. Spaces aboard the ship were adapted for the performers and a menagerie that included big cats, horses, zebras, and three adult elephants. To complete the transformation, the hull was painted the circus’s vivid orange.
After two shows in Yarmouth, Fleurus was being loaded for the short trip to Shelburne when a fire broke out in the engine room. Smoke quickly spread through the ship, and firefighters rushed to the wharf. But fighting a fire aboard a ship creates another problem. The tremendous amount of water being pumped aboard had nowhere to go. As water accumulated inside Fleurus, her stability worsened and she began listing toward the wharf. The firefighters were battling the flames while the water they needed to save the ship was also helping pull her down.
That list may have helped save some of the animals. With the ship leaning close enough to shore, rescuers laid heavy planks between the deck and the wharf and began leading the elephants across. One of those elephants was named Shirley. A crane was used to lift animal cages from the upper deck while firefighters stood nearby in case any of the frightened big cats escaped. At one point, a sling carrying a cage containing two lions broke, but the cage held and the lions survived.
There were other close calls. A horse named Sparkle escaped into the harbor and became trapped beneath the wharf. Circus worker Bob Dawson went into the water and managed to guide the frightened horse back out. A Brahma bull also ended up in the water and swam to shore.
All the performers and almost every animal survived. One zebra, trapped below deck as the ship settled, was the only animal fatality recorded by the Nova Scotia Archives. Fleurus was eventually towed away and deliberately sunk, while the circus lost much of its equipment and possessions. Today, the story is remembered less for the loss of the ship than for what happened beside that Yarmouth wharf, where firefighters, circus workers, and local residents came together to save animals from a burning and sinking vessel.
One of the most remarkable survivors of Fleurus wasn’t a person at all. Shirley was an Asian elephant born in 1948 who spent about twenty years performing in circuses. Her life after Fleurus would become a story of its own. She survived a badly broken leg in 1974, and three years later was moved to the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo, where she lived as the zoo’s only elephant for 22 years.
By 1999, Shirley was getting older, and her caretakers wanted her to have more room and, perhaps more importantly, the company of other elephants. Her longtime caretaker, Solomon James, accompanied her to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.
Something remarkable happened after she arrived. Shirley immediately showed an extraordinary reaction to another elephant named Jenny. The two strained to reach one another through the bars separating their stalls. It was eventually discovered that Shirley and Jenny had performed together in the same circus 24 years earlier. They appeared to remember each other.
For the next seven years, Shirley and Jenny were nearly inseparable. Their reunion and relationship were featured in the PBS documentary The Urban Elephant. Shirley remained at the Tennessee sanctuary for the rest of her long life. She died there in 2021 at the age of 72. The timeline of Shirley PLUS her time in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
