Moncton's shipbuilding era began in 1840 with the arrival of Stewart Russell, a shipbuilder from Hopewell. Russell built the "Aginora", which sailed down the Petitcodiac River to trade at the ports in Saint John and New England. The ship and its crew sank in a storm on 24 December 1850, during a trip to Boston for Christmas. A ferry service on the Petitcodiac River was launched around 1841, thanks to a license obtained by Simon Outhouse. The "Larch", built by Stephen Binney in 1845, was another important vessel, becoming the largest to sail on the river. But it was not until the arrival of Joseph Salter in 1846 that the shipbuilding boom began: a shipyard founded by Binney and Salter produced 24 vessels from 1847 to 1859, and employed almost 500 of the 1,000 inhabitants in Moncton. Salter would become the first mayor of Moncton in April 1855, the year the town was incorporated.