The Della S. was the first steamship on Lake Manitou.  Robert Stapleton, who married Mary Ann Bassingthwaite, built the first saw-mill in the Big Lake area in the early 1880's. He also had a blacksmith shop. In 1888 he built a steamship with a 55-foot keel at his mill and moved it up the road to where Cannard’s Lane is today, down through the bush on Bassingthwaite’s farm and launched it in Lake Manitou.