members of the town's elite. Many escaped slaves who fought for the British known as Black Loyalists were also part of the Loyalist migration, including Thomas Peters, a member of the Black Pioneers regiment and an important Black Loyalist leader who first arrived in Annapolis Royal before taking land near Digby. Another notable Black Loyalist was Rose Fortune who founded a freight business and policed the Annapolis Royal waterfront. While many Loyalists moved from Annapolis Royal to take up lands elsewhere, others stayed and the migration brought an injection of professions and capital that strengthened the town as a regional centre beyond its status as a garrison outpost. 19th century Owing to the extreme tidal range, relatively shallow waters of the Basin, and the small population of its hinterland, the port of Annapolis Royal—despite having a good harbour—carried on only a small trade through the 19th century. Along with Granville Ferry across the river, however, it was a local centre for shipbuilding. Among the notable local mariners was Bessie Hall. Following the replacement of sailing ships by steam in the 1880s, Annapolis Royal served as a coaling station between Saint John and Boston. The town had a minor boom in 1869 when the Windsor and Annapolis Railway arrived, with two large railway piers built along the waterfront and several factories constructed in the area. The population reached 1500 in the 1870s. Incorporation as a town under the Nova Scotia Municipalities Act took place in 1893. However, the completion of the railway to Digby in 1893, followed by the creation of the Dominion Atlantic Railway to Yarmouth, shifted most of the steamship commerce to those cities as steel-hulled vessels began to require deeper and deeper waters. By 1901, Annapolis Royal's population had shrunk to 1019 and it became a small country town whose principal export was apples. Twentieth and twenty-first centuries A ferry service ran from Lower St George Street across the river to Granville Ferry from the early 19th century but in 1921 a bridge was built to link the two sides of the estuary. This bridge collapsed in 1961 (luckily, with no loss of life) and was replaced by a causeway, already under construction. In 1984 this causeway became a component of the Annapolis Royal Tidal Power Generating Station. The construction of the tidal generating station by the then-provincially owned electrical utility Nova Scotia Power Inc. was part of