Robert William Boyle was a physicist and one of the most important early pioneers in the development of sonar. 

Boyle was born in 1883 at Carbonear in the Dominion of Newfoundland. His father, Dr. A. D. Boyle, operated his surgery from a room on the second floor of Keneally House. It is the only house of this style in the area and is one of the oldest houses still standing in Carbonear. Don’t miss it.

Boyle left Newfoundland for Montreal, Quebec, where he trained at McGill University under Nobel Prize winner Sir Ernest Rutherford in the then-fledgling field of radioactivity.

In collaboration with Lord Rutherford, Boyle worked on developing ultrasound methods for submarine detection.

Read more about Robert William Boyle | People of Small Towns

Philip Henry Gosse was a naturalist, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium, and an innovator in the study of marine biology. He was born in 1810 in England. 

In 1827, Gosse sailed from England to Newfoundland to serve as a clerk in the Carbonear in the counting-house of Slade, Elson and Co. Gosse became a dedicated, self-taught student of Newfoundland entomology, “the first person systematically to investigate and to record the entomology” of the island. 

In 1853 Gosse created and stocked the first public aquarium at the London Zoo. He coined the term “aquarium” when he published the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea, in 1854.

Read more about Philip Henry Gosse | People of Small Towns

Duane Andrews is a guitarist who combined Newfoundland folk music with the swing jazz of the legendary Django Reinhardt.

Born in Carbonear, Andrews grew up exposed to the island’s mélange of cultural influences – a mix of English, French, Irish, Scottish, Spanish and Portuguese.

Read more about Duane Andrews | People of Small Towns