I CONCLUDED a previous chapter with an account of how I terminated my peace-time service in Ireland at the Cove of Cork, early in April 1776: by embarking for Quebec with the Ninth Regiment in which I was then a non-commissioned officer. The reason why ourselves and five other regiments of the Line, of which we were the eldest, were being sent to Canada was that news had reached England of a dangerous attempt on the part of the Americans to seize Canada, which was only lightly held by us. The enemy were under the command of Benedict Arnold, of Connecticut, an enterprising militia colonel, and Brigadier-General Montgomery, an Irishman who had formerly held the King’s commission. It was commonly feared that our expedition of relief might not reach Quebec in time to prevent an insurrection of the French inhabitants, who numbered about five thousand, or the surrender of the small garrison for some other reason. How strange a war it already appeared! General Montgomery had, twenty years before, played the hero beside Sir William Howe and Sir James Wolfe during the famous capture of Quebec from the French.
It is important to distinguish the motives which prompted this invasion. The Americans’ ostensible motive, which was to free the Canadians from British tyranny, must be taken at a heavy discount. A few dozen malcontents in Montreal and elsewhere may have been stirred by the appeal to revolt made by the American Congress of 1776; but in general the Canadians, who were all French, found themselves pretty well off under British rule. They rightly suspected the American offers of help in ‘knocking off their chains’ as too effusive to be disinterested. The fact was that the Americans wished to secure Canada mainly for reasons of strategy. They feared a British attack by land upon New England, and they wished to deny us naval bases in the St Lawrence River. There were, besides, powerful Red Indian tribes resident in Canada, which then extended through the central part of what is now New York State, and behind the western boundaries of the other colonies, as far south as the great Mississippi River. These the British might persuade to light the flame of war along the whole inland frontier from New England to Virginia. If the Americans could strike suddenly and victoriously at the Canadian posts and prove that the British were not invincible, they might perhaps swing the Indians across to their own side. However, the more immediate object of their invasion was the capture of military stores from our arsenals at Montreal, St John’s, Quebec, and other places, of which they stood in great need.
In England, no news had been received from Quebec for some months, owing to the freezing of the St Lawrence River, which cut our communications by sea. The last dispatches that had come were sent in the Adamant frigate, together with a few prisoners, on November 12th of the previous year. These told how Colonel Arnold’s men had burst into Canada by the back door, that is to say by way of the Kennebec and Chaudière rivers, and, after a march of incredible hardship and exertions over unmapped country were now within a mile of Quebec. Moreover, General Montgomery’s column was knocking at the front door, having moved up by the more familiar route of the Lakes George and Champlain; and the important posts of St John’s and Chambly, with their garrisons, had already fallen to him. Montreal, a city of twelve thousand inhabitants, the largest on the whole American continent, was to be abandoned to this second column for want of troops to defend it; so that in all Canada no place of importance but only Quebec remained in our hands.
It seemed evident that, soon as we disembarked upon the farther shore of the ocean, we would find ourselves hotly engaged with the American colonists, whose fighting abilities the news of Lexington and Bunker’s Hill had warned us not to underrate. It was therefore with indescribable emotions that early in the morning of April 8th I stood on the deck of the Friendship transport and eyed my native country, as we prepared to leave the harbour. It was bitterly cold for that time of year, though the sun was shining brightly, for a strong north-easterly wind blew. The exit to the cove was by means of a somewhat narrow strait. On the right hand stood the fortifications and the solidly built barracks which we had just quitted; the green hills beyond, spotted with white flocks of sheep, looked delightful as a background to the intervening blue waters. I leaned over the rail, gazing at them, and wondered when, if ever, I should look on them again. There was a certain luxuriousness in my melancholy, which almost drew tears from me, as it did from many of my messmates who were exceedingly drunk. In the Swallow transport, which lay a cable’s length from us, the military band of The Ninth was playing a lively air, and similar strains proceeded from several other ships of the three hundred which composed our convoy. Two fine frigates were to escort us: we could make out their top-sails at the head of the line.
Soon we heard the boom of signal guns, every mast-head broke out with bunting; one by one the ships’ crews heaved up their anchors and away slid the ships. The wind was favourable, the tide ran fast, and soon we were racing out through the strait with huzzas and nautical melodies, and the barrack buildings dwindled in the distance. I took a deep tug at my spirit flask, and after one more lingering view of Ireland, went below.
Mr Lindsay, the Scottish surgeon of The Ninth, who had been pleased to take a kindly interest in me, had given me much useful advice; for he was sailing in another and larger transport. I had inquired of him how best to keep myself and the men under my immediate supervision in good health during our passage. He observed, first, that during the first two weeks of sailing there was generally little sickness, except the usual nausea which persons unused to the sea feel and which have no ill effect. Against this sickness, abstinence from fluids was proper, and he recommended magnesia and walking on deck. After this first fortnight, however, a different diet became necessary. The men were given spirits and water instead of small beer, and were obliged to eat salted meat. This diet was not unwholesome, unless the water were putrid, which, however, was common both on the transports and the ships-of-war. Mr Lindsay recommended sweetening the water for the men of my mess by hoisting the butts out of the hold and pumping the contents with a hand-pump from one butt to another; and continuing this method every day, for three days, before the water was put into the scuttle-butt.
‘Above all,’ said Mr Lindsay, ‘if any of your men be sick, avoid if possible letting them be sent to the sick-bay, which has the worst circulation of air and which breeds disease in those who are confined there for some other cause – such as a broken limb – from the stench of their fellow-patients’ evacuations and putrid sweats. This bay is in general dark and its cleanliness but little inspected into. To save life, good air is indispensable.’
On the surgeon’s advice, I commenced a regimen of diet and living which was intended to season me for the severities and fatigues in store. I ate and drank sparingly, chose for my berth a place under the main hatchway, and slept on the boards.
Mr Lindsay had spoken very passionately in my hearing about the negligence which condemned good men to die of disease on ship-board. ‘More men by far are lost through injudicious management than by the violence of the most malignant diseases, especially in hot quarters of the globe. Putrid fevers are caught from the smell of the bilge-water lying at the ship’s bottom: this becomes dangerously fetid from the soft loam and muddy matter of the ballast, along with the filth thrown down by the crew. This noxious air acts so powerfully that articles of silver taken into the hold are quickly turned to a black colour; and that the men who pump this water from the bilge are often overcome with giddiness, headaches, and fatal fevers. Great heavens, surely in an empire established, as ours is, in the ocean, the inquiry of the Medical Faculty and the constant care of naval officers should be particularly devoted to maintaining cleanliness on board and making arrangements, both in shipbuilding and general nautical economy, to keep vessels well ventilated! Ill health among troops stowed together in cramped quarters on ship-board promotes riots, quarrels, and ill behaviour: terrible accidents may derive from causes which at first seem insignificant. If only the whole of the Regiment could be transported in one vast ship, so that I might be able to exercise some guiding control over the health of men and officers! But I cannot be everywhere at once in a flotilla of forty craft, and naval surgeons are not provided except on warships; nor will the generality of officers heed me when I impress upon them the graveness of their responsibility for the men’s health.’
We experienced rough weather almost as soon as we drew out of sight of land: we split one of our top-sails in a very high wind and broke some of our rigging, in which many sea-fowl became entangled, blown there by the force of the gale. The Friendship, in which the celebrated American privateer Paul Jones happened to have served his apprenticeship, was an old, crazy ship and rolled horribly, the gunwales being frequently under green water and the decks awash; so that the Captain was obliged to shut all the hatches. Hardly a soldier or soldier’s wife but was overcome by the most dreadful nausea, and since we were all landsmen on board, we fully expected the ship to founder: but most of us were past caring. This ill weather continued for four days, though the hatches were not battened down for more than twenty-four hours, and at the end of that time the greater part of the men were still prostrated. It was not until much later that we recollected an Irishism of one of our recruits sufficiently to laugh as it deserved; he had come down from a visit to the deck in an ecstasy of terror, bawling out: ‘O honeys, listen to me! We are all sure to be drowned, for the ship is sinking! Yet we shall be avenged, by my soul, for if she goes to the bottom that rogue of a captain will be accountable for our lives when we reach Quebec!’
At the height of the gale a soldier’s wife was brought to bed; on which occasion, as the only person aboard with the least pretence to surgical knowledge and the least affected of any of the troops by sea-sickness, I was called upon to act as man-midwife. Another soldier’s wife, who could not rise from her cot for weakness, offered me meanwhile not always coherent advice. I delivered the child creditably within three hours, and it survived the voyage. It will be wondered at, that I had the resolution to attempt this operation, when I tell my readers in what a place it was performed. The poor woman was stowed with two others and their husbands, all prostrated, besides three children (one of whom had a quinsy, from which it subsequently died) in a cabin which was a cube of seven feet – that is, seven feet long, seven feet broad, and seven feet high. Among these others was Mortal Harry and his wife, whom, when I first set eyes upon her and heard her tongue, I judged at once to be God’s requital on him for his own wicked character. For one thing only I could feel grateful: that Harlowe and Mrs Harlowe were not of this number. She was being employed as lady’s maid, on another ship, by the wife of the adjutant.
After a week the weather improved, though the sun seldom pierced the clouds, and I was able to spend a deal of my time on deck. Lieutenant Sweetenham, who commanded the troops on the Friendship, was desired by the Captain to keep the private soldiers between decks as much as possible, since they interfered with the management of the ship. He consented, though I had already acquainted him with Surgeon Lindsay’s views about the healthfulness of fresh air. I now urged that to spend a mere two hours a day on deck, which was all that they were now allowed, and which was occupied by arms drill, was a prejudice to their health; but the Lieutenant continued to defer to the Captain, at whose table he ate, and nothing was done in the matter. Lieutenant Sweetenham was a veteran officer, worn out by the service, to whom a disagreeable voyage was no novelty and who also considered that the men should not be pampered on any account. However, I went to the Mate, who happened to be acquainted with my father and was a good-natured man, and asked permission for the men directly under my charge to be allowed to come up on deck during his daylight watch to perform fatigue duties under his supervision. To this he was pleased to agree, since it saved his own men labour. I would allow no man to plead nausea as an excuse from this duty and was often obliged to tie a rope about some of the lazy ones, and have them hauled out into the fresh air by their more vigorous messmates. As a further precaution against contagious disorders, I made every man wash and comb himself every morning; and every day, unless it rained, had the beds brought up on deck to be aired, and the berths sprinkled with vinegar. In consequence, I had far fewer men on the sick list in my mess of twenty-five than in the other, which was Mortal Harry’s, or than in messes of other transports.
Brooks the Dipper, on the thirteenth day of the voyage, so far forgot the promise of good conduct that he had made to Major Bolton that he stole a linen shirt from Smutchy Steel’s knapsack. Smutchy reported the loss to me and I knew at once where to seek for the missing garment, there being no dram-shop keepers aboard to act as receivers of purloined goods: I found Brooks wearing it under his own.
When Lieutenant Sweetenham was informed of the crime he decided to flog Brooks on the coming Sunday after divine service: ‘for,’ he said, smiling, ‘who knows but that if I defer the penalty until we reach America, we may all be drowned beforehand and justice cheated? The King made a pretty hard bargain, Private Brooks, when he engaged you.’
Brooks decided, on the contrary, that he would rather drown than suffer another lashing. The next afternoon, soon as I brought my mess upon deck for our daily fatigue duty, Brooks broke from the party and running forward to the forecastle, leaped headlong into the sea. The vessel in a moment made her way over him, and he arose at the stern. We were travelling at a rate which seemed about that of a man walking fast. I instantly ran to the cabin where the Captain and the Lieutenant were dining and crying ‘Man overboard!’ burst in without a knock: for which lack of manners I was called a ‘damned insolent rascal’ by the Captain, who continued with his meal unperturbed. He presently complained, in a surly way, after eating a mouthful or two, that this pother came of permitting troops to go on deck at irregular hours. Nevertheless, at Lieutenant Sweetenham’s insistence, he ordered the ship to be put about, and the boat to be hoisted out and manned.
I then returned anxiously to the deck and was relieved to make out the form of Brooks, at a little distance ahead of us, swimming strongly. He hoped, I dare say, to be picked up by some other ship of the convoy, at least a dozen sail of which lay astern within half a mile of us. He was soon overhauled and it was with some difficulty that the sailors could force him into the boat. When he was brought back to the ship he was ordered between decks and a sentinel placed over him until the Sunday morning. However, that night he was found to be in a high fever and continued very bad until almost the last day of the voyage, when Lieutenant Sweetenham mitigated the award to forty strokes of the rope’s end, which was as much as he was judged capable of enduring. These were duly inflicted.
On the last day of April, at about nine o’clock, a little girl, the elder of the two grown children from the married cabin, came running up to me and, ‘O, Mr Lamb, dear Mr Lamb,’ she cried, ‘I believe that mother will murder father. For pity’s sake, Mr Lamb, come at once and unbuckle them.’
I could not, in humanity, assure the child (who was, perhaps, seven years old) that, for all I cared, both her parents, who were Mortal Harry and his wife, Terrible Annie, might tear each other to little shreds and goblets and be heartily welcome. I therefore hurried to the cabin, where I found the place in indescribable confusion, for breakfast had been in progress when the battle began. On the floor, in the narrow space between the bunks, the two drunken creatures were rolling among the wreckage of their meal, grappled together with the fearful, deadly fury of snake and vulture.
I had once been warned by my father never on any account to intervene in any quarrel or altercation between man and wife. ‘Each,’ he said, ‘will equally resent it and make common cause against you.’ But here was an exception to an excellent rule, for, being both beside themselves, neither seemed to notice my presence, not even when with a great effort I disengaged the woman’s clutching hands from Mortal Harry’s throat, so that he was narrowly preserved from throttling.
They rose – he to a crouching, and she to a kneeling posture – and glared at each other, without a word. His face was mottled with blood, and one ear torn. At last he said in an odd, pitiful, complaining tone, to curdle the blood – and using no oaths, neither, which was remarkable: ‘So you are too fine a lady to eat salted pork, are you, Annie, you touchy, passionate, ill-natured, contradictory woman? You would rather see me drowned first, you say? My dear, is that the truth now? You would rather see your Harry drown?’
‘It would make my heart sing psalms, you great Limerick ape,’ she replied, ‘to know that you were fifty fathoms under the keel.’
Without another word Mortal Harry rushed out of the cabin and up the companion-ladder. The woman went slowly prowling after him, hissing between her teeth. I remained behind, to pacify the children and restore some sort of order to the cabin; for the sake of the poor mother of the child that I had delivered, who lay screaming in an hysterical manner, with a blanket thrown over her face. Suddenly the alarm of ‘Man overboard!’ was raised, and we felt the jar of the vessel being turned hard about. We were making six knots at the time, and there was a heavy swell. I hurried on deck to find Terrible Annie leaning against the fore-mast, laughing at her loudest. This occasioned great scandal among the seamen who heard her, for Mortal Harry had sunk to the bottom like a plummet and was seen no more. They threatened to throw her after him if she did not cease her cackle; but nothing would make her desist, so I called a drummer and a file of men who forced her below.
Let me here interpose as a remarkable fact that this poor widow had no difficulty at all in funding another mate; but so just were the workings of Providence, or whatever supernatural power regulates these matters, that the man she hit upon was Buchanan, the very same drunken corporal from whose depredations we had suffered so severely as recruits. The conclusion of that story I will not here anticipate.
Accidents are generally found to run in sequences of three, and this was no exception to the rule. Casey, the recruit whom I had been at such trouble to apprehend when he tried to desert in Dublin, was on deck four days later, during the drill hour; I was in charge of the parade. He had been provoked throughout the voyage by his comrades, who taunted him with the name of Jail-hound and with a legend of his having hanged his old mother in order to gain a small legacy by her decease. This he took very ill, and his obvious discomfiture encouraged his messmates to tease him further. It is true that he had been recruited in Downpatrick Jail, where he was confined on suspicion of some crime of violence, but murder was never imputed to him. When I gave the parade an order to stand easy, after the completion of an exercise, they proceeded as usual to chaff Casey. I did not prevent them, because that was outside my range of duty and, besides, the man had treated me very badly in deserting after I had advanced him money from my own pocket. Smutchy Steel now made some blockish remark, which was like a spark in the priming-pan. Casey stood and harangued them all in a high screaming voice, uttering dreadful curses upon them, and wishing that they might all soon become miserable and comfortless captives in the farthest parts of America, and suffer at their enemies’ hands all and more than he had lately suffered from his supposed comrades. Then, in his full accoutrements, he ran and leapt off the forecastle from exactly the same spot that Brooks and Mortal Harry had chosen before him. The great deep swallowed him up in a moment.
These deaths greatly sobered the remainder of us, especially Smutchy Steel, who came to me the following day and asked as a favour whether I would instruct him in reading and writing! I readily consented and he learned very quick. There were no further casualties among the troops, in spite of salt-tack, weevil-ridden biscuit, and an increasing foulness of the water with which we mixed our grog. Even of this water there proved to be an insufficiency, the Captain having as a speculation filled a number of our water-butts with porter for sale to the Quebec garrison on his arrival. He prevented me also from sweetening the water for my mess in the manner recommended by Surgeon Lindsay, by withholding the hand-pumps necessary for the task lest we should damage them. I fell back upon the alternative method, of scalding the water with irons made red-hot in the galley-furnace. The butts were old wine-butts, improperly cleaned, and in consequence many of us suffered much from dysentery, a miserable complaint for which the only specific we had was to swallow in brandy the rust scraped off an anchor-stock. The captains of transports were in general a set of men who had their own interest far closer at heart than the welfare of their country.
Towards the middle of May we approached the Banks of Newfoundland, which are a surprising range of sunken mountains, extending in a direct line not less than three hundred and thirty miles in length, and about seventy-five in breadth. The top of the ridge, which at its highest reaches within five fathoms of the water’s surface, is frequented by vast multitudes of lesser fish on which the excellent cod feeds, fattens, and multiplies in inconceivable quantities. Though hundreds of vessels have been laden for centuries past from thence, no scarcity or decrease of cod happens.
During the greater part of our passage across the Banks we never saw the sun, owing to the thick, hazy atmosphere which prevails in that part of the ocean. For two days together a total darkness like midnight covered the sky, so that a continuous firing of guns and beating of drums was needed to enable the ships of the convoy to keep due distance and avoid fouling one another. There was also the danger of running down fishing-vessels, from whose unseen decks hoarse shouts of warning against collision frequently arose. In spite of such risks it was customary for convoys to travel along a depression in the middle of the Banks, which was named the Ditch. The water here was as calm as in a bay, though the winds on either side were extremely impetuous.
At last came a stiff wind and with it a break in the fog. We saw the disc of the sun, dim and red, but gradually blazing with what seemed to us more than its usual splendour. In the welcome light we observed how numerous a congregation of fishing-vessels, large and small, lay about us. In times of peace, we were told, more than three thousand sail were annually to be counted there. A vast flock of seafowl was in attendance on the vessels, wheeling above them and ever and again swooping down to the decks to snatch up a cod’s head or some other fishy prize. Besides the familiar gulls and many larger birds of the same feather, we observed a flightless, swimming, knowing sort, called penguins. They were sporting in pairs here and there, and ducking deep down in the water in chase of fish. Here the sea was no longer of the usual azure blue, but of a sandy white colour. We were now permitted to supplement our diet of salt meat and maggoty biscuit with fresh-caught cod. We baited a hook first with the entrails of a fowl and soon pulled up a fish. The hook was then baited with the entrails of this fish, which was gutted in its turn, and presently we were hauling in cod as fast as one can imagine. The water magnified the size of them so that it seemed almost impossible to get them aboard, and their struggles were very obdurate.
The right of fishing on these Banks, though by the law of nature it should have been common to all nations, had been appropriated by the French and British, who at this time had frigates constantly cruising there to prevent encroachment by ships of other nations. And, by an Act of the previous year, the revolted colonists of New England had been excluded from the Banks, though it was on the cod-fishery that their wealth had been founded and was still largely maintained. The New Englanders took this very hard, and the fishermen of Marblehead and Salem who lost their employment because of the Act were, as privateers, to do us more mischief in the war almost than any other class of Americans.
We passed close by several of these fishing-vessels, which had galleries erected on the outside of the rigging from the main-mast to the stern, and sometimes the whole length of the ship. On the galleries were ranged barrels with the tops struck out, into which the fishermen would get to shelter themselves from the weather. The stay of these vessels on the Banks was but short, for the method of curing was as quick as the catching. As soon as the cod was hauled up, the fisherman cut out its tongue, then passed it to a mate who struck off its head, plucked out liver and entrails, and tossed it to a third hand, who drew out the bone as far as the navel; then down the carcass went into the hold. In the hold stood men who salted and ranged the cod-fish in exact piles, taking care that just sufficient salt was laid between each row of fish to prevent them from touching.
It was on this sunny day, May 14th, that we first saw icebergs; but these were small bergs floated down from the St Lawrence River. Four days later we had a view of the mountains of Newfoundland, covered with snow. We had been forty days at sea without landfall and this dreary island was therefore very pleasant to our eyes. On the following day we entered the noble Bay of St Lawrence our fleet being all in sight. We doubled Cape Rosier and found ourselves in the St Lawrence River itself, which at this place is no less than ninety miles in breadth, with very boisterous water. Soon we were boarded by our first visitor from the New World, at whom we all gazed with the greatest interest, as if to divine from his appearance what sort of fate we were destined to encounter
He was a French-Canadian pilot, a low-statured, yellow-faced, merry man dressed in seal-skin jacket, well-tarred trousers and stout sea-boots. He affected also a prodigiously long pig-tail, bound with eel-skins, a heavy gilt crucifix about his neck and a round cap of white fox fur.
It was from this person that we heard the first particulars of the recent fighting, which had favoured our arms. The frigate had the day before signalled the fleet the good news that, though Montreal had been in American hands for some months now, the British standard still flew at Quebec. The pilot assured us, it was not to be expected that the Americans would stand their ground much longer, hearing of our approach. It was therefore with relieved minds and no immediate expectation of battle that we continued our voyage up the river.
We passed by Bored Island, so called from an opening in its middle through which a small schooner might pass with her sails up; and Miscou Island with its excellent harbour, in the offing of which a fresh spring spouted up to a considerable height from the salt water; and the Island of Birds, shaped like a sugar-loaf, which gave off a most insufferable stench from the droppings of the innumerable sea-fowl that nested upon it – we sent our boat to it, which returned laden with eggs; and the large Island of Anticosti which, upon my inquiry, the pilot represented as absolutely good for nothing.
In the third week of May, we saw, for the first time since we left Ireland, houses and cultivated land: a number of pleasant-looking French plantations upon Mounts Notre Dame and St Louis. Our navigation grew slow; for, after the river narrowed to about nine miles across at Red Island, shoals, sunken rocks, and whirlpools became frequent. It was here that I caught my first sight of the Indian aboriginals: three of them (of whom one appeared to be a chief by his feathered head-dress) passed within musket-shot of us in a birch-bark canoe, which they paddled downstream with inconceivable celerity. Their faces were painted with green stripes and they paid no attention at all to us when we hailed them.
Before the week was out we had passed by several more islands, but these for the most part well inhabited and cultivated. Stone churches, wayside crucifixes, and neat, whitewashed buildings with boarded roofs were now to be seen almost everywhere; and well-kept woods of red pine-trees, valuable for their profuse yield of turpentine, which we thought very graceful besides. The river-water was sweet to the taste at last, having been brackish for the first three hundred and thirty miles up from the ocean.
In the fourth week we entered a part of the river where the stream was no more than a mile across, and came to our destination – the noble port of Quebec, remarkable for being able to accommodate one hundred ships of the line at four hundred and twenty miles distance from the ocean. The newly arrived troops were not permitted to go ashore, except for a short fatigue-duty across the river at Point Levy, since there was fighting promised for them farther up the ever; but disappointment was assuaged by the fresh meat, poultry, and vegetables brought aboard. I was fortunate enough to be an exception to this rule against the allowance of shore-leave; for I was sent to the Upper Town with a detachment of The Ninth, which as the eldest regiment was chosen to provide guards for the day. I had a great curiosity to visit Quebec, if only for the sake of childish memories of the Heights of Abraham (represented by our wood-shed) and the death of that hero, Major-General Sir James Wolfe.