Halifax was the origin of Brigadier General McClean’s troops and Captain Mowat’s ships that established Fort George and the Loyalist settlement at Penobscot. It was also the most crucial naval base for a broad area, including the Gulf of St Lawrence, Newfoundland’s Grand Banks and the Gulf of Maine. Since the Seven Years’ War, it had been part of the Atlantic supply and defense chain with convoys sailing to Halifax and then New York, where a surplus of supplies was maintained for further distribution.1
Early in the war, New Englanders hoped to coax Nova Scotia into becoming the fourteenth colony of their rebellion. As with Canada, however, Nova Scotians remained within the British Empire during the war. This was because Nova Scotia was dominated by a strong British military presence, in which many owed their livelihood to Halifax’s careening yard and its related facilities. Unlike most of the colonies to the south, Nova Scotia’s economy had lost what little agrarian basis it had, when the Acadians were deported in 1755. Halifax became Nova Scotia’s chief economic engine as it was the only naval careening yard for the mainland colonies of British North America.2 Nova Scotia farmers provided fresh beef, spruce beer, hay and cordwood for the navy base. British dominance was not only economic, but also political and social. While Nova Scotia had an elected assembly like the rebellious colonies and after the Seven Years’ War was settled by New Englanders, it was controlled by Halifax merchants, whose interests were tied to the naval and mercantile establishment. Nova Scotia’s people were not about to give up the prosperity they had achieved because of the Royal Navy’s presence in Halifax.
Halifax port is a result of the Sackville River emptying into a basin, divided between an inner and outer harbor, along Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coast. It was the closest to Europe of any North American port. During the Seven Years’ War, it had served as a naval counter to the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, which had been restored to the French at the peace table in 1748. Ten years later, Louisbourg was taken by the British and systematically razed. From then on Halifax became popular with the Navy Board because of the ‘convenient situation of His Majesty’s yard …, its utility for heaving down ships stationed in North America, and supplying them with stores, and the preservation of the wharfs, storehouses, and other works erected there in the course of the war’.3 In October 1764, an Admiralty court opened in Halifax for the adjudication of prizes. By the 1780s, Halifax’s careening yard would actually be capable of copper bottoming ships. Still, it never reached the importance of English dockyards as it failed to have the required dry docks for building ships and this detracted from its ability to support the navy during a war.
Located a mile north of the town, the Halifax careening yard initially consisted of a capstan house with a rotating machine for hauling, along with a careening wharf, a mast house and associated mast and spar ponds, and a boathouse and storehouses.4 A sail loft was added in 1769 and three years later a dockyard clock was installed. Ultimately, a stone wall would enclose the whole. The commissioner of the yard verified workers’ attendance and approved extended work hours. After a new hospital was built, dockyard workers told the commissioner that they would be willing to have a deduction made from their pay to give them access to the assistant surgeon when they were sick. This became the basis of the yard’s medical system. During the Revolution, the dockyard employed just under 200 men, only a fraction of a Royal Navy dockyard in England, but considering that Halifax’s civilian population was only 3,500, those jobs were economically significant.
Halifax’s dockyard jobs had long been monopolized by white British immigrant families, who perpetuated their control by apprenticing their sons and relatives, and through intermarriage.5 As in the British dockyards, positions were meant to be held for lifetime, so that it was difficult for outsiders to gain jobs, especially if they did not have the requisite skills. When the war broke out, skilled workers were lacking at Halifax and 142 smiths, shipwrights and caulkers were recruited from the dockyards at Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth. They formed the nucleus of the workforce and mounted guard every night for the protection of the careening yard. After five years, when the contracts for these English artificers expired, as they could not be replaced locally, the commissioner was forced to request that ‘ten shipwrights, four joiners, and a block maker’ be sent from England. The Navy Board replied that while it would advertise the positions, it could not ‘keep pace with the wants of the fleet’, and it was unable to fill the request.6 Obviously, the lack of these skills in Halifax perpetuated the influence of British families over the yard’s positions. Acadians before their expulsion and blacks during the Revolution were never employed at the dockyard. It was not only them; most whites were also shut out of the low-paying but secure jobs at the yard.
One aspect unique to the naval yard was the excursion of shipwrights directly into the woods to obtain spars or timber when supplies were exhausted. They could cut and haul trees to the nearest stream to be floated to the yard’s mast pond.7 Parties from ships’ companies assisted them in doing this. During the Revolution, Halifax was able to send so-called sticks to other Royal Navy dockyards like New York and even to the West Indies.
To tie Nova Scotia’s economy to the careening yard, commissioners noted that Halifax was surrounded by ample quantities of trees for masts and other sticks, so that its dockyard did not have to import these items from England, Scandinavia or Russia. An effort had been made to supply masts to the Royal Navy dockyards from Cape Breton Island. When the first shipment of masts reached England in 1779, however, the Navy Board found them ‘so knotty’ that they declined to order any more of similar quality.8 The Saint John River valley, New Brunswick, proved to be a better source of masts, yards, bowsprits and small spars for both the Halifax and New York dockyards. In 1781, a contract was concluded with the newly created local partnership of Franklin, Hazen and White to supply masts for English dockyards. It helped that the new firm also dealt in furs, which were sent to the London firm of Brook Watson and Robert Rashleigh. Halifax would become the firm’s entrepôt for overseas trade.
Early in the war, Halifax’s defenses lacked troops. In 1776, it was thought necessary to reinforce Halifax to support the rescue of besieged Quebec. When Marriot Arbuthnot arrived at Halifax to be the new commissioner of the dockyard, he found it so poorly defended that he had to take marines from and delay the departure of the Roebuck that carried him there.9 He attempted to get along with his Assembly and to defend Fort Cumberland, Liverpool and Yarmouth, but it turned out that some Nova Scotia communities actually sheltered New England privateers. When he left in August 1778, Halifax was secure, but the Nova Scotia coast remained open to privateers.
By mid-1780, when George Washington evaluated a map of Halifax Harbor and its defenses, made by Boston merchant James Bowdoin, he concluded, ‘[Halifax] appears to be very strong and to have had much attention [paid] to its security latterly.’10 Still, while Halifax itself had impressive fortifications on paper, mounting 150 guns, only eighty-five artillerymen existed to man them.
Halifax developed two interrelated communities: the military and the civilian, which often were at odds with each other. Specifically, a large population of poor camp followers had been abandoned there when the Seven Years’ War ceased, and they continued in need of feeding, clothing and shelter.11 Smallpox had also been introduced by troops in the Seven Years’ War and it reappeared at the beginning of the Revolution and continued to be a problem.
These problems were enhanced in late March 1776, when Admiral Molyneux Shuldham successfully evacuated Boston and carried General Howe’s army to Halifax. Briefly, the town was the center of British activity to quell rebellious Massachusetts. It, however, was unable to meet the strain of Howe’s 8,900 soldiers, 1,100 Loyalists and 553 children.12 Rents and the price of provisions skyrocketed, especially for the civilian Loyalists. In support of the navy, but to the dismay of upstanding Loyalists, the town exploded with brewers, taverns, inns and bawdy houses, some of them at the very entrance to the careening yard. The streets swarmed with military recruits and the town was described as filthy and riddled with disease, providing every known vice to those who could afford it. The respectable, who could fund their passage, quickly moved to England. Luckily, Howe was anxious to leave and carry the war to New York so that the army was transported there in June.
Howe’s departure renewed a problem which had plagued Halifax since its founding, as every time a major expedition left, a large number of transient women and children remained to be charges on the community’s fledgling workhouse and poor house. Howe left 2,030 women and children when he embarked.13 Halifax authorities approached the Lords of Trade for relief, but they were refused additional support for these indigents, as the Board defended the right of ship captains to rid themselves of the burden by leaving them. Some relief for transient military wives was provided by employing them to prepare oakum, a tarred fiber used to caulk seams.
Admiral Howe’s favorite captain, Andrew Hamond, was named resident commissioner and lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia. He had come to Halifax because he was not ready to retire from the American War, which he believed could still be won. While visiting England, he had set his sights on the Halifax and Nova Scotia posts.14 The authorities had promised him that he would ultimately succeed to the governorship of Nova Scotia and on this basis he accepted the positions. He arrived in Halifax during the night of July 29, 1781, with Lady Anne and his son Graham Eden, who was only a year and half old. Hamond was sworn into office five days later. It was the first time he had brought his family with him to America, as he was now shore based. Although permission was possible, the navy frowned on taking one’s wife aboard a warship and he had never done it, so their presence was a pleasant perk of his new position.
Health care in Halifax’s civilian, military, naval and prisoner hospitals was improving, supported by the arrival of numerous Loyalist surgeons. Hamond specifically needed to improve Halifax’s naval hospital, which he found to be a disgrace. It was located in a deteriorating commercial warehouse, built on piles over the water, with scarce a roof or floors to it. He saw it was ‘absolutely necessary to prepare for building a hospital in the spring’.15 He found a 3-acre site north of the naval yard and on the harbor but away from the town and the naval burial yard. Bids were called for in December 1781 and John Loader, the yard’s master shipwright, was placed in charge of the construction. Funded by the Navy Board, the new facility eventually cost almost £8,000, and when opened at Christmas 1782, it accommodated 200 patients in four wards. The staff consisted of a surgeon, a purveyor, a dispenser who acted as assistant surgeon, nurses for every ten to twelve patients, a matron, cook and porter, and two laborers. Its first physician was the Rhode Island Loyalist John Halliburton.
Another problem was the hundreds of enemy prisoners who arrived in Halifax, where no prison was large enough to hold them. Hamond had to hire a transport, the prison ship Stanislaus, that was fitted out to hold 400 prisoners in decent conditions.16 A bulkhead with doors and loopholes was erected to separate the prisoners from the guard and the main deck was covered against the weather as it contained the necessary house. The captured seamen had clothes and blankets brought to them, to prevent the prison ship from becoming a watery grave. This contrasted with the situation of prison ships in New York.
Manning ships in Halifax was a continuous burden. In the winter of 1780–81 a Halifax grand jury and the Court of Quarter Sessions protested against the navy’s impressment of seamen from Lunenburg, Liverpool and Chester, who had been pressed when they innocently came to Halifax to purchase provisions and fuel. They asked Governor Sir Richard Hughes to intervene and he issued a proclamation in January 1781 reminding all that ‘impressing Men for the Kings Service, without permission of the Civil Authorities, is contrary to, and an Outrageous breach of Law’.17
Seven months later, Hamond could only meet naval manpower needs by discreet impressment, showing respect for local laws governing the controversial activity. When Captain Thomas Russell of the Hussar attempted to fill his crew, he went to Hamond, who allowed him to press ‘old Countrymen’ among deserters. However, as the army could not spare soldiers to serve as his marines, Russell still came up short and had no alternative, but further impressment.18 Hamond was willing to let Russell do it in Halifax, but only if he received the town’s permission. Halifax authorities were willing, but limited the press to ‘an early hour of the evening’, and the press gang had to be accompanied by local peace officers, who would supervise its activities. Russell also had to ensure that ‘none of the Inhabitants, People belonging to market Boats, or Fishermen are allowed to be impressed.’
Given the restrictions on the press, Hamond was forced to take additional steps to man his ships and transports. He encouraged crew sharing between vessels to avoid impressment. After granting Russell permission to press in Halifax, he ordered the sloop Albany to anchor off Mauger’s Beach ‘for the purpose of impressing seamen out of the merchant Ships inward bound, and to search all those that go out for Deserters from the Navy’.19 As a result of these strategies, Hamond’s tenure saw no further disturbances over impressment.
In September 1782, Hamond found that because of desertion from his transports ‘the Ships now ordered for Spanish River [coal mines] cannot proceed for want of hands.’20 One reason for these desertions was that American prisoners working in the Cape Breton Island coal mines had volunteered to serve in the Royal Navy to get out of the mines. British authorities knew they were likely to desert. Another cause of desertions was competition with the King’s Orange Rangers, a Loyalist unit based in Halifax. Its commander, Major John Bayard, claimed he had ‘a right to enlist any seamen that does not belong to any of His Majesty’s Ships’. Hamond had to ask the military commander in Halifax to intervene with Bayard, so as to discharge two transport seamen who had enlisted in the Rangers and prevent further transport seamen from being lured away.
Despite its problems, Halifax grew as a naval base during the Revolutionary War. It sustained the greater part of Nova Scotia’s economy, which made the province loyal to the crown. No serious rebel effort was ever made to attack it, as its naval defenses were too strong. The greatest challenge for Halifax’s commanders would be to protect the Nova Scotia coast.