Rule, Britannia! Last Call: Schooner Days CMLIV (954)

by C. H. J. Snider

TING-DING! TING-DING!" the bell on the forecastle head of the U.S.S. Scorpion struck, at 6 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 6th, 1813, as, she lay secure at anchor in the Detour Passage, in northern Lake Huron.

"Four bells!" roared the Scorpion's gunner, in charge of the morning watch. "Buckets and brooms! Sand and holystones! Stand by to wash down"

From the corner of his eye he saw the man-of-war's consort, the U.S.S. Tigress steering towards them from' her night's anchorage.

"Pass the word Tigress standing down!" the gunner shouted to the boatswain as the wash buckets began to splash.

"Pass the word less row about washing down or the watch's grog will be stopped!" was the acknowledgment from the cabin companionway. The commander of the Scorpion did not relish his breakfast if called too early.

He did not relish this one.

Ship's bells strike every thirty minutes. Before the Scorpion's could strike the next half hour she had changed hands. And flags. Her consort, unknown to have been captured two nights before in a bloody boarding battle by British rowboats, ran her aboard as she came alongside through the early morning mist, drove her whole crew below with banging of muskets and clash of cutlasses, bayonets and boarding pikes, and sent the good three-crossed flag of St. George, St. Andrew and St. Patrick aloft, to greet the rising sun.

So the U.S.S. Scorpion became H.M.S. Confiance in almost the twinkling of an eye—and the flagship of the resuscitated British fleet of the Upper Lakes. Two nights ago there had been none. Now, with the captured Tigress, renamed better H.M.S. Surprise, there was a two-ship navy under the British ensign for the protection of our heritage.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS

It is hard for us at the midway milestone of the twentieth century to realize what an "establishment" the taxpayer in Britain maintained, thousands of miles away in such a remote spot as Penetanguishene, that we might inherit baby bonuses and old age pensions and all that goes between.

"Establishment" is the official name of the institution there which made possible the present Canada. Britain paid the shot, every cent of it, and British sailors and British soldiers did the work.

They cut the roads, and dug the canals, and surveyed the Great Lakes. Our best charts are based on Admiral Bayfield's survey, and that survey was based upon Penetang. The Place of the White Bolling Sands was the Ultima Thule from which Sir John Franklin plunged to his unknown fate in the exploration of the Arctic coasts of Canada, and Captain Ross, R.N., used it on his Polar discoveries. From Penetang John Galt sallied forth in 1827 to lay out the Huron tract of the Canada Company, and found Goderich, Galt and Western Ontario towns.

123 YEARS AGO

"We reached Penetanguishene, the remotest and most inland dockyard that owes obedience to the meteor flag of England, where, by orders of the Admiralty, His Majesty's gunboat the Bee was placed at my disposal. By the way, the letter from the Admiralty was a curious specimen of the geographical knowledge which then prevailed there, inasmuch as it mentioned that the vessel was to go with me on Lake Huron, "in Lower Canada."

The "naval blue" and beef and bone of British hearts-of-oak pulled the oar and hove the lead mile by mile, fathom by fathom, from St. Lawrence to Superior to chart the lake path for the greatest annual water borne commerce the world has seen, and to wrest a Dominion from the wilderness—not for any Government, for you and for me. John Bull paid for it.

For the same purpose the thin red line of British regiments stretched from the Horse Guards in Whitehall to Penetang, at the cost of the British taxpayer.

There are some eloquent tombstones in the Establishment cemetery opposite Magazine Island—which latter was once Dobson's Isle, after Midshipman Dobson, who fought under Lieut. Miller Worsley in the Battle of the Nancy and helped him capture the Tigress and the Scorpion, One stone was "Erected by Michael McCabe in memory of his daughter Rosana McCabe, who departed this life on the 3rd April, 1832, aged 10 years and 27 days. May the Lord have mercy on hir soul."

Poor Michael and poor little Rosana! We may be sure He will. Michael's regiment is not stated, but he may have been an Irish lad who sang "Fare ye well Enniskillen, fare ye well for a while," to come out with the 79th Regiment, though it was Scotch.

Close by a similar stone is "Erected by their Comrades to the Memory of Privates John and Samuel McGarrity, two brothers, late of the 79th Regt., who died on the march to this Post on the 2nd June, 1831. John aged 25, Sam'l AGED 23 years.In the midst of life we are in Death."

The brothers are said to have died of heat prostration on the march up Yonge street from York, when near the end of the trail, on an unseasonably hot June night. Yonge street was early cut through to Holland Landing and continued on to Penetang.

MOTHERS' ALLOWANCES

What mother in the Old Country mourned these boys who never came back from the Canadian bush?

How many British mothers gave their sons that detachments of the 34th Cumberland Regiment of Foot, under Lieut. Hutton, and of the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders, under Lieut, Hay, and of the 84th, under Lieut. West, and these 79th Cameron Highlanders, might fell trees and dig ditches and put Yonge street through? And hew barrack stone and build canals and docks, with the Royal Marines and the bluejackets at Penetang a century and more ago.

Another quaint tombstone—of well preserved white oak—is kept within the Church of St. James on the Lines, "in the forest between the Establishment and the Village," where, as Capt. Bonnycastle recorded in 1841, "a clergyman is constantly stationed for the army, navy and civilians."

It is so to this day. The army and navy have been gone for ninety years, but the civilians, reinforced, by tourists and summer cottagers, have increased and multiplied, and St. James on the Lines ministers to their moral, spiritual and physical welfare, after the Anglican rite. We found the Rev. Mr. McLaren, the clergyman, an English gentleman, whatever his racial origin, and as they say elsewhere, they don't come finer.

BACK TO THE BELL

In Penetang Catholic and Protestant, those who speak English and those who speak French, are called to worship, to prayer and praise to the same Father in heaven, by the bells of warships captured by the blood and bravery of British tars defending Canada a hundred and thirty-six years ago. St. Anne's Jesuit Memorial Church has one, St. James-on-the-Lines another.

Which brings us back, "on tack and half-tack turning," to hearing and seeing the Scorpion's bell — which I think should ring backward to express Canadian indignation at a minister of the Crown condoning and attempting, to defend, driving out "Rule, Britannia!" from the band-book of the Royal Canadian Navy.

Next thing we'll have "God Save the Gov't," for a national anthem.

Old Oaken Tombstone in St. James:-