Acorn of the R.C.N. H.M. Provincial Marine: Schooner Days CMXCI (991)

by C. H. J. Snider

NOW we have H.M.C.S. Sioux greeted by 25,000 people at Victoria as first back from the Korean war. Sioux was the smallest of four destroyers sent. This week an officer from her was at the Shellbacks Club luncheon. And H.M.C.S. Ontario, 10,000 ton cruiser, left Esquimalt this week for 15,000 miles cruising in the South Pacific.

"Two leaky destroyers locked up in a garage in Halifax" was the Canadian navy as described around 1920 by T. L. Church, KC, MP, seven times Mayor of Toronto. At the beginning of the last war (we hoped) it was six modern destroyers and five small minesweepers and two training ships, one of them the sailing yacht Glencairn. Schull's Official Account of Canadian Naval Operations in World War II names 392 "principal ships" with their officers. Of these 68 were fairmiles and motor torpedo boats, 126 corvettes, 73 frigates, 68 minesweepers, 24 destroyers, 13 Algerines, 3 cruisers, 2 escort carriers, 2 depot ships, 2 armed merchantmen, 6 armed yachts, 5 patrol vessels.

All this argosy, more numerous than the Spanish armada, sprang from schooner days.

Yes, the first British keel of any kind to cleave the blue waters of the Great Lakes was a schooner's. This schooner was the origin of His Majesty's Provincial Marine, and the Provincial Marine was the ancestress of the Royal Canadian Navy.

If you have never heard of the Provincial Marine (nobody, it seems, has) you are going to hear about it now.

FOUGHT FOUR WARS

The Provincial Marine fought four wars for Canada, and founded one of the world - great transportation systems.

It fought the French out of America in the Seven Years War, it broke Pontiac's siege of Detroit in the Indian wars, it held every British post on the Great Lakes in the War of American Independence, and it fought to victory in the War of 1812.

But it did not rust or rot in peace time as there was not only Britain's naval force in America, but Canada's whole transportation system. The Great Lakes and rivers were the only trunk lines and highways until roads were cut through the wilderness and railways began.

The Provincial Marine handled all the freight and passenger traffic of the incoming Loyalists and early immigration and all the requirements of the civil administration of the growing provinces. It was thus the mother of the fleets of schooners which private enterprise provided, and the grandmother of the present 3,000 steel steamers and motorships, Canadian and American, which transport 200,000,000 tons of essenentials annually for the fifty million population of the Great Lakes area.

"PROVINCIAL ROYAL NAVY"

This forgotten service was first merely His Majesty's vessels for in land America, then the naval force for the Quarter Master General's Department of the army, in 1765 the Provincial Marine of Canada, and in 1812 His Majesty's Provincial Royal Navy.

"All able-bodied seamen who are willing to enter into the service of His Majesty's Provincial Royal Navy on the Lakes and Rivers of Upper and Lower Canada are invited"-by advertisement, Montreal Herald 26 Sept., 1812—,"to rendezvous at the house of Mrs. Grant, at the sign of the Sugar-Loaf, Montreal. Bounty $20 for each able-bodied and $12 for each ordinary seaman; PAY $8 PER MONTH, payable at the end of every two months." The hours were certainly more than 40 a week and there was overtime.

The service was not intended as a little navy for each province, but received its "Provincial" appellation because it was provided for the new British Province of Canada after the conquest. Upper Canada did have a provincial armed vessel for its civil administration, ordered by Simcoe.

GOD SPEED ONTARIO

HMCS Ontario might well have III after her name, for so was called the first decked vessel armed with carriage guns in the Provincial Marine. And so was named another very fine ship, a square-rigger designed in England and built a Carleton Island, just below Kingston, in 1780. Hers was the greatest tragedy that befell a sailing vessel in all Great Lakes history. We shall keep our fingers crossed for Ontario III, remembering that there is luck in odd numbers and that all the other Ontarios — we recall two schooners and three steamers outside the Provincial Marine, and there were also the very fine car-ferries Ontario No, 1 and Ontario No. 2, besides our own Province— all these were fortunate and efficient.

IN THE BEGINNING

Major Thomas Mante, in his history of the Seven Years' War in America (so rare a copy costs $400) wrote: "In 1755 the brig Ontario, 12 guns, was launched at Oswego." This first Ontario was not a brig. She was intended for a schooner, but was in service as a sloop. The major, a soldier writing sixteen years later, probably did not know the difference. Do you?

Yes, we do, but we won't tell now. The Ontario's sister was also a sloop, but she, too, was intended to be a schooner, and was one, perhaps before and certainly after her sloop experience. She was a schooner when she nearly drowned Montcalm's officers when she was lost in the ice at the end of navigation in 1756.

THAT FIRST BRITISH KEEL

We adhere to the statement that the first British keel to cleave the lakes was a schooner, on the strength of a letter attributed to John Bradstreet, the New England whaleman sent to Oswego with fifteen carpenters by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts to build the first British fleet to fight the French.

"Oswego, July 9, 1755-—I found the sloop Oswego in great forwardness, and shall turn her off the stocks tomorrow—I sent Mr. Dean out in a small schooner, upon hearing they (French and Indians) were nigh us, who soon discovered them encamped within eight miles of this place; but as there was little wind he could not venture nigh enough to form any judgment of their numbers.

I sent him out the next morning in the same boat, but they had left their encampment in the night, which makes me conclude they are gone to Niagara, It was very unlucky that one of the sloops_was not ready; if she had (been) I think they might have been stopped."

The gallant Ontario, launched June 28, 1755, was not yet in service by July 9, through indecision over her rig. Governor Shirley decided she would be a sloop, The Oswego was still on the stocks. But one little schooner at least had been launched, if not named, and was sent out against the French and Indians hovering to attack the first British shipyard. Oswego, fortified by the English in 1727, and held until 1796 despite the revolution, was an early trading fort for English and Dutch merchants from New York and Albany. It was Britain's only access to the Great Lakes.

FRENCH SIZE-UP

Capitaine Francois de Pouchot, of the Regiment de Bearn, thus described the first British naval establishment of 1755:

"The first English schooner on Lake Ontario was launched this summer. She had 40 feet keel, mounted 14 swivel guns and was made to row when necessary. The fleet fitted out by the English at Oswego in 1755 consisted of a decked sloop of eight 4-pounders and thirty swivels, a decked schooner of eight 4-pounders and 28 swivels, an undecked schooner of 14 swivels and 14 oars, and another of 12 swivels and 14 oars. All-of these were unrigged and laid up early in the fall."

H.M.C.S. ONTARIO, first decked vessel of His Majesty's Provincial Marine of 1755, built on our lake. This is how Captain Labroquerie depicted her and the two "little schooners VIGILANT and GEORGE, in 1757. His inscription over them may be translated "The 2 Skiffs", The late John Ross Robertson discovered Labroquerie's map with these portraits in the British Museum in 1894. What a contrast to H.M.C.S. ONTARIO of 1951 now off to the Pacific.