Stromness Tug Fought the Fenians: Schooner Days MXVIII (1018)

by C. H. J. Snider

Idyll of a Lost Port III

"THE FENIANS ARE COMING!" shouts an extra of the old Telegraph. Young John Ross Robertson, 25, pulls off the scoop of his century in Toronto with this announcement. Robertson and Cook published the Telegraph in 1866, ten years before The Telegram was born.

At midnight that 1st of June, in Stromness-on-the-Feeder in Haldimand County, Lachlan McCallum, enterprising Scotch shipowner and merchant caught the message. He was Captain of the Dunnville Naval Company of volunteers. Walter T. Robb of Dunnville, for whom Lachlan had built the powerful timber tug W. T. Robb at Stromness two years before, was First Lieutenant of the company, Angus MacDonald was Second.

The tug was lying in Dunnville on the Grand River, three miles away — but before the sun rose on the 2nd of June Capt. McCallum had the tug and his two officers and company of 43 men in Port Colborne, at the Erie end of the Welland Canal, shouting "Where's the battle?"

A fussing lieutenant colonel of militia and a hardworking captain adjutant pushed the Welland Canal Field Battery aboard without its guns—they had been sent to Hamilton and took the Robb off on reconnaissance of the Niagara River. The volunteer gunboat hadn't any guns either, so they were all even -- 108 men armed with short Enfields and sword bayonets, to push Gen. O'Neil's myrmidons back to Ireland or the county jail.

Nine hundred Fenians had crossed from Buffalo and seized Fort Erie, which hadn't had a fort for fifty years. The Fenians pushed on to a sounder position for a camp on Frenchman's Creek, seven miles or so down the Niagara River.

The colonel did not know this. He had a blurry idea that Col. Peacocke of Her Majesty's 16th Regiment, the imperial officer in charge of the defense, had been mistaken in ordering a concentration at Stevensville before marching on the enemy, and had changed his mind.

There was no cavalry that day and no intelligence — which may be taken both ways. Nobody knew what anybody else was doing, with captains hiring horses and buggies to drive to the Buffalo and Port Stanley railway station to try to get an inkling of what was doing from the railway Ticker. The colonel lost his hardworking captain for seven hours in that way. The Fenians cut him off.

The Robb passed Fort Erie with bated breath, not knowing the Fenians had left. She patrolled the river as far as Black Creek, which is the third below Frenchman's, found where the Fenians were, and picked up 59 stragglers and brought them back prisoners to Fort Erie.

The colonel wanted to land his gunless battery and the naval company of volunteers and either occupy Fort Erie or march to Port Colborne to rescue or avenge Col. Peacocke, who seemed to have disappeared. Capt. McCallum naturally objected to leaving his command in the river with only seven men to guard 59 prisoners. "While the colonel was backing and filling, with his men lined up in the village street, the Fenians came over the hill into the village. They had fought the Battle of Ridgeway, and were falling back on Fort Erie, where they would have Buffalo under their lee, for retreat or reinforcements.

"You're outflanked! They're coming over the hill! Come aboard! Come aboard!" yelled First Lieutenant Robb from the tug of that ilk. The colonel shook his head.

"Well for God's sake tell your men to shoot, then!" shouted Capt. McCallum, who was ashore with half the Company and could see what the colonel couldn't.

There was an order, "Right about!" when it should have been "Left face! and a volley was fired which brought some of the Fenians down.

The colonel gasped "Scatter! Every man for himself!" and promptly set the example.

Capt. King with the battery and Capt. McCallum with the Company fought a rearguard action, to draw the men off until the Robb, which had cast off her lines, could pick them up.

"If we'd a-had a gun mounted in the Robb we'd a captured the whole dam' Fenian army!" one of the seven men left aboard bragged. But they hadn't.

Capt. King went down with a bullet-smashed ankle which cost him a leg. Half the gunners and sailors got into the village post office and an adjoining house and fought till their ammunition gave out.

The Fenians ringed the place with bayonets and set the buildings on fire. The trapped men surrendered. There were 27 of the battery and 10 of the company. Four of the wounded had legs to be amputated. Meantime, Capt. McCallum and a group of 15 fought their way down the river road, firing and falling back, trying to put enough space between themselves and the Fenians to let the tug reach them.

Lieut. Robb and the men on board kept up a fire on the Fenians with their rifles, until the surrender was made. The tug then dropped down the river, raking the pursuers of the captain's company. Several times the fighting on the river bank was hand to hand. The Fenians came on shouting "Shoot the bloody officer!" for McCallum was the only one in uniform. Nelson Bush fell with a bayonet wound in his chest. Capt. McCallum emptied both his pistols at the two pursuers in the lead. Before he could reload a big Fenian got to within ten feet of him, fired twice at him and missed, and lunged with his bayonet.

The captain thought his end bad come—when the big man spun and fell, clawing the dust.

"Take better care of yerself, Cap, them balls is comin' too thick for comfort!" yelled Ned Callack. He had whirled around, slashed the first Fenian's throat with his bayonet, and shot the second through the heart.

This gave a breathing space. The tug picked them up, turned round, and steamed back past Fort Erie. In the passage six bullets smashed through the wheelhouse, piercing between the man at the wheel and Lieut. Robb and Capt. McCallum, who knelt beside him, ready to take the helm if he was hit.

From Black Rock to the lake the tug was under heavy fire, but — well, you shall hear what happened to her next week.

Timber Tug W. T. ROBB, a Fenian Raid gunboat Toronto knew well.