Velvet Garter Under Ship's Prow: Schooner Days MCXXXVII (1137)

by C. H. J. Snider

Mystery at Frontenac

ONE narrow strand of black velvet ribbon was found immediately below the forefoot of the mystery ship, plucked from the deep foundations of the million-dollar Defense College at Kingston on Wednesday. As Edward the Black Prince said when restoring the Countess of Salisbury's garter, "HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE."

It was bitter cold. The Cataraqui River water seeping into the 10-foot pit was scumming to ice far below the frost line.

"Hoist," said Ronald Way quietly at 2 p.m. He showed no signs of tension, though he had been working with head, hands and feet night and day for a week on what would be in the next five minutes either a brilliant research triumph or a mare's nest.

Steel slings, neatly adjusted around an indistinguishable mass of frozen mud and timber, stiffened as the five ton derrick motor applied the strain. The whole thing might collapse into fragments in a second. Inch by inch the mass rose in the pit, without a groan, without one scrape. Up it came into the frosty sunlight of Dec. 16, 1953—perchance its first sight of the sun in the 195 years since July 27, 1758.

News hawks, televisors, commentators, professors and top brass military scrutinized it as eagerly as if it were a flying saucer. The blunt pointed mass was 8 feet from end to end, and spread to 14 ft. width. It was parts of the keel, stem, apron, keelson, cant-frames, and planking of some ship's prow. The curve of the forefoot was armed with a flat strap of half inch iron, there were driftbolts and througbbolts, two with square nuts, and trenails and ship spikes in the timber. All the wood was sound white oak and rock elm.

While we pondered whether the ironwork was ancient blacksmithing or later cold-drawn steel, Mrs. Ronald Way and Mary Chambers, graduate history research student, came up with the velvet, though no one else knew of it at the time.

That was the real atomic jet missile which pinpointed the find with the destruction of the French fleet, on this very spot two centuries before. The ribbon tied all together.

When John Bradstreet, hardy Nova Scotian whaleman, rowed across from Oswego with a British army of 2,737 provincials in July, 1758, he fell upon Fort Frontenac here like a thunderbolt.

The French fleet which could have blown the armada of whaleboats out of the water, was all dismantled except for its three largest vessels—and those were engaged in the nefarious racket of hauling merchandise to Niagara.

It can be called a nefarious racket. In the midst of the Seven Years War for the possession of this continent, army contractors in partnership with corrupt officials were abusing the transportation facilities of the Canadian French colony to run luxury articles for consumption in Louisiana. British enterprise at sea had cut off imports to that rich section of the French American empire. Fort Frontenac at Cataraqui was no longer an arsenal, but an entrepot from which Louisiana was supplied with luxuries while the defense of New France bled to death.

Bradstreet found the place stuffed with stores of all kinds. He carried away "178 gold and silver laced hats. 33 pieces of gold lace, 16 pieces of silver lace, 400 pieces of ribband, 445 pieces of gartering, 3,690 men's shirts, 375 callimacoe gowns, 689 children's gowns and frocks, 662 children's shirts, 313 laced coats"—

But why go on? These were only samples of what he took away from Cataraqui, and shared among his provincials at Bull's Fort on the homeward trek. He had crammed two captured ships with goods, but this was "not the fourth part of what was burnt in the stores and on board the vessels" before he left the site of future Kingston.

Whether the prow raised this week was a French ship or not, whether the velvet ribbon found below it was a French garter or not, where both were recovered was exactly where Bradstreet found a French wharf covered with warehouses filled with French fancy goods, and three French ships laden with 400 tons of gold lace hats and ribbons and gartering and such. Four or five other French ships were lying dismantled alongside the pier.

To all except the two large laden ships lying aground on an adjacent island he put the torch. The smoke of burning Cataraqui lingered in the July air for days.

Hulls of two other vessels and remains of the wharf have been pierced by the excavations for the concrete piers of the new Defense College. The site has been a town dump for a century. The early harbor of the French has been filled in with rubbish to the depth of ten feet by 1850.

All sorts of domestic material, broken dishes and bottles, boots and shoes, cross-cut saw blades, and so forth, have been brought up by steam shovel. Most of it is 19th century. But the cuttings for the concrete bases show an almost continual layer of charcoal below the rubbish deposit. This covers the sunken hulls. It was Bradstreet's calling card.

Indications of charcoal on the rungheads and frame ends of the prow recovered suggest that she burned to the water's edge and sank. A little keg of pitch, found in the muck beside her shows how Bradstreet "put the torch" to her. She probably sank before the fire got to this particular combustible. This may explain why the bit of velvet, which may have been part of the cargo, also escaped the flames.

The arrow points to where the velvet ribbon was hiding.