Louis XVI's Last Ship Found at Kingston?: Schooner Days MCXXXVIII (1138)

by C. H. J. Snider

MINISTER, the Hon. Geo. H. Doucett and Deputy Minister J. D. Millar, of the Department of Highways, Have earned public gratitude by their energetic backing of the discoveries of Ronald Way, director of Fort Henry at Kingston.

With their prompt support that enterprising director has been able to secure, in the nick of time, much physical evidence of the capture of adjacent Fort Frontenac of Cataraqui, by Bradstreet's lightning stroke of July, 1758.

That stroke was the turning point of the Seven Year's War in favor of British America. But for it we would either not be here at all now, or would be subjects of a defunct Bourbon colonial empire, struggling to learn the English language.

And but for Ronald Way's gratuitous exertions beyond Fort Henry the tangible and visible evidences of a bloodless victory of continental importance might have been sealed forever under the concrete foundations of the million dollar Defense College now rising upon the site. Fort Henry, by the way, had 152,000 visitors in four months this year, under its director's attractive display program.

What the fleeting sunlight of 1953 shows of the Nova Scotian Bradstreet's brilliant Canadian triumph of 1758 is: one prow or forefoot with attached timbering and planking, some timbers from a wharf or other vessels in the fleet, and a dozen knees, elbow-shaped timbers hewn from natural crooks of oaks that were growing in the Cataraqui forest two hundred years ago.

FOUR TO CHOOSE FROM

These relics are not all from the same vessel. Three hulls, lying parallel — burned perhaps with anchors out and stern-fasts on the pier — have been cut through by the steam shovel excavating for concrete foundations. Others may be lying hidden under their own charcoal and a 10-ft. fill of rubbish which obliterated their harbor a hundred years after they sank.

Bradstreet found a snow, a brig or brigantine, three schooners and two sloops at Cataraqui. He took away a snow or a brig, and one large schooner, and burned the rest. This would leave five charred hulls on the bottom. Sir Richard Bonnycastle's book of 1841 mentions that a French schooner had recently been raised at Kingston and exhibited as a trophy. There are then four to choose from two schooners and two loops, with possibly the brigantine as an alternative.

Director Way's assumption is that the prow he recovered intact by such careful engineering on Dec. 16 is that of the French schooner Huralt. He may be right. The French built twelve vessels in their 80-year occupation of Cataraqui, and the Huralt was the last.

"La Huralt (properly spelled Hurault) was named after the lady of a high officer in the French artillery who came out with Montcalm for the defense of New France. The schooner was built on this very site in 1755, and was, commanded by Capitaine-de-vaisseau Labroquerie, second to Admiral La Force. Labroquerie drew a chart of Lake Ontario at Cataraqui in 1757, in which he depicted the French fleet, three schooners and a sloop, and the English fleet which the French had captured at Oswego in the preceding year, a snow, brigantine, three large sloops and two small schooners. Most of these prizes were at Cataraqui when the place fell.

LA HURALT'S PORTRAIT

Labroquerie took particular pains in depicting his own command, and this writer took particular pains in examining his drawing microscopically in the British Museum only last year. The Labroquerie "Carte du lac Ontario" is carefully preserved in the King's Maps division. George III presented this to the Museum. The chart was probably captured by Bradstreet, and found its way to His Majesty as a trophy from far America.

La Huralt was pierced for 14 guns, six and four-pounders. Her officers lived aft above the guns on or in a raised quarterdeck. Her crew of 40 berthed below be tween the guns or in the hold. The forecastle (immediately above the prow excavated) was too small to hold many men. The foremast, as sailors say was "right in the eyes of her," like a mackinaw fishboat's, or a Gaspe fishing barque.

She was painted or varnished a yellow brown over all, with two stripes of black below the gun deck, and a band of red above the rail and on the quarter bulwarks. Her bowsprit rose steeply to 30 feet above the water. It was half as long as her keel. She had a three-reef mainsail on gaff and boom, below a large square maintopsail, and a two reef foresail also on gaff and boom, but no foretopsail. Her jib, which had one reef, was set on the steep bowsprit, and her flying jib on the jibboom, from the topmast head. She wore a white broad-pendant, the cornette blanche, at the main truck and a bordered windvane at the fore; no lily-sown ensign, for she was not the flagship. The tip of the jibboom and of both topmasts carried small red globes. Lanterns, or decorations? We cannot tell.

She had no figurehead. Her stem rose almost vertically, from above the waterline, but the cutwater or forefoot raked at a marked angle.

COULD BE—WHY NOT?

The small section recovered by director Way is not inconsistent with Labroquerie's picture of his own ship. The rake of the stem below water indicated by the picture could be the same as the fragment's. The 10-by-10 keelson in this fragment, the 6-by-0 cant-frames, 2 and 3-inch planking, and pieces of lower wales, all of white oak, are consistent with the drawing and with dimensions assumed for La Huralt in Cuthbertson's "FreshWater"—75 feet overall, 20 feet beam, 8 feet depth of hold, 90 tons burthen.

The keel has been traced back for forty feet where another cutting for concrete work shows a breadth, of 20 feet for the same snip. The line of a deck, collapsed under burning and the 10-foot fill, makes an 8-foot hold a possibility.

All the timber ends of this fragment are rounded off, not broken or rotted. The surviving wood is sound, as it should be in a ship burned and buried when she was only three years from the launching cradle.

This may be all that will ever be seen of Louis XVI's war schooner La Huralt. But before completely accepting the identification may we consider another possibility next week? Thank you—and a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

"LA HURALT" in Labroquerie's Chart captured at Kingston 1758