How They Talked in the River: Schooner Days MCCLVIII (1258)

by C. H. J. Snider

USE of the Nancy's guns?

Best told, undoubtedly, these words, neatly penned from the Nancy's log book, by Alexander Mackintosh, her sailing master in 1813—afterwards 26th Chief of the Clan Mackintosh.

This was written after a day of peril and night of anxiety in the St. Clair river, when the Nancy was the King's transport, the last British sail afloat after the disastrous Battle of Lake Erie.

Two heavily armed schooners and two gunboats were lurking below to pounce upon her, the current barred her from Lake Huron above, and the banks of the river were covered with American patrols.

LOG ENTRY:

"Oct. 6 - A crowd appeared on the bank below the vessel, which I took for the Americans and was determined from the first alarm to blow the vessel up. This made Capt. Maxwell (passenger) hurry with his family ashore. There was another female passenger, who was also left on the beach. The boat had just got alongside after landing them when we saw all made prisoners.

"Soon after some person sung out from the woods to surrender the vessel, that my property and that of the men should not be touched but no private or public property should he saved. It was Lieutenant Colonel Beaubien of the militia who wished me to surrender the vessel to him. When Beaumen hailed we were under weigh and had gained about three cable lengths.

"I asked an hour to give my answer, got both guns on the larboard side (the vessel was now at anchor) and asked my eight men if they would surrender or fight and defend the vessel.

"They all (mate, carpenter, carpenter's mate, cook and four seamen) one after another said they would, upon which I went back (in the boat) to Beaubien, and gave him my answer. He said if I attempted to go out of the river he would fire on me the moment I should heave up, to which I replied I would return the fire. He said he had 50 men.

"I went hack to the vessel, hung the boat in the tackles and hove up. While fishing the anchor they gave us a volley, which we immediately returned and kept it up for a good quarter of an hour, the vessel all the time barely going ahead against the current. During the action I was placed at the helm and exposed to the whole of their fire, but luckily escaped. Several shots struck the main boom: (immediately over the writer's head) and railing (body high around the raised quarter-deck). Whether it was from a piece of a cartridge exploding or their fire, our mainsail was blazing, which was no sooner seen than extinguished. Joseph Paquet, the carpenter was the only man who was hurt, and which was from the blowing up of a couple of cartridges for the guns, one of which set the mainsail on fire. Two shots in the main boom, one in cabin, one in foremast, square sail and mainsail.

"They (the Americans) then escaped and went off, where for want of powder or that we had killed or wounded any of them I know not. During the engagement my men behaved with the greatest coolness, and I can not say too much for them. At 8 a.m. we entered the lake.

The "both guns on the larboard side" which blew the jaws of the river trap apart were doubtless the pair of brass four-pounders which Alexander later set up in front of the two-story log mansion his father built in the present city of Windsor. It was named Moy House, recalling Moy Hall, the family seat of the Mackintosh of Mackintosh in Iverness-shire. Alexander, succeeding his father as 26th head of the clan in 1833, sent for these guns left behind in Canada, and mounted them on the parapet before his ancestral Moy Hall in Scotland. They are still maintained there by the 29th chief, Vice-Admiral Lachlan Donald Mackintosh of Makintosh, CB, DSO, DSC. Through his kindness Schooner Days was able to photograph them.

MOY HALL, Chief's Castle, Inverness-shire where NANCY'S guns have had a home for 120 years.