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George Heny Wyatt 307 and 1868 seasons, with the Royal Navy gunboats overwintering at Kingston, Toronto, and Goderich. The Canadian government resisted British pressure to organize a Canadian naval service to supply fighting crews for its own steamers insisting once more that naval defence against foreign attack was a British responsibility.* Royal Navy personnel thus retumed to operate three steamers, Rescue, Prince Alfred, and one chartered vessel, Hercules, in the 1867 season, and then Rescue, and Prince Alfred in the 1868 season. The Royal Navy withdrew its ships from the lakes and St. Lawrence in October 1868,” and in the spring of 1869 the British government advised that Canada would have to pay for any future naval assistance on the inland waters. The Canadian govemment, despite its previous wamings that the British underestimated the continuing Fenian threat, did not take up the offer. During the 1869 season the government brought its own ships, Prince Alfred and Rescue, back into service only with a new alarm in October 1869. Prince Alfred, with a fighting crew from the militia artillery, set out from its home port at Goderich to patrol the western waters down to the Windsor-Detroit area until the freeze up started at the end of November. Rescue, at Kingston, was prepared for service but was ready too late in November to undertake patrols.” In April 1870, intelligence of Fenian activity brought both gunboats out on patrol with militia artillery fighting crews as soon as the ice cleared. Later in the spring and in the summer they operated between Collingwood on Georgian Bay and Sault Ste. Marie as part of the steamer service that transported supplies for the military expedition to Manitoba dispatched in response to the %® See, e.g., PC 593/2 June 1868, RG2 Ala, vol. 259, reel C-3288, LAC. %” Secretary to commander-in-chief, “British North American Frontier Protection from Fenians — 1867,” 31 March 1868, ADM 128/62, ff. 1005-1007, TNA, reel B-2366, LAC; Secretary to commander-in-chief, “Protection of the British North American Frontier from Fenian incursions... 1868,” 1 May 1869, ADM 128/63, ff. 1-4, TNA, reel B-2366, LAC; Canada, Parliament, Sessional Papers, 1869, vol. II, no. 4, “Public Accounts...Fiscal Year Ended 30" June, 1868,”pt. I, 115, pt. III, 40-41; Sessional Papers, 1870, vol. III, no. 7, “Public Accounts... Fiscal Year Ended 30" June, 1869,” 151. °* In early 1867 and again in early 1868 the Canadian government successfully resisted the efforts of the Admiralty to significantly reduce the force on inland waters, arguing that the Fenians were still an imminent threat. “Copy of a Report of a Committee of the executive council approved...16 March 1867,” ADM 128/24, ff. 321-5, TNA, reel B-2358, LAC; [Executive Council minute,] 13 March 1868 and attached correspondence, Sessional Papers, 1869, vol. VI, no. 75, “Return...Correspondence...relating to the outlay...by Canada in Defence of the Frontier of the United States in 1863-4, and also...the threatened Fenian Invasion subsequently ...,”164-5; Granville to Young, 14 April 1869 in Sessional Papers, 1871, vol. V, no. 46, “Retum.. -Correspondence...withdrawing ...Her Majesty’s Troops from service in this Dominion,” 13. » PC 758/23 October 1869, RG2 Ala, vol. 270, reel C-3292, LAC; Sessional Papers, 1870, vol. IV, no. 8, “Report on the State of the Militia...for the Year 1869,” 17-19.