by Dan Snow
As the first British ships anchored off the Île d’Orléans some French officers had begged to be allowed to try to take the fight to the invaders. Groups of Canadian and Native American troops were sent out to lie in ambush for British landing parties and met with mixed success. A request was made by François-Marc-Antoine le Mercier, the commander of the artillery around the city, to place cannon on the island. The confused chain of command meant that he was dispatched by Vaudreuil without Montcalm’s knowledge.
He took four cannon with him to the Île d’Orléans. It was a small battery but he would have stood a chance of doing real damage to the British ships if he had been able to fire red-hot shot. This was a complicated business. To make the shot red hot the iron cannonballs were heated in a portable forge. A charge of gunpowder was placed in the mouth or muzzle of the cannon and then rammed all the way down the barrel to the breech at the end. Then a ‘wad’ was put in, made of wood to separate the powder from the red-hot shot which was placed in next after some wet rags to protect the wood and prevent the heat of the shot immediately igniting the powder. Last, the shot was picked out of the forge with a ‘scoop’ and placed in the muzzle, where it rolled down and came to rest on the wadding. The powder charge was pricked by prodding it through a touch-hole on top of the barrel with a sharp priming iron, more powder was tipped into the touch-hole and then a linstock or portfire, essentially some lit match, was applied to the powder in and around the touch-hole, which burst into flame and in turn ignited the main charge which blasted the shot out of the muzzle of the cannon. The shot could do fatal damage to a wooden ship. As well as the physical destruction of the iron projectile passing through the ship, the heat of the iron shot meant that if it lodged in the hull it would almost definitely start a fire on board. Fire was a dreadful prospect on the wooden ships packed with flammable materials. Many eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century fleet actions were illuminated by an inferno as one or two unlucky ships caught fire and burnt down to the waterline.
Saunders’ ships would not face this threat at least. In a bitterly critical tone, one of the leading French journals recounted that ‘in the whole corps of artillery belonging to the colony, not one man could be found who was capable of showing the way in which the balls were to be made red hot’. The diarist concluded that the situation was ‘almost too ludicrous to mention’.6 Even so the cannon represented a threat to the ships especially since any damage to the hull or rigging was especially serious when the ship was thousands of miles deep in enemy territory. Le Mercier made his way across to the island arriving on 16 June just in time to witness Captain Gordon of the Devonshire dispatching the boats from his vanguard to ‘cut out’ or capture a French ship that lay in the channel to the north of the Île d’Orléans. Crowded with marines and sailors, the boats rowed towards their prey. Suddenly there was a volley of fierce ‘musketry from the shore’ and twenty-five canoes emerged from the cover of the island. Native Americans paddled furiously, propelling the canoes at a surprising speed. The young Master and Commander of the Porcupine sloop, John Jervis, a promising young officer destined for great things, attempted to bring his vessel into the shallower water and use his fourteen guns to send the Native American attack packing. A sudden dearth of wind left him dead in the water. The sails hung limply and the crew watched impotently as the British open boats clumsily turned around and fled. One boat was unable to escape. The cutter of the frigate Squirrel was designed for sailing with two stowable masts. Its small crew would not have been able to row the boat as fast as some of the others, having just one man on each oar, whereas a ‘pinnace’, for example, had two men straining on the same blade. With hundreds of sailors and troops watching the cutter was overhauled and captured. The crew of eight were taken prisoner and provided the French with valuable intelligence.
The next morning Le Mercier opened fire on the ships. Centurion’s log records that she ‘received several shot’ from the French, which ‘cut away a bobstay and the clue of our maintopsail’. Both she and the Pembroke kept up a heavy fire on the battery all night but at 0700 hours on 18 June according to Cook’s log, ‘we and the Centurion shifted our berths further off; afterwards the firing ceased’. This first large skirmish in which Native Americans in canoes had complemented the artillery barrage under Le Mercier had resulted in a sharp French victory. It was a potent lesson in the limitations of sailing ships when operating close to enemy shores in variable winds. Although the French lacked the seagoing firepower of the British fleet, if they could utilize their advantage in fast moving, small, oar and paddle powered boats and their large arsenal of artillery they could mount a serious challenge to the control of the water on which any British plan depended.7
As the first real blows were being exchanged, the rest of the fleet, further downstream, was following slowly. The weather was getting ‘hot and sultry’. In light airs, the gun decks would have been getting uncomfortable to sleep on. On the night of the 22/23 June the tide had ebbed at a stunning 6.5 knots and Montresor’s ship, like several others, had dragged its anchor. Luckily the wind was blowing from the east and they could stem their drift. Both Montresor and Knox commented on the great increase in the number of habitations on the banks as the fleet edged past the Île aux Coudres. Knox wrote that there were ‘settlements now on each side of us’. The landscape grew ever more dramatic. Knox commented that ‘the land [is] uncommonly high above the level of the river’. Another British officer reported, ‘towering among the clouds, the most noble and awful ridges of mountains that I ever saw: they give one a highly finished image of the grandeur and rude magnificence of nature’. The woods were thick, green blankets of trees ‘of every genus’ and the steep valleys that cut through the mountainous rampart often had ‘surprising cascades’ running down their centre. He also noticed more and more evidence of human settlement: ‘The inhabitants have cleared and levelled some few spots around their dwellings, which form a delightful terrace.’ The officers had plenty of time to observe the shores because the ships were advancing up the river at a crawl, but Knox reports that ‘the reason for our not working up with more despatch does not proceed from any obstructions in the navigation, but in the necessity there is of sounding as we advance; for which purpose, a number of boats are out ahead’. Saunders was taking no chances. Despite the route finding of Durell’s ships and the presence of French pilots, each division was still feeling its way. 8 Behind Knox’s transport, the 15th Regiment of Foot had taken to their ship’s boats to attempt to suppress musketry coming from the banks but a greater threat than the nuisance of the Canadian militia on the banks were still the other ships. A combination of fast currents and light breezes, especially if combined with poor seamanship, was deadly. Knox was involved in two collisions in as many days. Neither, he reported thankfully, with fatal consequences.
Montresor heard that Wolfe, their thrusting young commander, had pushed ahead in the Richmond frigate to join the vanguard of the fleet. Wolfe had been bridling for some time and had eventually lost his patience. His frustration can only be guessed at, but anyone who has sat at anchor all day with limp sails drying in the sun, buffeted by a contrary current, can probably empathize. Wolfe returned again to his theme of leaving the larger ships behind. On 19 June he confided in his journal that Saunders was ‘running all the great Ships of War in amongst the Divisions of the Transports threatening some danger & a good deal of Disorder, as the Wind blew fresh’. It was the arrival of the news of ‘some cannonading from that Island [d’Orléans] on the shipping’ that determined him to get up the river and put himself at the very front of the expedition. On 22 June his journal says that he sent his aide-de-camp with a ‘memorandum to Mr Durell and inform him that I proposed to go on the next morning if possible’. He also ‘enquired what troops Mr Durell had detained and desired they might be forwarded’.Wolfe wanted every man and ship up to the Île d’Orléans as soon as possible.9
The next day he boarded the Princess Amelia to demand in person that D
urell push more ships up the river. Durell acquiesced, sending the two warships ahead and instructing the Captain of the Richmond to ‘proceed with General Wolfe up the Traverse, and land him when he shall think proper’.10 There is more than a hint here of frustration with an army officer who clearly did not understand the complexities of the passage. On 25 June Wolfe was again disagreeing with the naval officers over how many ships should be pushed ahead. His journal says that the suggestions of Captain Mantell of the Centurion ‘nearly drove me into expressing my mind with some Freedom’. Only the ‘good sense and management’ of Wolfe’s good friend, the expedition’s Quartermaster General, Colonel Guy Carleton ‘averted this’.11 The growing tension was not helped by soaring temperatures. Knox’s journal says again that it was getting ‘inconceivably hot’ and mosquitoes were ‘very troublesome to us’. Such is the remarkable transition from winter to summer in that part of the world. A journey that had begun with sailors risking frostbite now threatened them with sunstroke.
Wolfe demanded that the transports with the troops on board be prioritized. It was midsummer and not a British boot had touched the soil around Quebec. Saunders attempted to mollify his frustrated army counterpart. He ordered the larger warships carrying seventy to ninety guns and drawing more than twenty feet to stay behind and attempt the Traverse in their own time. He ‘switched his flag’ or moved ship from the Neptune to the smaller Hind, which proudly recorded in her log that she ‘made new pole topgallant masts to accommodate Admiral Saunders for hoisting his flag’. Sadly for the Hind the next day he switched again, this time to the Stirling Castle, a sixty-four-gun ship which was small enough to push quickly through the Traverse. By the afternoon of the twenty-seventh the Stirling Castle was through with three warships and ‘several transports’. The log reports that Saunders had left the ship in his cutter, so it is possible that as parts of the fleet passed the Traverse, Saunders was personally racing to and fro, shouting instructions to his captains on how to get the ships through.12
The Goodwill attempted the Traverse on 25 June. On board Knox and the others were left in no doubt as to the danger of the operation. They watched as ‘a trading schooner struck on a rock, near to the place where we first anchored, and instantly went to pieces; the weather being moderate the crew were saved, and some casks of wine’.13 Knox finally got a look at one of the French pilots who had been lured on board the British fleet by such dirty tricks.14 The Goodwill’s captain, Killick, and this pilot did not get on. The former considered it an insult, the latter, ‘gasconaded at most extravagant rate, and gave us to understand it was much against his inclination that he was become an English Pilot’. Knox goes on to describe the pilot’s dark predictions:
The poor fellow assumed great latitude in his conversation; said, ‘he made no doubt that some of the fleet would return to England, but they should have a dismal tale to carry with them; for Canada should be the grave of the whole army, and he expected in a short time to see the walls of Quebec ornamented with English scalps.’ Had it not been in obedience to the Admiral, who gave orders that he should not be ill used, he would certainly have been thrown over-board.15
An hour later the Goodwill was in the Traverse, ‘reputed a place of the greatest difficulty and danger’. Knox was fascinated by the terrible Cap Tourmente on the north shore, ‘a remarkably high, black looking promontory’, as the ship glided past on the flood tide. Meanwhile the relationship between Killick and the pilot had not blossomed. ‘As soon as the pilot came on board today, he gave his direction for the working of the ship.’ A mistake clearly; Killick’s word alone was law on the Goodwill. The captain ‘would not permit him to speak; he fixed his mate at the helm, charged him not to take orders from any person except himself, and, going forward with his trumpet to the forecastle, gave the necessary instructions’. Knox’s commanding officer protested to Killick and the pilot ‘declared we should be lost, for that no French ship ever presumed to pass there without a pilot’. Killick replied casually, ‘Aye, aye my dear, but damn me I’ll convince you, that an Englishman shall go where a Frenchman dare not show his nose.’ Knox joined the captain at the bows where Killick pointed out the discolorations of the water, ripples and swirls that showed him the best route. Before one gives Killick too much credit for his supernatural ability to see what lay beneath the surface, it is worth remembering that Saunders had placed ships’ boats to act as navigational markers. As Knox reported, ‘soundings boats…lay off each side, with different coloured flags for our guidance’. Even so Killick’s seamanship is commendable, the product of a lifetime spent in the Thames Estuary. ‘He gave his orders with great unconcern’ and even ‘joked with the sounding boats’. He said wryly, ‘aye aye my dear, chalk it down, a damned dangerous navigation—eh, if you don’t make a sputter about it, you’ll get no credit for it in England’. Having brought the Goodwill safely through the channel, which Knox said ‘forms a complete zig-zag’, he shouted to his mate, ‘Damn me, if there are not a thousand places in the Thames fifty times more hazardous that this; I am ashamed that Englishmen should make such a rout about it.’ The pilot asked Knox if Killick had ever sailed these waters before; ‘I assured him in the negative, upon which he viewed him with great attention, lifting, at the same time, his hands and eyes to heaven with astonishment and fervency.’16
Not all the ships were as lucky as the Goodwill. At least three ships grounded in the approaches or in the Traverse itself. Bad weather would have wrecked them as certainly as the trading schooner that Knox watched break up. The next day it was the Lowestoft’s turn to get through the Traverse. After lending one of her anchors to the transport Ann and Elisabeth who had lost all hers during the passage, she was forced to go to the assistance of one sloop and one schooner who both hit ledges. Cargo would have been loaded into the ships’ boats and the drinking water pumped over the side. The lightened ships then refloated as the tide rose. The Traverse took three hours to clear. By the end the Lowestoft fired a gun to catch their attention and signalled the rest of its division to make more sail and increase speed, seemingly in an attempt to clear the passage before the weather changed. Both on the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth the onset of evening was marked with ‘violent’ squalls, ‘incessant rain, thunder and lightning’.17
At 0400 hours on 26 June Saunders ordered the last division of the fleet to weigh, but they had to anchor again almost immediately. By the afternoon they were ready to take on the Traverse. Montresor commented on the boats moored with flags to mark the route. ‘Boats were appointed with red flags and white ones to guide the fleet—directions to keep the red flags on the starboard and the white ones on the larboard sides.’ This was exactly as laid down by Saunders before leaving Halifax. In Montresor’s blue division the wind turned unfavourable and it was ‘obliged to make several tacks within it’. It was a stunning display of seamanship.18
The British were ecstatic. Journals, letters, and accounts are virtually unanimous in their praise for the seamen and a swaggering pride in their achievement. One senior officer boasted that although the Traverse was ‘reckoned dangerous’, the British ships were not only able to sail through it but even did so into the teeth of a ‘contrary wind’. He wrote that ‘this piece of seamanship surprised the enemy a good deal, for we were perhaps the first that ever attempted to get through in that manner’. He concluded that ‘it must be observed that we found the navigation of the river much less difficult than we could expect from the accounts given of it’.19 A marine officer paid tribute to ‘the great abilities, required of a British admiral to steer his squadrons with safety in so intricate a navigation as that of the River St Lawrence, and so little known to Englishmen’.20 Another officer wrote that ‘the French account of the navigation of the river St Lawrence we found to be a mere bugbear’.21 Another described it as ‘an entertaining navigation’.22 Captain Killick, of course, told Knox that having sailed up all the principal rivers of Europe, ‘he esteems the River St Lawrence to be the finest river, the safest
navigation, with the best anchorage in it, of any other within his knowledge; that it is infinitely preferable to the Thames or the Rhone, and that he has not yet met with the least difficulty in working up’.23 It comes across as a bravado born of enormous relief. Interestingly the only person who makes no mention of the navigational feat is Wolfe. His diary and subsequent letters and dispatches to London are all silent on the matter. He was desperately impatient. He had pushed ahead to be in the vanguard of the fleet and clearly regarded Saunders’ methodical creep up the St Lawrence as overly cautious. The anonymous ‘Family Journal’ written by someone close to Wolfe, contains a scathing indictment of the support he received from the navy. In the very last lines of the journal the author writes that the foremost ships could not be persuaded to ‘go up to the basin of Quebec’ because ‘fire ships, rocks and floating batteries had taken such possession of them, that there was an universal tremor among them’. It ends with the phrase ‘how much is the General to be pitied whose operations depend on naval succour’.24 This was a grossly unfair critique of the navy. Saunders had brought hundreds of ships up an unknown and hugely treacherous river, in which one Anglo-American expedition and countless other ships had been lost in the past. It was one of the epics of eighteenth-century maritime history, an achievement that was to help cement Britain’s reputation as the world’s foremost naval power for centuries to come. Wolfe’s total lack of understanding of the sea and his impatience to get his men onto dry land made him a poor commander of an amphibious operation which was dependent for its transport, supply, command and control, and much of its firepower on the ships of the Royal Navy.