His Majesty's Provincial Marine was the naval service for the Province of Canada on the Great Lakes and St.Lawrence river, and on Lake Champlain and Lake George.
The Provincial Marine was first referred to as His Majestys vessels for inland America, then the naval force for the Quarter Master Generals Department of the army. In 1765 the Provincial Marine of Canada. and in 1813 His Majestys Provincial Royal Navy.
This forgotten service was not intended as a little navy for each province but received its "Provincial" appellation because it was provided for the new British Province of Canada after the conquest.
It was never perfect but during it's long life it was a quaint and controversial Canadian institution. It suffered from three-way control and from three-way neglect. It satisfied the Department of National Defence, then called the War Office, or its equivalent; it served the civil department of government exceptionally well. Although for many years it tried, it could not satisfy or compete with private enterprise in freight and passenger traffic.
Born of war in the 18th century, and buried by peace in the 19th century, it served it's purpose and even by it's failures accomplished much unforeseen good. Its keels dated from the year 1755, the year when the first British vessels for freshwater in America were built.
It proved, unexpectedly a foundation stone. not flawless. nor well and truly laid, but a firm footing for all that, for the freshwater transportation of a new nation. This was they key to the successful defence of Canada in the war of 1812, and in North America, which has developed on the Great Lakes the greatest commerce ever floated on any body of water in the world.
The genesis of the Provincial Marine was the small and unfortunate fleet of six or possibly seven English vessels built at Oswego in the summer of 1755. All of these were in French hands in 1756. Some were retaken at Frontenac (Kingston), and others at Niagara in 1759.
The trials and triumph, and even the failures, of the Provincial Marine proved that, to succeed, government of the people for the people must be by the people. It cannot be delegated to despots, be they upstart dictators, or permanent, officials of some public service, or experts with the itch of controls for controls sake. We ourselves must govern ourselves, for the good of others and for our own good.
Had the service had the inspiration of a Brock or Nelson at the head, or tried the French precedent of native born, (Rene Hypolite LaForce) it might have accomplished more.
All that was wrong with the Provincial Marine, - and there was much that was right - was that it had too many necks and no head. His Majesty may never have heard of his Provincial Marine. It's officers received their commissions from military commanders-in-chief in the colonies, frequently changed, and took their orders from the Quartermaster General's department of the army, through the military officers commanding at the different posts.
The Provincial Marine fought four wars for Canada, and founded one
of the worlds great transportation systems. It fought the French out of
America in the Seven Years War, it broke Pontiacs siege of Detroit
in the Indian wars, it held every British post on the Great Lakes in
the War of American Independence and it fought to victory in the War
of 1812.
But it did not rust or rot in peace time. It was not only Britains naval force in America, but Canadas whole transportation system. The Great Lakes and rivers were the only trunk lines and highways until roads were cut through the wilderness and railways began.
The Provincial Marine handled all the freight and passenger traffic of the incoming Loyalists and early immigration and all the requirements of the civil administration of the growing provinces. It was thus the mother of the fleets of schooners which private enterprise provided and the grandmother of the present shipping industry, Canadian and American where nearly 4,000 ships transport over 40 million tonnes of cargo, grain, iron ore, coal, steel and other bulk annually for the 90 million people, nearly one quarter of North Americas population.
In 1865, two years before Canada became a Confederation, the Provincial Marine as an entity was officially disbanded.
LaSalle was dead. The importance of his great achievement of navigating the Lakes under sai1,instead of paddling and portaging around their 8,375 miles of shoreline, did not impress in consequence his contemporaries fell back on pack and paddle, canoe and bateau, for their fur trade
The 17th century ended with the horizons of the Great Lakes swept as
clean of sail as they had been when that century began. No more French keels clove the Lakes for twenty years after Frontenacs death in 1698. France was engaged in losing war after war in Europe and America, and the Church and the Kings ministers and mistresses were indifferent or hostile to expansion and nautical development in the wilderness of these few and faraway "serpents of snow".
FRENCH VESSELS
The first naval vessels on the Great Lakes were undoubtedly French.
The five vessels built by LaSalle were not designated as naval vessels. Neither was Le General built by La Barre in 1685. Notwithstanding this statement the French vessels, including the first four barques of 1678, and the short lived Griffon, were armed, or fitted to fight with muskets, arquebuses in crotche swivel guns, petereroes, or small cannon. This armament had been for the purpose of overawing the Indians or interloping freetraders. The vessels were primarily Kings carriers, whether built by the governors orders or by his permission for individuals, like LaSalle.
By 1715, Charles Le Moyne, second Baron de Longueuil and Lieutenant Governor of Montrea1, proposed a "small establishment" at the foot of the neglected Toronto Carrying Place, to keep the Amikoes or Nipissing Beavers of the north and the Missisagas of the west from trading with the hunting Iroquois, who were middlemen for the English. The magazin, which had been urged by La Durantaye nearly thirty years before, would be "about 100 leagues from Fort Frontenac, seven or eight days distant by canoe and would require a ship for transport from one post to the other.
When they built the fort at the Toronto Carrying Place, Fort Rouille, it was suggested that ship be built for transport as it was a long way from Cataraqui to Toronto by Bateau.
In fact it was not until 1725 that the next vessels, two barques, were built at Kingston, each about 50 tons, and of Bugalet rig.
In 1733 one replacement was built at Cataraqui.
In 1734 Sieur de La Ronde' sloop was built privately for Lake Superior.
In 1739 - Douville de La Saussaye's barque, or one with a consignment of his beaverskins, was reported lost October 5th on Lake Ontario, apparently stranded and broken up in the following spring. This may have been a new vessel or one of the unnamed ones listed above:
1743 The Chevalier de Chalet built a barque of 50 tons at Cataraqui.
1745Charles de Chalet follows with another Barque of 50 tons built at Cataraqui.
1747There are now 4 brigantinesschooners on Lake Ontario, the largest number since De la Salle's barques 70 years before.
1749Saint Victor of about 40 tons, may have been built at Cataraqui (Kingston) and rigged as a schooner. She served the settlement at Toronto which was then called St.Victor. She was in the battle of Oswego, and was burned when Frotenac was taken in 1758.
1750 LaLouise schooner rigged 50 tons,, built at Cataraqui, in the battle of Oswego, burned at Frotenac in 1758.
1755LaHurault war schooner, 90 tons,. 55 feet on the keel, 70 feet on the deck, 20 feet bem. 8 feet depth of hold It was said that she was built at Cataraqui in 1749 which, if true. would make her an old vessel rebuilt for war purposes and also renamed. As LaHurault she was pierced for 12 guns and carried 6-pounders, and carried some 8s.
1756 Marquis de Vaudreuil flagship of the French fleet, launched April 25, 1756. 90 feet length, 120 tons burthen, the largest schooner yet attempted.
1759 L’Outaouaise, built by Sieur de Cresse at Point au Baril, present Maitland Ontario. It became the British Anson after the battle of the 1000 Islands
1759 L’Iroquoise, built by Sieur de Cresse at Point au Baril, the present Maitland Ontario. It became the Williamson after the battle of the 1000 Islands
Malartic mentions being windbound in Toronto for a week when LaForce, then Commandant des Batiments sur le Lac Ontario, and his fleet of Marquis de Vaudreuil, La Herault, Louis and Victor were gathering up troops from Toronto for the attack on Oswego. (The commandant at Fort Rouille sent Colony regualrs and Indians).
BRITISH VESSELS
Although it is not technically correct, we prefer to say that the Provincial Marine dated from the year 1755 because that was the year the first British vessels for freshwater in America were built. They were three schooners and two sloops built at the old Dutch-English trading fort at Oswego, first fortified in 1727, for Lake Ontario and the St.Lawrence River, and a five gun sloop built at Fort George for Lake George and the Champlain waterway to Canada.
Lieutenant Governor Clarke of New York wrote to the Duke of Newcastle.
New York, April 22nd, 1741
"The French have now on Lake Ontario, or Cataraqui, two brigantines of about fifty tons each; they had three, but one is lately stranded and broken to pieces; these vessels serve to transport their merchandise and men and provisions and ammunitions to their forts, two of which they have on that lake.
The letter goes on to say that it would be advisable for the British to construct at least two vessels of "superior bigness and force" than those of the French. Also, that the numerous good harbours the coast of the lake would provide a place suitable for building, basing and keeping outfitted these vessels."
By 1754 the lately established British post at Oswego depended entirely on its land defences to protect it from French attack. Lieutenant General and Acting Commander_inâ€â€ÂChief of the British forces in North America Governor Shirley of New York began preparations for the building of several ships of war at Oswego. Funds were voted for the building of vessels to stop the flow of commerce between the French at Fort Frontenac and all the western forts that the French had established in the lake region.
During the winter of 1754_1755. a crew of Great Lakes artisans was engaged in New York and Boston. John Bradstreet, Nova Scotia graduate of the whale fishery, went to Oswego in 1755 with fifteen carpenters, some of suspect value, (one was a boy and another was lame) and plans provided by Governor Shirley of Boston, acquired from Commodore (later Admiral) Augustus Keppel,to build a British naval fleet on the Great Lakes. They travelled by way of the Hudson river, and over the Mohawk trail and the Grand Carrying Place, for the construction to begin in the spring. A smithy was established; sail and store sheds were erected; sheer legs were rigged; saw pits for cutting up the logs into planks were prepared; workmens quarters were erected.
By the end of May 1755 the keels of two sloops and a small schooner had been laid on the ways.
Bradstreet wrote Governor Shirley;
"I the new galley you order to be built, and the schooners, may answer the purpose, but am fearful they will not, for they are so full built they will not sail before the wind, and this lake is like the ocean, where there is strong gails and great Seas, with few harbours"
Bradstreet's foreboding was later justified, Both were so tubby that they had to have false keels added before they could be got to work to windward.
Notwithstanding doubts and difficulties, by June 28th, 1755, the first of the undecked open rowing schooners (row galleys) had been launched, and soon after the first decked man-of-war, built to mount carriage guns and not mere portable swivels, was launched, and christened Ontario.
Various writers give different descriptions of this significant vessel.
There was division of opinion as to the proper rig and armament for this vessel and her sister, to the confusion of builders and riggers at the time and of historians afterwards. Major Thomas Mante, writing in 1771, said:
"On June 28th, the brig Ontario was launched at Oswego. She was 40 feet keel, 12 guns."
George A. Cuthbertson, writing in his book "Freshwater" in 1931, said she was a sloop (one-masted with fore and aft sails), not a brig (which has two masts with square sails on the foremast only) and gives her dimensions as
"length 43 feet, beam 15 feet, depth of hold 7 feet, tonnage 60, ten guns, 9-pounders and 12s, also Swivels"
C.H.J. Snider,probably the most reliable historian, after extensive research, was satisfied she was a
"sloop, with one mast, armed with five guns, 6-pounders at the heaviest, and an indefinite number of swivels, these being not much larger than musketoons."
HMS Ontario was by one record launched on June 28, 1755, however a newspaper report indicated that she was still on stocks on July 9th, 1755. (see below)
It seems to be established that there were two sloops and three schooners in this first British lake fleet in 1755, and that one of the sloops was schooner-rigged as well, once or oftener. A quotation by the Severance from Montcalm's Journal, November 1756 to July 3, 1757, puts the finger on the Oswego as the dual rigged vessel;
"Late in November numerous officers returning from the upper posts gathered at Fort Niagara; Dumas, the Chevalier de Repentigny, Benoist, Godfrey, Corbiere, Normandville. These and others, thus hazardously late in the season, embarked on the Chouaguen, (the captured British vessel Oswego). It came near being a tragic hour for Canada, for the schooner was wrecked on account of the ice; but the officers after great peril reached Montreal".
Captain Labroquerie, French commander of Le Hurault and L'Outaouaise in the ensuing war, and in direct contrast with these English schooners, depicted the pair in his Carte du lac Ontario, 1757. Over them he wrote something like "Les 2.Kive" which would mean "The two skiffs" It has been read as "Les 2 Evive" by some and translated as "The two livelies" as if these vessels belonged to the lively class, as we now speak of a class of vessel in the modern navy, or as though each were called Lively.
This possibly has given rise to a fictitious name in the first fleet, or the name Lively may have actually been given to one of the rowing schooners in the second season, in place of her original one.
Labroquerie believed that Le George was the name of a large brigantine of 16 carriage guns launched in 1756, and so inscribed this in his carte. This brigantine was 60 feet on the keel and 21 feet beam, 7 feet deep in the hold and 160 ton burthen.
The statement that the first British keel to cut lakewater was probably a schooner is also based on this letter to Captain John Bradstreet in the Pennsylvania Gazette:
"Oswego, July 9, 1755. I found the sloop Oswego in great forwardness and shall turn her off the stocks tomorrow...I sent Mr. Dean, (the captain designated to command the Oswego) out in a small schooner, upon hearing they (the French and Indians) were nigh us, who soon discovered them encamped within eight miles of this place; but as there was little wind he could he could not venture nigh enough to form any judgement of their numbers. I sent him out the next morning in the same boat but they had left their encampment in the night, which makes us to conclude they are gone to Niagara. It was very unlucky that one of the sloops was not ready: if she had (been) I think they might have been stopped."
This letter is a flashlight on the immediate conditions - a state of war existing although war was not acknowledged by either nation, one sloop ready for launching, another launched but not ready for fighting, but a small schooner already in commission and able to do some cautious scouting. It confirms the statement in Pouchot's memoirs;
"The first English schooner on lake Ontario was launched this summer. She had 40 feet keel, mounted 14 swivel guns and was made to row when necessary. The fleet fitted out by the English as Oswego in 1755 consisted of a decked sloop of eight 4-pounders and thirty (?) swivels, and an undecked schooner of fourteen swivels and fourteen oars, and another of twelve swivels and fourteen oars."
This first little schooner's name may have been Vigilant, which would have been a highly appropriate name. In fact two of these schooners were launched in July 1755, the one named Vigilant and the other George, in honour of the then reigning sovereign, George II, of Great Britain, King and elector of Hanover. Whether named George or Vigilant, that the first English craft on of the Great lakes was schooner has certain significance, for schooner rigs, new in America in the 18th century, and already introduced to Lake Ontario by the French in their goelettes by 1741 and perhaps as early as 1726, became characteristic of Great Lakes commerce and remained so as long as sail was to be seen. There were other rigs, fore and aft, singlemasted, lug or square, but the schooner predominated for over 200 years.
The first pair of "small schooners", as they were frequently called, were baldheaded schooners. They each had a gaff mainsail and foresail and one jib on a long bowsprit, not dissimilar to the much later Mackinaw or Watts fishboats but they had a much loftier mainmast. This simplest form of schooner rig, called baldheaded because it had no tophamper, is yet a favourite with small coasters and yachtsmen.
C.H.J. Snider describes these first British vessels as being like the "mackinaws" and "Watts" fishboats of the late 19th century. It was his opinion that the first and second small schooners were probably deckless and open amidships for rowing. The oarsmen rowed standing up on the bottom boards, or seated on the thwarts. Like the mackinaws also they stepped their foremasts so far forwards that they seemed almost prolongations of the stem. The jib was wholly outboard. The mackinaws were often sharp-sterned and their sheer profile was a simple curve. The first British lake schooners differed from this. Their sides were broken, two thirds of the way aft, by a steep upspring, rising into a poop cabin which provided accommodation for the officers and sheltered the stores. This gave them a cocktailed profile. The sterns were square and overhang the water. The little vessels had no carriage guns nor gunports. Their armament was swivel guns which could be mounted on forks or crotches set in sockets in the rail between the seven oarports on each side. They could be unshiped quickly and used for ballast. The balls were too bulky and too heavily built to be rowed rapidly, being 20 tons burthen, but they could be moved through water at four miles an hour without the assistance of sails.
Next to the Oswego and the two small schooners, was the Ontario.
There is confusion and contradiction in the early Oswego records and in the deductions which have been drawn from them about this vessel. Severance says:
"General Shirley had ordered that the Ontario, should be given a sloop rig; she sailed so well that it was decided to refit Oswego, Broadley's flagship, and make a sloop of her also."
This may be so, but it suggests that the Oswego already had another rig, if she had to be "refitted", perhaps a schooner rig. George A. Cutherbertson goes in the reverse, thus;
"The Ontario was first designed as a schooner, but so satisfactory had been the performance of her sister, the Oswego that it was decided to rig the Ontario as a cutter or a sloop. The same letter states also that the Ontario was launched on August 24th. The Oswego was launched several weeks before."
He is referring to Broadley's correspondence with the Admiralty.
The fact is that the first British keel to furrow the Great Lakes went into action against French and Indians menacing Oswego, the only British access to the Lake region, on July 9, 1755, where she had been launched just a few days, or more probably a few weeks, before.
