Nova Scotia (24 page)

   
In the spring of 1776, the British pulled out of Boston and,
along with a great number of new Loyalist refugees, who dubbed
their new home “Nova Scarcity,” landed in Halifax. Once again, an
ill-prepared Halifax was overcrun with military men. By summer,
however, the redcoats were off to attack New York and Halifax was
emptied of men. Less than a hundred soldiers were left to defend
the town should anyone want to attack. Those civilians who stayed
behind were mostly poor and without means of
sustenance.

   
From 1778 to 1781, a brigade of Scottish troops made Halifax
home base for their attacks on New England. A corps of mercenary
Hessian soldiers was also stationed there. When the fleet came to
port, press gangs roamed the streets kidnapping “recruits,” putting
them immediately to service on the warships. The Halifax government
heartily supported this as a means of ridding the city of the poor,
the homeless and the criminals. *

Cruise the Seas for American
Gold

   
Privateering was on the upswing on both sides of the war. New
England looters jumped aboard British ships and grabbed everything
they could, including the ship. They were brazen enough to come
ashore at Liverpool, Louisbourg, Charlottetown and Annapolis Royal
as well. This roused the ire of even the Nova Scotian New
Englanders, who retaliated by making raids against the coast of New
England – for profit, of course, from the booty taken. It was a
dangerous business, but there was good money in it. The Americans
who got caught on this side of the line ended up in prisons in
Halifax, but as the supervision there was lax many of them
escaped.

   
Privateering was obviously a profession that attracted men
who were less than fond of following rules. Washington didn’t
always have the means to enforce maritime legal measures and there
was a multitude of abuses. But there were some rules of the game
that distinguished privateers from the even less ethical and more
bloodthirsty pirates who didn’t follow anybody’s rules. Pirates
stole for themselves, split the booty and tried to evade the laws
of any land. Here was the ultimate free-enterprise system.
Privateers, on the other hand, were legitimate in the eyes of the
government (Washington’s or England’s). They received a “letter of
marque,” which was their licence and calling card to capture
ships.

   
Privateering was a sanctioned and well-established tradition
in New England and Nova Scotia before the American Revolution. The
licence would occasionally switch as to whom you could plunder, but
the business was the same. It was a very attractive career for some
because it included freedom to do violent deeds without fear of
punishment, coupled with a chance to reap great financial gain. It
was adventurous, daring and brought a degree of macho glory. For
the investor, it was an opportunity to make a fortune from an
investment in a ship or two. If, as an investor or a privateer, you
had any moral twinge over the dealings, that was easily allayed by
the political overtones. You were performing a patriotic service by
distressing the no-good enemy. In short, the business, whether it
was in Boston or Halifax, attracted primarily the scummiest of both
the upper class and the lower class.

   
Stan Rogers immortalized the life of the
privateer for my generation in his a cappella song, “Barrett’s
Privateers,” telling the tale of one young man from Sherbrooke
lured to serve on a privateer sailing ship to “cruise the seas for
American gold” in 1778. Rogers, who had scoured the provincial
archives in Nova Scotia for such stories, had himself found gold
when he used his research to conjure up the narrator of this tale
of the man who, at seventeen, puts to sea from Halifax on the
king’s birthday in the
Antelope
and
ninety-six days later finds an American ship heavy in the water
with riches. The attempt to take her is a disaster.
Barrett
is “smashed like a bowl of eggs” and our sad hero
returns to Halifax, having lost both his legs in the
battle.

   
Part-history and part-fiction, Rogers’ song captures the
story of the lure of easy wealth for a young man not grounded in
the realities of war, who then suffers the
consequences.

   
Although American privateering reached new heights during the
Revolution, George Washington had given privateers a stern warning
not to plunder Nova Scotian ships or harm Nova Scotians unless they
were obviously part of Ethe British war effort against America. His
decree could have been a sensible act of goodwill, and he may have
also been looking forward to the day when Nova Scotians themselves
might take up arms against the British and become one with the
other colonies along the seaboard. Privateers were forbidden to
steal private property or ransom prisoners. Washington also
insisted that torture was out of the question.

   
The larger American privateer vessels followed Washington’s
ethical code to some degree, while the smaller New England
privateers had little regard for it. Some had also simply forged
their letters of marque. So in the end, the line between pirate and
privateer became quite blurred, because of the nature of the work
and those who were attracted to it. In the early part of the
Revolution the New England coast was downright crowded with
privateer ships trying to get in on the action. Sometimes they got
in each other’s way and had to fight for the right to board a
vessel that was about to be a victim. It was a messy business,
driven by greed and bloodlust, but still glorified both in its day
and in history books to follow. y

   
The owner of the privateer did not need to get his hands
dirty, except to collect his due – one-half of all that could be
seized. The officers and crew divided the other half. The business
arrangement was a veritable template for other seemingly more
dignified enterprises to follow in the American industrial
revolution. For those new American patriot investors looking to
profit from the war, it was tough to evade the enticement of such
easy money. And all supposedly for a good cause.

   
Supposedly, the American admiralty courts would decide (after
the fact) what goods could be legally kept according to the rules
of the game and what couldn’t. Sometimes Nova Scotians even
appealed through proper legal channels to have their stolen goods
returned. But Washington and his military enforcers had more
important things on their minds. Rarely did a Nova Scotian appeal
actually succeed in gaining the return of stolen
property.d

   
One of the more daring privateer attacks took
place not at sea but on land. On November 17, 1775, the American
schooners
Hancock
and
Franklin
arrived in
Charlottetown where they kidnapped Governor Callbeck and looted his
house. They plundered the storehouses and threatened to cut the
throat of the governor’s pregnant wife, but she couldn’t be found.
They kidnapped the surveyor and other hostages and took off *after
two days, loaded down with stolen goods.

   
So much of everything was being stolen as raids increased in
1776 that food prices soared as did the cost of all manner of basic
goods. Fishing boats were stolen or wrecked or simply taken for a
joyride and left abandoned. Communication and trade between ports
was being severed by the extent of this harassment and, since many
communities still weren’t self-sufficient, this brought on new
hardships.

   
The smallest of fishing communities were not spared and as
privateers became more brazen, they even made their way into the
Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour. Sometimes they left their victims
stripped of clothes either out of greed to steal absolutely
everything they could get their hands on or for sheer sadistic
amusement or possibly both.

   
Liverpool was particularly hard hit but when American Captain
Benjamin Cole arrived with two schooners in Liverpool Harbour he
met serious resistance. His crew came ashore and captured the
town’s fort, taking hostages.u The Liverpool militia, however,
succeeded in overtaking Cole’s men and captured the captain. Cole,
realizing he was in a tough spot, suggested a prisoner exchange,
but his men were greedy to acquire the ammunition and nother
supplies at Liverpool. After a stand-off, the militia finally
released Cole and the privateers fled without the booty they had
been hoping for. t

Raiders of the
Resolution

Dreams of stealing gold and costly jewels proved more often
than not to be unrealized. Therefore, privateers stole ammunition,
food, furniture . . . whatever they could lay their hands on and
haul off. Take Captain Amos P/otter, for example. A Yankee
privateer captain cruising off the coast of Nova Scotia, he and his
crew aboard the
Resolution
had just
seized a schooner full of dry goods and were on their way back to
New England. Potter was sailing past Halifax Harbour, feeling
pleased with having done well for himself, when he encountered an
English military vessel. The captain of the British ship figured
the
Resolution
to be a friend, not a foe. As they
drew nearer, he hailed Potter and invited him over to his ship for
a drink. Potter, not wanting to show his hand and not wanting to
pass up a little free swill, said he’d oblige. He also hoped that
he could use the elÿement of surprise to capture this vessel as a
prize. Before he boarded, he passed the word to his men to prepare
to board the British ship and to wait for his
signal.

   
The British boatswain had somehow heard Potter
talking to his men but clammed up until the privateer captain was
aboard, at which point he shouted out, “A traitor!” The English
sailors grabbed Potter and pulled away from the
Resolution
.

   
Now the men on the
Resolution
felt
as if they had been cheated out of an easy capture of a good ship.
Their captain had been taken and they felt humiliated. A shipload
of dry goods was not enough to assuage their privatbeering
machismo. For revenge, they decided to attack Annapolis – a little
town that forever seemed to be an easy target for revenge involving
injuries that had nothing to do with them. Potter’s men figured
they would kidnap some Loyalists and bargain for their captain’s
release. On August 19, 1781, eighty men took over the blockhouse
from three sleeping soldiers. The lusty lads promptly got drunk and
accidentally shot their own ship’s pilot. The sober raiders,
however, rounded up the poor citizens of the town and took their
weapons. Houses and buildings were properly looted and the
scoundrels made off with a prominent citizen as a
hostage.

   
Still smarting from the defeat at Louisbourg and the loss of
territories, the French were more than happy to aid the Americans
in their efforts toward independence. In 1780, the French Navy
began to provide assistance to the American privateers, making life
even more difficult for the already disadvantaged Nova Scotians who
were so dependent on outside supplies. Supply lines were virtually
cut off and some communities such as Pictou couldn’t even get
essential ingredients like the salt necessary for preserving
food.

   
Privateers increased their raids between 1781 and 1783,
capturing even poverty-stricken fishermen and holding them for
ransom. Privateer ships assaulted small communities as well as
sailing vessels, ransoming ships and cargo.

   
In July of 1782, some American ships arrived in Lunenburg to
loot and plunder. As the invaders came ashore, a woman named Mrs.
Schwartz was going out to milk her cow. When she saw the hoodlums
coming, she alerted her husband, who ran a full mile into the town
screaming, “The Yankees are coming!” At that point, everybody began
to hide their money and jewellery by dropping them down wells or
burying their valuables in their gardens. Only three men manned the
blockhouse to attempt a defence, but they didn’t stand a chance
against the big guns the Americans had brought ashore. So the
invaders took control and began to search the houses, stealing what
they wanted or simply trashing the residences and stores. The kids
in town apparently had a wonderful time of it. They followed the
looters around and every now and then an American would give them
some stolen candy, knives or trinkets. When the looters were tired
of their fun, they threatened to level Lunenburg to the ground
unless £1,000 (in the form of a promissory note) was paid. Three
hostages were held as insurance that they’d get their
way.

   
It wasn’t until the spring of 1783 that the raids let up and
Nova Scotians along the coast could sleep a little sounder at
night.

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

“Inexpressibly Rugged”

Jacob Bailey was an Anglican priest from Maine who, as a
Loyalist, decided to move to Nova Scotia to keep out of harm’s way
during the American Revolution. He arrived in Halifax in 1779 to
serve as a parish priest at Cornwallis and later at Annapolis
Royal. Bailey provides us with an intimate and opinionated glimpse
of Halifax and beyond with notes from his
Journal of a Voyage from Pownalboro to Halifax, with
Notices of Some Events in the Latter Place
.