Canada To-day and To-morrow

by Arthur E. Copping

Nor were picturesque touches lacking at the London end. Prince Rupert was the governor, and for colleagues he had a committee who, by way of tempering the austerity of the company’s affairs, permitted occasional latitude to a festive spirit. Lord Preston having rendered the company a service, the warehouse keeper was instructed to deliver “as many black beaver skins as will make my lord a fine covering for his bedd”; and, in gratitude for favours from a more exalted quarter, “two pairs of beaver stockings are ordered for the King and the Duke of York.” The Adventurers were equally alive to domestic claims on their goodwill, as may be inferred from orders “to bespeak a cask of canary for ye governor,” and “a hogshead of claret for ye captains sailing from Gravesend.”

THE ONLY SLUM IN CANADA—LITTLE CHAMPLAIN STREET, QUEBEC

“One of the quaintest customs that I found in the minute books,” writes Agnes C. Laut, the company’s painstaking historian, “was regarding the home-coming ships. The money that had accrued from sales during the ships’ absence was kept in an iron box in the warehouse on Fenchurch Street. It ranged in amount from £2,000 to £11,000. To this, only the governor and deputy-governor had the keys. Banking in the modern sense of the word was not begun till 1735. When the ships came in, the strong box was hauled forth and the crews paid. . . . An average of ten thousand beaver a year was brought home. Later, otter and mink and marten became valuable. These, the common furs, whalebone, ivory, elks’ hoofs and whale blubber made up the list of the winter sales. Before the days of newspapers, the lists were posted in the Royal Exchange, and sales held ‘by candle’ in lieu of the auctioneer’s hammer—a tiny candle being lighted, pins stuck in at intervals along the shaft, and bids shouted till the light burned out. One can guess with what critical caress the fur fanciers ran their hands over the soft nap of the silver fox, blowing open the fur to examine the depth and find whether the pelt had been damaged in the skinning. Half a dozen of these rare skins from the fur world meant more than a cargo of beaver. What was it, anyway—this creature; rare as twentieth-century radium, that was neither blue fox nor grey, neither cross nor black? . . . Was it senility or debility or a splendid freak in the animal world like a Newton or a Shakespeare in the human race? Of all the scientists from Royal Society and hall of learning, who came to gossip over the sales at the coffee houses, not one could explain the silver fox.”

The Adventurers’ right to the greater part of the present Dominion of Canada was disputed by the French. A nation went to war with a company. France dispatched fighting fleets. So did the Adventurers; for, what with the high price of silver fox and the low price of beads, the iron box at Fenchurch Street kept well filled. Hudson Bay was again and again the scene of horrible carnage; now one party having the best of it, now another. Anybody wishing to have his eyes opened to what happened between 1682 and 1713 should read “The Conquest of the Great North West,” by the authoress I have just quoted. Let us fix our gaze on one typical scene in the grim retrospect.

In 1697 five French men-of-war arrived in Hudson Straits under the command of the redoubtable Iberville. On his ship, the Pelican, forty men were down with scurvy. On another, the Wasp, a gun broke loose during a gale, crushing several of the crew. For eighteen days the little fleet was ice-jammed in an impenetrable fog. Later, the Pelican became separated from the rest of the fleet. Seeing three ships on the horizon, Iberville hastened towards the supposed friends. They proved to be English men-of-war, the Hampshire, the Dering, and the Hudson’s Bay. When the French commander made that discovery, it was too late to flee. “Quickly, ropes were stretched to give the mariners hand-hold over the frost-slippery deck. Stoppers were ripped from the fifty cannon, and the batterymen below, under La Salle and Grandville, had stripped naked in preparation for the hell of flame and heat that was to be their portion in the impending battle. Bienville, Iberville’s brother, swung the infantrymen in line above decks, swords and pistols prepared for the hand-to-hand grapple. De la Potherie got the Canadians to the forecastle, knives and war hatchets out, bodies stripped, all ready to board when the ships knocked keels. . . . The Hampshire let fly two roaring cannonades that ploughed up the decks of the Pelican and stripped the French bare of masts to the hull. At the same instant, Grimmington’s Dering and Smithsend’s Hudson’s Bay circled to the left of the French and poured a stream of musketry fire across the Pelican’s stern. At one full blast, forty French were mowed down; but the batterymen below never ceased their crash of bombs straight into the Hampshire’s hull.”

For four hours the battle raged. “The ships were so close, shout and counter-shout could be heard across decks. Faces were singed with the closeness of the musketry fire. Ninety French had been wounded. The Pelican’s decks swam in blood that froze to ice, slippery as glass, and trickled down the clinker boards in reddening splashes. Grape shot and grenade had set the fallen sails on fire. Sails and mast poles and splintered davits were a mass of roaring flame that would presently extend to the powder magazines and blow all to eternity. . . . Still the batterymen below poured their storm of fire and bomb into the English hull. The fighters were so close, one old record says, and the holes torn by the bombs so large in the hull of each ship, that the gunners on the Pelican were looking into the eyes of the smoke-grimed men below the decks of the Hampshire. For three hours the English had tacked to board the Pelican, and for three hours the mastless, splintered Pelican had fought like a demon to cripple her enemy’s approach. The blood-grimed, half-naked men had rushed en masse for the last leap, the hand-to-hand fight, when a frantic shout went up. . . . The batteries of the Hampshire had suddenly silenced. The great ship refused to answer to the wheel. That persistent, undeviating fire bursting from the sides of the Pelican had done its work. The Hampshire gave a quick, back lurch. Before the amazed Frenchmen could believe their senses, amid the roar of flame and crashing billows and hiss of fires extinguished in an angry sea, the Hampshire, all sails set, settled and sank like a stone amid the engulfing billows. Not a soul of her two hundred and fifty men—one hundred and ninety mariners and servants, with sixty soldiers—escaped.

“The screams of the struggling seamen had not died on the waves before Iberville had turned the batteries of his shattered ship full force on Smithsend’s Hudson’s Bay. Promptly the Hudson’s Bay struck colours, but while Iberville was engaged boarding his captive and taking over ninety prisoners, Grimmington on the Dering showed swift heel and gained refuge in Fort Nelson.”

Iberville had not noticed the gathering storm, which now broke upon him. “Mist and darkness and roaring sleet drowned the death cries of the wounded, washed and tossed and jammed against the railings by the pounding seas. The Pelican could only drive through the darkness before the storm flaw; ‘the dead,’ says an old record, ‘floating about on the decks among the living.’ The hawser that had towed the captive ship snapped like thread. Captor and captive in vain threw out anchors. The anchors raked bottom. Cables were cut, and the two ships drove along the sands. The deck of the Pelican was icy with blood. Every shock of smashing billows jumbled dead and dying en masse. The night grew black as pitch. The little railing that still clung to the shattered decks of the Pelican was now washed away, and the waves carried off dead and wounded. Tables were hurled from the cabin. The rudder was broken, and the water was already to the bridge of the foundering ship, when the hull began to split, and the Pelican buried her prow in the sands, six miles from the fort.”

The boats had been shot away. Men swam ashore with guns and powder-horns between their teeth. They also strove to tow rough rafts on which the wounded were placed. Eighteen lives were lost in the darkness. As for the survivors, “for twelve hours they had fought without pause for food, and now, shivering round fires kindled in the bush, the half-famished men devoured moss and seaweed raw. Two feet of snow lay on the ground, and when the men lighted fires and gathered round them, they became targets for sharpshooters from the fort, who aimed at the camp fires.