In the end of June, 1811, Captain Miles Macdonell found himself at Yarmouth, on the east coast of England, with a fleet of three vessels sent out by the Hudson's Bay Company for their regular trade and also to carry the first colonists. These vessels were the Prince of Wales, the Eddystone, and an old craft the Edward and Anne, with "old sail ropes, &c., and very badly manned." This extra vessel was evidently intended for the accommodation of the colonists. By the middle of July the little fleet had reached the Pentland Firth and were compelled to put into Stromness, when the Prince of Wales embarked a number of Orkneymen intended for the Company's service. The men of the Hudson's Bay Company at this time were largely drawn from the Orkney Islands.
Proceeding on their way the fleet made rendezvous at Stornoway, the chief town of Lewis, one of the Hebrides. Here had arrived a number of colonists or employés, some from Sligo, others from Glasgow, and others from different parts of the Highlands. Many influences were operating against the success of the colonizing expedition. It had the strenuous opposition of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, then in Britain, and the newspapers contained articles intended to discourage and dissuade people from embarking in the enterprise. Mr. Reid, collector of Customs at Stornoway, whose wife was an aunt of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, threw every impediment in the way of the project, and some of those engaged by Lord Selkirk were actually lured away by enlisting agents. A so-called "Captain" Mackenzie, denominated a "mean fellow," came alongside the Edward and Anne, which had some seventy-six men aboard—Glasgow men, Irish, "and a few from Orkney"—and claimed some of them as "deserters from Her Majesty's service." The demand was, however, resisted. It is no wonder that in his letter to Lord Selkirk Captain Macdonell writes, "All the men that we shall have are now embarked, but it has been an herculean task."
A prominent employé of the expedition, Mr. Moncrieff Blair, posing as a gentleman, deserted on July 25th, the day before the sailing of the vessels. A number of the deserters at Stornoway had left their effects on board, and these were disposed of by sale among the passengers. Among the officers was a Mr. Edwards, who acted as medical man of the expedition. He had his hands completely full during the voyage and returned to England with the ships. Another notable person on board was a Roman Catholic priest, known as Father Bourke. Captain Macdonell was himself a Roman Catholic, but he seems from the first to have had no confidence in the priest, who, he stated, had "come away without the leave of his bishop, who was at the time at Dublin." Father Bourke, we shall see, though carried safely to the shores of Hudson Bay, never reached the interior, but returned to Britain in the following year. After the usual incidents of "an uncommon share of boisterous, stormy, and cold weather" on the ocean, the ships entered Hudson Bay. Experiencing "a course of fine mild weather and moderate fair winds," on September 24th the fleet reached the harbour of York Factory, after a voyage of sixty-one days out from Stornoway, the Eddystone, which was intended to go to Churchill, not having been able to reach that Factory, coming with the other vessels to York Factory.
The late arrival of the colony on the shores of Hudson Bay made it impossible to ascend the Nelson River and reach the interior during the season of 1811. Accordingly Captain Macdonell made preparations for wintering on the Bay. York Factory would not probably have afforded sufficient accommodation for the colonists, but in addition Captain Macdonell states in a letter to Lord Selkirk that "the factory is very ill constructed and not at all adapted for a cold country." In consequence of these considerations, Captain Macdonell at once undertook, during the fair weather of the season yet remaining, to build winter quarters on the north side of the river, at a distance of some miles from the Factory. No doubt matters of discipline entered into the plans of the leader of the colonists. In a short time very comfortable dwellings were erected, built of round logs, the front side high with a shade roof sloping to the rear a foot thick—and the group of huts was known as "Nelson encampment!"
The chief work during the earlier winter, which the captain laid on his two score men, was providing themselves with fuel, of which there was plenty, and obtaining food from the Factory, for which sledges drawn over the snow were utilized by the detachments sent on this service. The most serious difficulty was, however, a meeting, in which a dozen or more of the men became completely insubordinate, and refused to yield obedience either to Captain Macdonell or to Mr. W. H. Cook, the Governor of the Factory. Every effort was made to maintain discipline, but the men steadily held to their own way, lived apart from Macdonell, and drew their own provisions from the fort to their huts. This tended to make the winter somewhat long and disagreeable.
Captain Macdonell, being a Canadian, knew well the dangers of the dread disease of the scurvy attacking his inexperienced colonists. The men at the fort prophesied evil things in this respect for the "encampment." The captain took early steps to meet the disease, and his letters to Governor Cook always contain demands for "essence of malt," "crystallized salts of lemon," and other anti-scorbutics. Though some of his men were attacked, yet the sovereign remedy so often employed in the "lumber camps" of America, the juice of the white spruce, was applied with almost magical effect. As the winter went on, plenty of venison was received, and the health of his wintering party was in the spring much better than could have been anticipated.
After the New Year had come, all thoughts were directed to preparations for the journey of 700 miles or thereabouts to the interior. A number of boats were required for transportation of the colonists and their effects. Captain Macdonell insisted on his boats being made after a different style from the boats commonly used at that time by the Company. His model was the flat boat, which he had seen used in the Mohawk River in the State of New York. The workmanship displayed in the making of these boats very much dissatisfied Captain Macdonell, and he constantly complained of the indolence of the workmen. In consequence of this inefficiency the cost of the boats to Lord Selkirk was very great, and drew forth the objections of the leader of the colony.
Captain Macdonell had the active assistance of Mr. Cook, the officer in charge of York, and of Mr. Auld, the Commander of Churchill, the latter having come down to York to make arrangements for the inland journey of the colonists. By July 1st, 1812, the ice had moved from the river, and the expedition started soon after on the journey to Red River. The new settlers found the route a hard and trying one with its rapids and portages. The boats, too, were heavy, and the colonists inexperienced in managing them. It was well on toward autumn when the company, numbering about seventy, reached the Red River. No special preparation had been made for the colonists, and the winter would soon be upon them. Some of the parties were given shelter in the Company fort and buildings, others in the huts of the freed men, who were married to the Indian women, and settled in the neighbourhood of the Forks, while others still found refuge in the tents of the Indian encampment in the vicinity. Governor Macdonell soon selected Point Douglas as the future centre of the colony and what is now Kildonan as the settlement. On account of the want of food the settlers were taken sixty miles south to Pembina and there, by November, a post, called Fort Daer from one of Lord Selkirk's titles, was erected for the shelter of the people and for nearness to the buffalo herds. The Governor Joined the colony in a short time and retired with them early in 1813 to their settlement.
While Governor Macdonell was thus early engaged in making a beginning in the new colony, Lord Selkirk was seeking out more colonists, and sent out a small number to the New World by the Hudson's Bay Company ships. Before sailing from Stornoway the second party met with serious interruption from the collector of Customs, who, we have seen, was related to Sir Alexander Mackenzie. The number on board the ships was greater, it was claimed, than the "Dundas Act" permitted. Through the influence of Lord Selkirk the ships were allowed to proceed on their voyage. Prison fever, it is said, broke out on the voyage, so that a number died at sea, and others on the shore of Hudson Bay. A small number, not more than fifteen or twenty, reached Red River in the autumn of 1813.
During the previous winter Governor Macdonell had taken a number of the colonists to Pembina, a point sixty miles south of the Forks, where buffalo could be had, as has already been mentioned on the previous page. On returning, after the second winter, to the settlement, the colonists sowed a small quantity of wheat. They were not, however, at that time in possession of any horses or oxen and were consequently compelled to prepare the ground with the hoe.