Nova Scotia (28 page)

   
Smallpox took an extreme toll on the Black population on the
Dartmouth side until it was brought under control with vaccinations
in 1815. The Americans kept wrangling with the British for the
return of their “property” until 1818 when the Czar of Russia acted
as an arbitrator on the matter. The British, in the end, agreed to
pay $1 million in compensation to the Americans for a total of
3,000 former slaves, who were allowed to remain in British North
America. It would not be an easy life for the Southern Blacks who
had arrived during and after the war. Nonetheless, they had
achieved their freedom decades before other Blacks who remained as
slaves in the South until the Civil War brought an end to slavery
in America.

In Search of the Promised
Land

Cape Breton had been sparsely
inhabited right up until 1800. It had changed hands back and forth
from French to British and appeared to be an unstable island from a
political point of view. When Cape Breton was set up as a separate
colony from Nova Scotia in 1784, land was granted for settlement.
At first, it was not a popular destination for immigrants but that
all changed in 1820 when it again became part of Nova Scotia and a
new wave of Scottish Highlanders began to arrive. At least 25,000
would sail the Atlantic and settle permanently there by 1850. The
earliest settlers were given free lots of land if they agreed to
homestead upon the properties.

   
One of the Scottish immigrants who did not make Cape Breton a
permanent home was the Reverend Norman McLeod, but he has an
interesting tale nonetheless. Along with a band of his devoted
religious followers from Scotland , he first arrived in Pictou in
1817 but found it an undesirable place. McLeod was anxious to find
his version of the true “promised land,” a place untainted by the
decadence of civilization. Obviously, he had not heard the stories
about Halifax or he would not have wanted his people anywhere in
the same province. But even Pictou, rural as it was, seemed
tainted. So in 1820, along with 200 followers, he set sail again,
this time to head south to another port and then to travel inland
to Ohio. Bad weather forced his ship ashore at St. Ann’s in Cape
Breton, and finding this place to his liking, McLeod decreed that
his followers should stay put. o

   
A land grant was easily attained from the government. The
families built houses and barns and planted potatoes, barley and
oats. Even a grist mill was put into operation. McLeod, a fiery
charismatic man, lived in a formidable three-storey house, and
convinced his followers to farm for him in return for his labours
as minister. He preached on Sundays in both English and Gaelic.
McLeod must have been a persuasive man with a dominant control of
his community, for he taught school as well and convinced his
followers to build boats from the plentiful timber nearby. The
first vessels were small, but soon McLeod had encouraged his men to
construct larger sailing ships. In 1840, his son Donald sailed one
to Glasgow, Scotland, and then went on all the way to Australia,
where he wrote to his father saying that he had found a wonderful
place to live.

   
McLeod grew anxious about the encroachment of civilization on
his own settlement at St. Ann’s and was afraid that his followers
might lose their purity and be tainted by North American life, even
here in this remote community. The preacher, now seventy, prayed
and God told him to move on to the new continent. His dutiful
followers built a ship and prepared for the voyage. It took a full
year. On October 28, 1851, McLeod moved his people yet again – at
least 136 of them followed the holy man who couldn’t seem to find
the perfect earthly paradise.

   
Nineteen thousand kilometres away, they reached
Adelaide, Australia, only to find that Donald had packed up and
moved to Melbourne. Yet when they arrived, they found that Donald
had moved on again, this time to New Zealand. Reverend McLeod was
tired of chasing his son and tried to settle into Melbourne but
found it wanting. When another of his Cape Breton ships, the
Highland Lass
, arrived with 188 more of his people, he
boarded ship and directed the captain to sail for New Zealand. When
the minister and his followers arrived at Waipu in 1853, they were
granted a generous 30,000 acres of land and began a community much
as they had done in Cape Breton years before. The settlement
thrived and many people there today trace their roots to families
that had once lived on Cape Breton Island. Fortunately for those
who had arrived in New Zealand, McLeod was getting on in years and
his wanderlust was no longer strong enough to uproot them yet
again.

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Sun, Sea and Ships
Afloat

About sixteen years ago I taught
myself to sail a four-metre sailboat with a single sail on the
salty waters of Lawrencetown Lake. I proved myself a lousy sailor
but I did eventually learn the basics, essentially that in order to
get from point A to point B, you usually had to point your craft
toward some imaginary point C and then change directions. I liked
the feel of the wind in my hair and I liked leaning far over the
side to keep the boat in trim as I hung onto the rope (or “sheet,”
as it is called) that controlled my sail. I revelled in staring
down into the cool, clear waters as I raced along, oblivious to the
concerns of the modern world.

   
Lawrencetown Lake is fairly shallow and sooner or later I’d
drive my little sailboat into a sandy shoal. Here I would hoist the
centreboard and wrestle the wind-snarled sail until I had realigned
my ship and prepared myself to launch again. My shipwrecks were
usually minor, the worst being the time I got my foot tangled in
the main sheet and the wind whipped up hard to flip my little
fibreglass boat on its side. My youngest daughter was with me at
the time and I grabbed her as we went flying through the air,
splashing down in the rather chilly March waters of the lake. I
walked my daughter ashore and then struggled to bring my cursed
craft back to home port.

   
It was all pretty unhappy and uncomfortable and I realized,
like a myriad of sailing men before me, I had learned sailing was a
thing that made you oscillate between love and hate, pleasure and
pain. Above all, I grew to respect this principle of sailing: you
are never totally in control. The wind and waters are full of
variables. Nothing is to be completely trusted – wind, sea or wave.
You have to always be on your guard. You wi*ll continually be
forced to conjure up solutions and variations to get you from point
A to point B. Therein lies the adventure and therein lies the
danger.

   
Periodically, Halifax Harbour is visited by “tall ships” and
the shopping malls empty as the citizenry lines the harbour
shorelines by Alderney Drive in Dartmouth and at Privateers’ Wharf
in Halifax. Nova Scotians stand in awe as they watch the display of
restored historic sailing vessels that come from around the world.
After the parade of sail, one or two of the big schooners will
leave the harbour and turn east.

   
It will be a cool, decently blue morning without
waves when I find myself writing at my computer before a slightly
salt-stained plate-glass window. I look up and away, beyond the
boring stare of my computer monitor. Not so far out in the blue
Atlantic I see the blossom of white sails as a ship navigates past
Lawrencetown Beach on its way perhaps to Louisbourg or Sydney. I
pull out my binoculars and get a better peek at her, convince
myhself that this indeed is the
Bluenose II
.

   
A little over a hundred years ago, it would have been quite
common to see such ships plowing the seas beyond Lawrencetown,
headed east or west, to or from Halifax. Ships from around the
world would have had their sails billowing on the horizon here,
just beyond my doorstep.

   
Nova Scotians rooted in their past will often remind me of
the fact that there was a time when no one would have called us a
have-not province. It was a prosperous time, sometimes referred to
as the Golden Age of Sail, roughly between 1830 and 1880. Sailing
ships were being built in a hundred inlets and harbours from Hell
Bay to Hawbolt Cove. Historian Phyllis Blakeley speaks of these
ships as “the finest sailing vessels afloat,” and of the sailing
men reared in Nova Scotia during these times as “the best sailors
in the world.” It was an age that is spoken of with
hyperbole.

The Captain’s World

Shipbuilding was a formidable
industry by the mid-nineteenth century. First a “designer” would
create a model or half-model of the ship he would like to build,
perhaps carving all the pieces with a very sharp whittling knife.
Then real timber was cut from the forest and, along a level stretch
of shore, the keel was laid down on blocks not too far from the
water’s edge. There were usually no sketched-out plans, but instead
the carved model would be used as a guide. Careful workmanship went
into fitting the keel, the veritable backbone of the ship to be.
Frames had to be bent with steam and fastened with hardwood pegs to
the keel. Every board had to be fitted as perfectly as possible and
then “corked” with oakum to make the ship watertight. Water was
pumped into the hull and leaks were marked with chalk for repair.
If she could hold her water tight, then maybe she could keep afloat
once out sailing in the sea.

   
Then the deckhouses were built and the masts mounted into
place. The ship was painted to perfection and a rudder hung in
place. When she was ready, she would be launched with some form of
celebration for her maiden voyage.

   
These were good times, heady times. Nova Scotians had
mastered the skills of boat-building and of sailing big ships long
distances. Their audacity to venture out across vast expanses of
ocean to trade at ports around the world was unparalleled.
Undeterred by a long legacy of sea disasters, Nova Scotians built
bigger ships and faster ones. The Golden Age, however, would not
last forever. Technology would eventually outrace tradition. Soon
the Golden Age of Sail would be a memory, a memory that could be
clouded by mythology and longing.

   
Certainly these had been grand times but they were not
necessarily easy times. Nor were all the captains of heroic
proportions. Life on a sailing ship was a hard one; there is no
masking the facts. If you grew up in Nova Scotia in the nineteenth
century, there were few great job opportunities ashore and many a
young man felt he had to get away from home to earn enough money to
survive. Boys of twelve or thirteen might sign onto a ship and
begin a life’s work at sea, sometimes cut short by disease or the
other dangers inherent to sailing the seas. Captains would take
their families along on the larger vessels and some children
literally grew up aboard  ship. Perhaps they travelled around
the world once or twice before they ever set foot in a
schoolhouse.

   
For those who worked on a ship, it was a physical life and a
hard one. If you couldn’t take it, you went back ashore and would
have to live down a reputation as being soft; if you stayed with it
from a young age, you might find yourself stepping up a notch or
two in your profession – second mate by sixteen, first mate by
eighteen and a master sailor even as early as twenty-one. There was
no formal institution where you’d learn the ropes. MYou were
educated in the trade while you worked and earned your own
keep.

   
Aboard ship, the captains were all powerful. Some were kind
men but many were cruel taskmasters, brutal even. One of the
legendary tyrannical captains was reported to have punished six
disobedient sailors by having them hang, tied by their big toes and
thumbs, from the rigging. Of his contemporaries, some were worse,
some were better. Whatever the case, the captain’s words were law,
usually enforced by the first mate. Questioning authorit*y could
bring severe ramifications. Nonetheless, mutiny and insubordination
occurred and so captains were always on the lookout for signs of
rebellion.

   
Mice and rats have always been common shipmates for sailors
and in the nineteenth century, cats were kept on board to control
the rodents. Some cats lived their whole lives without ever setting
foot on shore.

   
Many ships’ captains could almost boast the same as these
cats. There was something truly addictive about the life at sea. It
was not uncommon for a captain to make his fortune and attempt to
retire – buy a farm and settle in – only to return to sea the
following year. This scenario might repeat itself several times
before the captain became too old or feeble to guide his vessel to
foreign ports. Most of these men had never been schooled in
navigation but learned it aboard ship. A good captain would know
the construction of his vessel down to every screw and nail.
Invariably, things would break, fall apart or disappear on a long
voyage and the captain would have to see to replacement or
reconstruction with whatever resources were
aboard.

   
Most captains wore no particular uniform, although they might
take care to remain well-dressed throughout a voyage. If the
captain’s wife had sturdy sea legs, she often joined her man at sea
and was obliged to earn the respect of the crew through both her
demeanour and her work. A captain also functioned as a doctor,
sometimes delivering his own wife’s baby during a voyage. He
controlled the finances of the ship and kept a “slopchest”* to sell
tobacco and clothing to his men. Many were meticulous about
cleanliness and maintenance of the ship and there was a strong
sense of personal identity with the vessel. *