APPENDICES

Ships of the Acadian Expulsion, 1755 and 1758

Unless otherwise noted, the information below is taken from Dr. Don Landry's website <landrystuff.com/ExpulsionShips.html>.

1755

Dr. Landry writes:  "It appears that the ships used for the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia ... were a variety of makeshift second hand cargo vessels, making up a fleet of about 24 sailing vessels.  Governor Shirley [of Massachusetts] and Colonel Lawrence [lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia] had contracted, or chartered these vessels, by the month, for a flat fee per head [9s. per ton], from Charles Apthorp and Thomas Hancock of the Boston Mercantile firm of Apthorp and Hancock.  And, after they were outfitted and converted in Boston to hold 2 persons per ton (in some cases 300 to 500 persons) [a maritime ton was 100 cubic feet of capacity], they were brought over from Boston to Nova Scotia.  The transports were ready on the 11th of October."  He also writes:  "The amount of provisions for the transports were included in the sailing orders issued by Lawrence and was to be 5 pounds of flour and one pound of pork (or 1 lb of beef 2 lbs bread and 5 lbs flour) for (each) 7 days for each person so embarked."

The ships are listed first by departure point, then chronologically by departure date, then alphabetically by destination and ship's name for same day of departure.  HMS means of course His Majesty's Ship and designates a warship in the Royal Navy.  

Milling, Exile Without End, 47, lists an HMS Jamaica, under master Samuel Hood, as one of the two British warships that went to South Carolina with Acadian prisoners of war, but I have found this ship in no other source.  It arrived with HMS Syren, so it may also have come from Chignecto in late 1755.

Note that this list contains no ships that removed Acadians from Cobeguit in the fall of 1755.  This is because virtually the entire population of that settlement escaped to Île St.-Jean, now Prince Edward Island, before British forces could get to them that summer.  Île St.-Jean at the time was a French possession, so, by escaping to the island, the Cobeguit refugees enjoyed a respite from British oppression; in fact, many Acadians from Cobeguit had moved there in the early 1750s at the behest of the Abbé Le Loutre, a French priest who controlled the local Mi'kmaq bands and who used threats of pillaging and murder to pressure the Acadians into supporting the French.08  The Acadians' respite from British attack on Île St.-Jean ended in the autumn of 1758 after the British captured the French stronghold at Louisbourg on nearby Île Royale, now Cape Breton Island, in late July of that year.  British forces descended on Île St.-Jean, rounded up most of its Acadian habitants, and deported them on overcrowded ships to France.  Many of the Cobeguit Acadians were among the exiles rounded up on the island.  

Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, and Memramcook, in present-day southeastern New Brunswick, were Chignecto area settlements.  In the summer of 1755, they lay in territory claimed but not controlled by the British.  Such was the case also of the Beaubassin area of Chignecto west of the Missaguash River, the present boundary between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.  The fall of French Fort Beauséjour near Beaubassin on 16 June 1755, which the British renamed Fort Cumberland, and the summons by Colonel Monckton of the Chignecto area men to Fort Cumberland on 10 August to hear Governor Lawrence's proclamation, nabbed 400 or so Chignecto area men and boys, hence the hundreds deported from there.  If a man from Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, or Memramcook answered the summons to Fort Cumberland on 10 August and fell into the clutches of the British, his family likely departed with him on one of the Chignecto transports two months later.  But most of the Acadians from Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, and Memramcook, especially from the upper Petitcoudiac villages, fled into the woods after Beauséjour fell and escaped deportation.  Meanwhile, while waiting for the transports to arrive, the British confined some of the Chignecto men at nearby Fort Lawrence.  On the night of 1 October, 85 of the Fort Lawrence detainees escaped, led probably by Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil of Petitcoudiac, and most of them probably eluded deportation.  Meanwhile, British forces burned the farms at Chepoudy, the lower Petitcoudiac, and Memramcook as they had done at Minas, Beaubassin, and in the Annapolis River valley, to deny the escapees sustenance in the winter months ahead.  When a British force was burning the villages on the upper Petitcoudiac in early September, a French Canadian force led by Lieutenant Charles Deschamps de Boishébert drove them away with heavy losses, but only after Monckton's men captured 30 women and children and destroyed hundreds of buildings and a large quantity of wheat.  The British did not return to the upper Petitcoudiac until 1758, after the fall of Louisbourg, so that area became a center of resistance, led by Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil, against the hated invaders.  

In the autumn of 1755, the British did not or could not get at the Acadians on upper Rivière St.-Jean, in present-day New Brunswick, hence no transports were sent from there.  A British naval force under ex-privateer Captain Rouse destroyed the French fort at the mouth of Rivière St.-Jean on 30 June 1755 after the fall of Beauséjour, but the settlements farther up the river, where most Acadians in the area lived, were safe for now.  This was fortunate for many of the Annapolis valley Acadians who escaped deportation in the autumn of 1755.  After languishing in the woods above the valley and enduring a terrible winter on the Fundy shore, in March 1756 they somehow crossed the bay to the French-controlled side and found succor amongst their countrymen on upper Rivière St.-Jean before moving on to places of refuge along the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore or to the St. Lawrence valley.  Not until the late summer and autumn of 1758 and the winter of 1759, after the fall of Louisbourg, did the British send expeditions under Colonel Monckton and other officers to the upper St.-Jean, with terrible consequences for the Acadians there.  

The small number of transports that took away the Acadians at Cap-Sable in early 1756 reflects the small size of that community.  With the British capital at Halifax so near to them, unless they had access to ocean-going vessels, the Acadians at Cap-Sable were trapped in a geographic cul de sac when Governor Lawrence ordered the deportation of the Acadians in Nova Scotia.  One of two transports sent there, the Mary, had taken Minas Acadians to Virginia in October, but Governor Dinwiddie refused to let his hundreds of charges disembark.  The Mary was compelled to wait in the lower James River with the other Virginia-bound ships until colonial leaders determined once and for all what to do with the papist exiles.  In March 1756, after the Virginia House of Burgesses had met and supported the governor in refusing to let the surviving Acadians land, the refugees boarded four overcrowded transports destined for England while the Mary headed back to Nova Scotia to retrieve a second load of exiles.  Her destination this time was New York colony, with the bulk of the Cap-Sable Acadians.

From Chignecto

From Minas (Grand-Pré, Rivière-aux-Canards, and other lower communities)

From Pigiguit

From Annapolis Royal

From Halifax

From Cap-Sable

1758

Dr. Landry writes:  "After the fall of Louisbourg in July of 1758, it was decided that the Acadians of Île Royale (now Cape Breton), Île St.-Jean (Prince Edward Island) [be transported] to France and the transports were assembled in November, 1758.  However, soon after their departure, the transports were delayed in the Gut of Canso until November 25, 1758 when they finally set sail for France. ... Between September 8, 1758 and November 5, 1758 it was believed that 2,200 Acadians were embarked on 16 ships destined for France."

According to Parkman, France & England, 2:1249-50, a usually reliable source, in late summer 1758, after the fall of Louisbourg, Andrew, Lord Rollo, in command of Britain's 35th Regiment and two battalions of the 60th Regiment, "received the submission of Isle St.-Jean, and tried to remove the inhabitants,--with small success; for out of more than four thousand he could catch but seven hundred."  So how were the British able to deport so many Acadians from Île St.-Jean a few months later?  Were the majority of the 1758 exiles from Île Royale and not from Île St.-Jean?  A careful historian of Le Grand Dérangement, Dr. Carl A. Brasseaux, says on page 29 of his Scattered to the Wind:  "It is indeed a popular misconception that all of the Acadians were deported from the region in 1755.  Only 6,000-7,000 of Nova Scotia's 12,000-18,000 resident Acadians were removed from their homeland during the Grand Dérangement [1755].  Those who escaped deportation became fugitives.  Hundreds made their way to Prince Edward Island (then called Ile St-Jean), a French possession which had been established earlier in the eighteenth century by Acadians no longer wishing to remain under British rule; by 1758, there were between 3,400 and 5,000 Acadians residing there.  Following the fall of Louisbourg on neighboring Cape Breton Island in 1758, Prince Edward Island was occupied by British forces who deported to France two-thirds of the Acadian population."  The italics in this quote are mine.  

According to figures compiled by Louis-Xavier Perez based on documents found at the Archives de la Marine, Brest, France, and found on the website <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/index_arrivee.htm>, 1,672 Acadians sailed aboard 10 of the ships that reached St.-Malo from Île Royale and Île St.-Jean in late 1758 and early 1759.  These vessels were the Antelope, Duke William, Queen of Spain, Tamerlane, Supply, and the so-called "Five Ships," Yarmouth, Patience, Mathias, Restoration, and John Samuel.  Of these 1,672 passengers, 584, or 35 percent, died at sea, and 228 died soon after arriving in St.-Malo, which reveals how terrible were the conditions aboard these English vessels.  Add the deaths at sea to the deaths in St.-Malo soon after arrival, and you have a total death rate on these ships of ... 48.5%.  This does not count the 400+ Acadians aboard the Violet and the unknown number aboard an unnamed vessel who perished in a mid-Atlantic storm on the way to St.-Malo in December 1758.  So, if a final count could be made, well over half of the Acadians deported to St.-Malo perished in the operation.  K

Keep in mind that not all of the British transports from the Maritime islands went to St.-Malo.  Other French ports of debarkation were Brest, Cherbourg, La Rochelle, Le Havre, Morlaix, and Boulogne-sur-Mer.  Some of the ships, damaged by the crossing, took refuge in English ports before going on to France.  One ship, the Ruby, foundered in a storm off the coast of Portugal in mid-December 1858, losing 190 of the 310 Acadians aboard, a death toll of 61.3%.  A Portuguese ship took the survivors to England, and an English vessel took them to Cherbourg.  After reaching France, some of these wayward Acadians remained in the ports where they had landed, while others sailed on to St.-Malo to join relatives already there.  A careful perusal of the first two volumes of Albert Robichaux, Jr.'s Acadians in St.-Malo reveals a number of Acadian families who did not reach St.-Malo until the early 1760s.  

NOTES

01.  Passenger figures are from <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/index_arrivee.htm>.

02.  Dr. Landry says that, as the ship was sinking, the captain & crew saved themselves, but most of the Acadians perished; 4 Acadians & a priest  made it to Penzanet, England, in a lifeboat.  According to <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/index_arrivee.htm>, & Robichaux, Acadians in St.-Malo, passim, the Duke William (Duc Guillaume in the French archives) did reach St.-Malo, on 1 Nov 58.  It had 283 left on aboard; 148 passengers had died at sea, and 37 died in hospitals soon after arrival, for a death toll of 53.4%.  

03.  <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/index_arrivee.htm>, says that this ship had 105 aboard, 66 died at sea, & 9 died in hospitals soon after arrival, for a total death toll of 71.4%.

04.  Passenger figures are from <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/index_arrivee.htm>.

05.  <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/index_arrivee.htm>, says that this ship had 167 aboard, 24 died at sea, & 19 died in hospitals soon after arrival, for a total death toll of 25.7%.

06.  According to <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/index_arrivee.htm>, the "Five Ships," Yarmouth, Patience, Mathias, Restoration, & John Samuel, had 1,033 aboard, 339 died at sea, & 156 died in hospitals soon after arrival, for a death toll of 48%.  

07.  Figures from Milling, Exile Without End, 47.

08.  See Parkman, France & England, 2:919, 1037.  

09.  See <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/index_arrivee.htm>.

10.  See Paul Delaney's "The Chronology of the Deportations and Migrations of the Acadians 1755-1816," in <acadian-home.org>.  

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