Читать книгу There Go the Ships - Archibald McKellar MacMechan - Страница 3

Table of Contents

For the third time, I offer the public a handful of true stories, chiefly adventures of Nova Scotia seamen. My aim is plain truth; “romance” I avoid and abjure. The sources of each tale are noted in the table of contents, under each title. My task has been to order my material, correlate and harmonize statements, and thus reconstruct the incident. Inference and deduction came into play; but it was surprising to find how readily the collected facts fitted together as whole coherent narratives. Perhaps they may serve some native Carlyle of the future as data in a study of heroes and the heroic in history.

The adventures of Saint-Luc de La Corne, afloat and ashore, form only one chapter in a long, roving, exploring, fighting life. He seems a type of the old native Canadian noblesse, whose story is yet to be told. It was a hardy, warlike race ready for any bold enterprise like Iberville’s descent upon the English garrison at Hudson’s Bay, or the bloody surprise of Noble at Grand Pré. They intermarried, and seem to have formed one large family. One hopes for other documents like Saint-Luc’s journal buried in obscurity for a century and a half. An excellent portrait of Saint-Luc, painted apparently during his visit to London, is preserved in the Château de Ramezay. It makes credible everything that is known about him, both good and bad.

The basis for the second saga is a remarkably full and well kept log of the privateer Charles Mary Wentworth. It is doubtful if any other document, in Canada, at least, presents so clear and truthful a picture of life on board an eighteenth century “private vessel of war.” Benjamin Knaut became sheriff of Queen’s County, and Mr. Collins, the zealous first officer, a merchant prince of Halifax, and one of the first multi-millionaires of America.

Two tales exhibit the Nova Scotia sailor saving life at sea, at the risk of his own. In one case, he responded to mysterious monitions out of the blank night. In the other, the “perfect folly” of the Lunenburg coasting captain snatched seven men from the very jaws of death.

The saga of the Regina tells how a stout vessel may be dismembered by stress of weather in mid-ocean and how a strong-hearted, much-enduring Nova Scotia sailor used every means to save his life. From first to last, the chain of causation is strangely tenuous, but it is complete. It ends in rescue.

Still another chain of remote causation links a Maitland captain with the labours of a missionary in the South Seas and the gift of a treasure.

Two tales exhibit typical Nova Scotia ship-masters extricating their vessels from great difficulties and navigating them safe to port. One is old school, and the other new school; but both manifest the same professional skill, resource and indomitable spirit.

The saga of the W. D. Lawrence, the largest ship ever built in Nova Scotia, illustrates the enterprise of the past generation. To have conceived, financed and carried through such an undertaking would have been a notable achievement for a company of rich Halifax merchants; Lawrence did it single-handed. His voyage round the world in his masterpiece is of the essence of poetry. The sailing ship is the universal symbol of romance.

There are two tales of heroic women. The name of Mary Hichens, who built the Seal Island lighthouse, should be written in our national scroll of fame in letters of gold beside Laura Secord and Madeleine de Verchères. Beside it should stand the name of Margaret MacDougall, who threw herself between her wounded husband and the knives of the Launberga mutineers.

“The Wave” illustrates the perils faced and the hardships undergone by the Nova Scotia girls who married sailors and went to sea. What capable helpmeets they were is shown by Ada Inness steering the Whidden at the critical juncture of re-rigging the dismasted schooner.

Danger comes rarely into the ordinary life of the landsman; it is the sailor’s element. Death may spring upon him at any moment of the day or night. Swift destruction may overwhelm him and his vessel in an instant of time. He must always be on the alert. The sea is a hard school, but it breeds men of courage, fortitude and swift decision; it breeds heroes.

Praise for the men and women whose deeds are written in this book is impertinent. No form of words, no flight of eloquence can add a glory to the plain record of what they did and endured; but the province which bore and bred them should remember them with pride and the giving of thanks. These shining examples of courage, hardihood and self-devotion are a far more precious heritage than all the wealth ever won or still to be drawn from the mine, the field, the forest and the sea.

A. M. M.