Читать книгу Canadian Footprints - Melvin Ormond Hammond - Страница 15

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ON a bare rocky hill overlooking the “reversing falls” of the St. John River may be seen a small group of old buildings, the relics of Fort Howe, a defence post which kept the port and the river for King George in the troublous years of the American Revolution. It was a period of danger and temptation. Seventy families of disbanded troops from Massachusetts, some of them soldiers of Wolfe at Quebec, had settled up the river in Sheffield Township in 1763. When the Revolution of 1776 came, the early residents naturally sympathized with their kinsmen of New England. A rebels’ “nest” was established at Machias, on the Maine coast, near the New Brunswick border, and from here came privateers and marauders against the British ports. Colonel John Allan, formerly a member of the Nova Scotia Legislature, led these trying enterprises.

In the Autumn of 1777 the British sent Major Gilfred Studholme with 50 men, 4 six-pounders and a framed blockhouse, to establish defences at the mouth of the St. John. Before the year ended, Fort Howe was built, and thereafter was so imposing in the eyes of enemies that it is doubtful if it ever fired a shot in anger. The old Machias pirate, A. Greene Crabtree, who had previously raided the harbour for supplies for hungry revolutionists, beat a hasty retreat when he returned to find a British flag on Fort Howe. Robbery was more to his liking than fighting.

Studholme then settled down to his duty of watchdog. He had a commanding situation, and accommodation for 12 officers and 100 men. Allan in 1778 stirred the river Indians to return the British flag and to send with it a declaration of war to Fort Howe. Michael Francklin, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and James White, his agent at St. John, summoned a delegation of Indians to confer. Under the shadow of Fort Howe the eloquence and the gifts of the King’s men were so effective that the Indians signed a letter in which they said:

“We have this day settled all misunderstanding that thou didst occasion between us and King George’s men.”

There was another season of unrest upriver in 1779 and it was met with another conference and presents, with the same result.

The St. John then became a highway for messengers between the British military authorities at New York and the Governor at Quebec. The river’s safety and loyalty were secured, and when the first fleet of three thousand Loyalists reached St. John in May, 1783, to found the city and the Province of New Brunswick, there was a thunderous welcome from the iron throats of Fort Howe.

Fort Howe, St. John