Cape Breton Places & Foods

Halifax, the ancient and picturesque capitol of Nova Scotia, is visited every summer by thousands of American tourists. They enjoy their escape from the torrid heat of August at home, to the cool sea air, the clear blue days, and the peaceful sleep-filled nights, and they find no little interest in the bowery public gardens, the mazes of the sea-grit park, the royal prospects from the star-shaped citadel, and the many monuments that record the history of this old garrison. As long ago as the eighteenth century, during the American Revolution, hundreds of American citizens used to visit the place, but they did not come willingly; they were singularly blind to its scenic charm and they took the earliest possible opportunity of returning to their native land. They were, in fact, prisoners of war gathered up by His Britannic Majesty’s cruisers and land forces. They were confined in jails and prison-ships and barracks, and they lived on prisoner’s fare. Their lot was hard and they gave the city of their captivity a bad name which it was slow to shake off. Sooner or later, they were sent home by cartel, in exchange for British prisoners gathered up by the Continentals; but the more impatient broke out by force or stratagem, and the sympathizing Nova Scotians helped them “up along to the westward” on their way to freedom. The rape of the Flying Fish is a case in point, and the story shows how peaceful men suffer in time of war.

On the evening of April 7, 1780, a little ten ton schooner with this poetic name lay at a wharf in Halifax, probably Fairbanks’ near the foot of Blower Street. With the help of a single other hand, William Greenwood brought her up from Barrington, a small fishing village at the butt-end of the province, to the capitol with a load of potatoes. He had sold his cargo, possibly to the commissariat department, for Halifax had a huge garrison to feed at the time; and he had received his money. He had also his clearance from the Customs and he was ready to sail. Between eight and nine o’clock he was in the tiny cabin with the other man, the two forming the entire crew; he may have been getting ready to turn in for the night, or he may have been reckoning up the profits of the trip, or considering how soon he could get back to Barrington and begin the spring fishing. He had on board nets and other gear, and he knew where he could procure a sufficiency of salt; he may have been thinking of the Banks. Or he may have been meditating on the varied experience of the past five years, since the Thirteen Colonies had declared their independence of the mother country.

The war had been a hard trial for poor men like William Greenwood. Only ten years before it broke out, he had left his native state of Massachusetts for Nova Scotia and had settled at Barrington for greater convenience to the rich fisheries of the North Atlantic. He was a British subject. He had simply transferred himself and his belongings from one British colony to another, and now, for no fault of his, by the ironic accident of mere residence, he found himself an enemy to his old friends and the kindred he had left behind. How could he bear arms against them? How could he help sympathizing with the “rebels,” against whom the governor and Assembly of Nova Scotia fulminated in menacing Acts and proclamations? It was a cruel situation for a poor man, especially after Congress had declared that the thirteen colonies would have no trade or commerce with the two erring sisters to the north, which refused to join the union. The fishermen of Barrington and Yarmouth soon felt the pinch of want. Fishing was their sole source of livelihood; to move back to Massachusetts meant ruin; to remain in Nova Scotia exposed them to the American privateers and shut them out from their natural market.

Still, men are not as harsh as their laws; even in the worst year of the war, commerce between Nova Scotia and Massachusetts did not wholly cease. In October, 1776, the Barrington men loaded the schooner Hope with fish and liver oil and sent her to Salem with a piteous request that they might be allowed to barter the cargo for provisions, to keep them through the long winter approaching. It is impossible, they said, to get provisions elsewhere. The homely petition breaks into an irrepressible cry of distress-God only knows what will become of us.” To resist such an appeal was not easy. The House of Representatives allowed the agent of the Hope, Heman Kinney, to dispose of his cargo, and to purchase two hundred and fifty bushels of corn, thirty barrels of pork, two hogsheads of molasses, two hogsheads of rum [a necessity of life], and two hundred pounds of coffee. With these rations, rather plentiful and luxurious compared to what they purchased in later years, the community of Barrington managed somehow or other to get through the long winter.

Exactly a year later, Greenwood had been able to render an important service to the new republic by returning to it no fewer than twenty-five of its fighting men. Captain Littlefield Libby had the misfortune to lose his privateer. She was driven on shore by one of H.B.M.’s cutters. Her crew set her on fire and took to the woods. After a toilsome journey of seventeen leagues through the primeval forest, they reached Barrington and bought a boat with what money they had, eked out with their shoe buckles and thirty small-arms. But ill luck still fowled them. They were wrecked and lost their dear bought boat… Once more they were forced back on the limited hospitality of the fishing hamlet at the east passage of Cape Sable Island. In this crisis, Greenwood undertook to ferry them over to his forty-five ton schooner, the Sally, which may have been named after his wife. In addition to Libby’s crew, he brought one of Captain Fullerby’s men and three others who had escaped from Halifax and made their way to the end of the province nearest their own home. The plan of the previous year was repeated. On Captain Libby’s advice, the Sally was loaded with a few quintals of fish, the result of the labor of many families, some bushels of salt, and some fish oil to be exchanged for corn or wheaten flour, for the indispensable daily bread. By October 27, 1777, the Sally with her cargo and her returning privateers was safe at Salem, and four days later, Greenwood’s petition for leave to buy food was granted.

For the return trip, Greenwood had shipped a new hand, one John Caldwell, a young fisherman, whose artless tale illustrates the sufferings of the innocent noncombatants in time of war. He lived in Nova Scotia, not far from Barrington, where the visionary Colonel Alexander McNutt projected his marvelous city of New Jerusalem. Caldwell was the only support of his widowed mother and his sisters. The fishery had been ruined by the depredations of the merciless small privateers, so he made a voyage in a merchantman from Nova Scotia to the West Indies. On his return, he avers that he was “strongly important” to go on another voyage to Quebec; so he must have been a likely lad. On his way thither, his vessel was snapped up by the privateer Dolphin out of Salem, and he himself was mage prisoner of war. Now he petitioned for release, and the Council of Massachusetts were not without bowels. They considered his motives, his youth, and his peculiar circumstances, as he requested, and they gave him leave to return in the Sally to his own place. The next October saw Greenwood again in Boston with his annual cargo of escaping prisoners on board the Sally, and his annual petition for leave to buy food. His passenger list included Amos Green of Salem, Ichabod Mattocks of Mount Desert, and Mr. John Long, late quartermaster of the Continental ship Hancock. She had been captured by that very active officer Sir George Collier of the Rainbow in a sea-duel, like that between the Chesapeake and the Shannon, and taken to Halifax. The local jail must have been a curious place. The jailor was infirm and delegated his duties to his wife. The supply of shackles was insufficient and the regulations for visiting the prisoners at night were not enforced. Apparently, nobody with any contrivance remained long in durance. Americans were always escaping and always being helped up along by the people of Nova Scotia.

So far Greenwood, the “hearty friend of America,” as Captain Libby calls him, had managed to escape being ground between the upper and nether millstones of the hostile forces, but soon he was to suffer not from “the enemy,” but from the Americans he consistently befriended.