With his bold and open brow,
And age, with his wearied look of care,
And his floating locks of snow;
And the agile form of the stripling boy,
With his throbbing pulse of hope and joy.
They dreamed of the happy hours of home,
Of a blessed mother’s prayer,
Of the cherished wife in that sacred dome,
Of the lisping prattlers there;
And the stripling dreamed of his young love’s smile
When he left her bound for the fatal isle.
Oh, what was that dim, ominous sound,
That struck on the sleeper’s ear,
Yet roused him not from his rest profound
Till the unsheathed blade was near?
And it seemed as the air and the rocks were riven
By the slogan of death and the wild shriek given.
Oh, vain was the strife of the struggling few
With a well-armed murderous band;
For the gallant barque, with her blood-drenched crew,
Is floating from the strand,
And the young boy’s _quarter cry_ it bore
To the purple wave, with his own heart’s gore.
On, wildly onward, sped the craft,
As she swiftly neared the verge;
And the demon guards of the black gulf laughed,
And chanted a hellish dirge;
And the booming waters roared anew
A wail for the dead and dying crew.
As over the shelving rocks she broke
And plunged in her turbulent grave,
The slumbering Genius of Freedom woke,
Baptized in Niagara’s wave,
And sounded her warning tocsin far
From Atlantic’s shore to polar star.”
A careful computation from pages of prose, almost as flowery as
the foregoing lines and oftentimes breaking into rhyme from a very
luxuriousness of idea and rhythm, puts the lives aboard the _Caroline_
at about ninety-nine in number. Thirty-three were killed and missing;
thirty-three were towed into the middle of the stream when the boat
was fired, and with her went over the ledge; there were also thrilling
cries from “the living souls” on board, plus “wails of the dying,”
presumably thirty-three cries and thirty-three wails, all gliding
down the resistless rapids to perish by “the double horror of a fate
inevitable.”
On the day following the cutting out five hundred men were told off to
complete the work by driving the filibusters off the island, the three
schooners, with boats and barges, being sufficient transport. “But
what shall we do if a shot strikes our boat--we must either drown or
go over the Falls,” was a query which sent Captain Drew off on another
hazard. He pulled up stream in a four-oared gig, within pistol shot of
the island, to see if the enemy’s field-piece was equal to hitting a
boat which moved fast through the water. So far the casualties from the
red-hot shot sent skipping along the Canadian shore were the death of
young Smith of Hamilton, who, lying in a barn on some hay, had part of
his thigh carried away and some ribs broken, and an old sailor named
Millar who served Captain Luard’s guns, and had his leg taken off.
Millar asked to see his leg, gave three cheers for the Queen, and died.
A twenty-four pounder, mounted on a scow, battered the point where the
guns of Van Rensselaer were most active. Drew’s expedition brought
upon themselves both musketry and field-pieces, at first innocent of
all aim, but suddenly so improved that one shot made ducks and drakes
on the water, just clearing the gunwale, and passing between Drew and
his strokesman. This was from no amateur, but owed its precision to
the hand of a young West Pointer--possibly of the “empty hand, stout
heart, of fair military tactics” letter. Van Rensselaer has left it
on record that the only moments of excitement to him in this episode
were when the first gun was fired from the island, and when this boat’s
crew, at early dawn, made its way in safety round them; so that Drew’s
temerity was not without reward. These patriots had “kissed their rusty
muskets” and vowed they would never lay them down until “the redemption
of Canada was accomplished.” A “sympathetic” account tells us that the
men so determined to do or die, in order to protect themselves from
temptation had taken the pins out of the screws of the scows and burned
their oars, resolved,
“If sons of Liberty can keep
resting-place but this,
Then here we’ll stand--or madly leap
Into the dark abyss.”
The outcome was a hurried departure by night after they heard of the
arrival of the 24th Regiment. The brisk cannonade of about four hundred
rounds from heavy guns and mortars, and the armed schooners which
effectually kept them within their breastworks, were almost enough
without the rumour of the 24th.
When the Canadian force landed not a soul was to be seen, and what had
appeared formidable defence dwindled. Apparently a second Gibraltar, it
was found in military parlance to be a bug-bear than which a greater
never existed, a conglomeration of batteries and hovels masked with
wood, a sickening spectacle of “looped and windowed” wretchedness. The
vaunted blockhouse citadel, the barracks and the batteries, were but
huts of trees and sods and ill-constructed embankments; the only reward
for industry was an abattis of brushwood to prevent boat invasion.
A man concealed in the woods now came out, white flag in hand, and from
him and two women found in a hut did the Canadians get an account of
life on “the fatal isle” during the biting storms and pitiless rain
of December, ’37, and January, ’38. “Peas and beans dank as a dog,”
varied by feasts, the bones of which lay about with remains of bread
and barrels of beans yet untouched, had been their food; the bushes
about were eloquent, with bits of rag sticking to them, of the quality
of clothing; these patriots, herded together like swine and sheep,
left behind them evidences of some stores, boots and shoes, plenty
of reading matter of the most virulent kind, all mixed up with burst
shells, splintered wood and dirty straw. Some boots had the legs cut
open, apparently to strip wounded limbs, some were stained with blood;
and “a huge pile of unpicked bones, ... on a rough board used as a
table,” and the remains of beds made of pine branches, gave further
evidence.
Sir Francis paid the site a visit on the 17th, a wild and boisterous
day. He had the body of one man exhumed--shot by a rifle, but his arms
were pinioned. He had been suspected as a spy. The susceptible Sir
Francis, light as his heart generally was, saddened at the sight of him.
Songs abounded for every part of the event, dates sometimes making way
for rhyme:
“They say he murdered one Durfee,
In December, ’39, sir;
And stole some candles and old boots,
And burnt the _Caroline_, sir.”
On the night of evacuation the _soi-disant_ patriot army surrendered
their arms to the United States authorities and disbanded their forces.
The cannon belonging to the State were returned in a scow to Fort
Schlosser, and in transit with the men on board came near following
the fate of the _Caroline_. The scow had fallen far down the current
and the men had given up their case as hopeless, when a gale from the
north-west sprang up, and, aided by their blankets extemporized into
sails, they were wafted ashore.
A month before, when they had received these ill-gotten guns, they
slaughtered the oxen which drew them, and paid for the beef and work by
a due-bill on the future Canadian Republic.
“No sooner was the _Caroline_ in flames than a sudden excitement
prevailed; but it was the excitement of _fear_. The women fled from
the villages on the coast, people who had fancied themselves bedridden
decamped, and the citizens of Buffalo evinced the greatest possible
consternation for the safety of their town.”
Captain Drew almost distanced Sir Francis in unpopularity in certain
quarters; but like him, among his own was at once a hero. At St.
George’s Day dinner in Toronto, Captain Marryat, an old comrade of
Drew’s, gave the toast: “Captain Drew and his brave comrades who
cut out the _Caroline_.” The day after the cutting-out, Drew, with
MacNab, was burnt in effigy on the ice at Detroit, and he saw himself
advertised for in a Buffalo newspaper at a reward of $500. He was
hanged in effigy--a compliment kept up on the anniversary for several
years; active attempts were made to assassinate him, of so determined
a nature that in the end the pleasant Woodstock home was forsaken, and
heroism was forgotten when, forced to leave the country to preserve
life to wife and family, he found himself in England, where the
preservation of Canada was of interest on a large scale but the reward
of her preservers a matter of no moment. Captain Marryat’s toast
brought upon him, too, attentions similar to those bestowed upon the
subject of it. He was burned in effigy in every town in the United
States through which his journey took him; his writings were made into
a bonfire in Lewiston, and in St. Louis his effigy was decorated with
a halter round the neck. Cincinnati was the first place which dared to
assert a difference. The captain, whose mother was an American, had so
far looked on at his own cremation and at that of his child-literary
with calmness, smoking a cigar the while; but in Cincinnati, at the
dinner tendered him, he spoke out like a man, a gentleman, and a person
of force and humour, giving his reasons for his opinions and actions
and ashamed of neither. He said that his motive in refusing private
hospitality was that he might leave himself freedom of speech; and he
finishes his deliverance, “If we are to burn all those who differ with
us in opinion, consider, gentlemen, what a glorious bonfire would be
made of the whole United States.”
What touched him most deeply was part of his mail matter,--five hundred
anonymous letters which cost him on an average fifty cents each to
redeem from the post, and of which he makes bitter though humorous
complaint in a long, published letter, supposed to answer his five
hundred correspondents in one _coup-de-main_ and also his well-wishers,
whose missives followed him so persistently from place to place, that
he began to think it a combined attack upon his purse from Van Buren
and the Postmaster-General.
* * * * *
The destruction of the _Caroline_ surprised everyone, Americans,
Canadians, even the chief actors; it let loose the tongues of ministers
and diplomats, and it gave a great impulse to the outside movement of
sympathisers or patriots. The success of Drew’s action made the last
wary; but the howl of indignation, which for a time was allowed to have
some show of reason, served as a cloak under which to add retaliation
to what before had been dubbed patriotism alone. Sugar Island, Bois
Blanc, and the schooner _Anne_ followed in quick succession; but
the most direct outrage as result of it was that against the _Sir
Robert Peel_ under the management of an autocrat on the other side of
the warfare, handsome and distinguished looking as MacNab himself,
determined as Drew, uncompromising as Prince, with an air and halo
of romance over all his actions arising partly from his personality,
partly from the romantic beauty of his surroundings--the redoubtable
Bill Johnston, king of the Thousand Islands.
General Van Rensselaer, in sash and epaulets, with his encampment on
Navy Island, backed by two or three hundred vagabonds, making war
upon Great Britain, was a ridiculous person. But Bill Johnston, the
buccaneer, armed to the teeth, actuated by revenge for real injuries,
carrying out his threat to be a thorn in Great Britain’s side, flying
from island to island, a price set upon his head, determined to sell
his life at desperate cost, devoted to his daughter and adored by
his children, has a touch of poetry about him which almost justified
what he devoutly believed himself--that it was a glorious thing to
be a pirate king. It is a come-down to have to admit that one of
his occupations was robbing the Canadian mails, when he would take
the clothes off the occupants of the coach and beat whoever refused
him, tie the coachman to a tree--as he did between Gananoque and
Kingston--and leave the man there. He once captured a dragoon carrying
despatches, took the man and his horse to the lake shore, shot the
horse, put the despatch-bag in his boat, and let the man find his way
on foot to report himself to his captain.
This was the personage concerning whom Silas Fletcher, one of the
refugees from Gallows Hill, wrote from Watertown to Navy Island, that
he was a man in whom it was perfectly safe to confide, “a gentleman
of intelligence, equal to fifty ordinary men,” recommended for a
commission because he could “greatly annoy the Kingstonians,” his
influence so great that he could raise two hundred as bold volunteers
as ever drew trigger. Some of the sympathizers had a faculty for
arousing admiration; for about this time a lady in Rochester, who kept
a private school where some Toronto girls were sent, allowed her pupils
to work a silken flag to be presented to the pirate force.
Johnston and his followers had many disguises. In their attacks on
isolated farm-houses it was their pleasure to adopt the dress of
ordinary sailors, and in their expedition to the island of Tanti--a
Canadian possession of Lord Mountcashel, from which they took much
plunder, and where they left one farmer with three fingers and part
of a hand shot off--the whole _mise-en-scène_ is absurdly like “H.
M. S. _Pinafore_.” From island to island, from rock to the hidden
fastness, keeping in the narrower channels where inclined planes
were cleverly constructed by which to draw up their fast boats, the
only clue to their haunts was a surprise shot from some ambush or
the expiring embers of a lately deserted bivouac fire, or perhaps a
couple of barrels moored in the narrowest part of Fiddler’s Elbow,
innocent-looking infernal machines left ready for the unwary.
French Creek--_A-ten-ha-ra-kweh-ta-re_, the place where the wall
fell down--Abel’s Island and some other points, were his favourites;
but Fort Wallace, a small islet at the head of Wells’ Island, was
his fastness, where, with a dozen men, he boasted he could withstand
two hundred. The number of boats scattered up and down the islands
was popularly supposed to be one hundred, and the population of this
world of islets some thousand souls, all under the sway of Johnston.
Rinaldo, Robert Kidd and Robert le Diable seemed centred in him. He
could land at Queenston unarmed and get the guard tipsy, and with a
few companions take off seventy stand of arms. But his experience as
smuggler and trader, and his exploits when in the employment of the
American Government during the war of 1812, when he roamed all the
lakes and rivers, intercepting despatches, and when, his boat driven in
by a gale on the Canadian shore and his crew captured, he could cross
Ontario--at that point thirty-six miles wide--in a bark canoe after
a fortnight’s dodging of British vessels, made such affairs as came
to his hand in ’37 seem bagatelles. In the early days he had at his
command a six-oared barge; now he and his four sons, the latter all
partaking of his own nature, powers and daring, did their work in four
row-boats of extraordinary speed, each boat with a crew of eight or ten
men and all armed to the teeth. The boat used by Johnston himself was
twelve-oared, the swiftest of the fleet, twenty-eight feet by four and
a half, clinker-built and gay with paint. Black bottom, white above,
with a yellow streak six inches wide below the gunwale, inside red, so
light in weight that two men could carry her with ease, but capable of
accommodating twenty armed men, this gay-looking craft flew his own
colours.
But for special use in deceiving British vessels a Stars and Stripes
lay ready to hand. Not that he was under the protection of the latter;
he was harried equally by United States authorities and Canadian, his
capture being finally made by the former. The most interesting member
of his domestic group was his daughter, whom his ambition was to make
Queen of the Thousand Isles, a handsome girl of nineteen, possessed of
courage enough to manage her boat alone, armed like her brothers, and
skilful enough to keep her father supplied with provisions on those
exciting occasions when he had to hide.
Bill Johnston and his followers were of more consequence than all the
men, Provisional Government, generals and staff, on Navy Island; in the
words of an American newspaper, “This chap seems now to be conducting
war on his own hook.” Wells’ Island was the scene of his reprisal for
the burning of the _Caroline_; for all his own grievance, such as the
confiscation of his property on the British side in 1812, he felt
himself more than avenged. The island, part of Jefferson county, had
not more than an acre of cleared land upon it, with a wharf used for
wooding the vessels which called there for fuel; the sole building was
one log shanty. When the _Sir Robert Peel_ drew in on the evening so
important to her, May 29th, 1838, the woodman warned the captain that
suspicious-looking characters were inland. But the warning was made
light of, and the usual fueling programme followed. All on board went
to bed, and about ten o’clock thirteen of the erstwhile sailors of
the island of Tanti appeared in their new scene as Indians, looking
the part to perfection in black, red and yellow paint. Their number
had been twenty-eight, but they had dropped down the river from their
camp on Abel’s Island, on the opposite side to the wood station, and
in crossing fifteen of the band had been temporarily lost in a swamp.
The debate whether this left too small a number for the attack led to
delay, but Johnston decided that a baker’s dozen was a lucky number,
and that if this opportunity were lost another as favourable might
not offer itself. So the warwhoop, as good an imitation as their
painted semi-nudeness, was raised. One discrepancy was the absence of
tomahawks, replaced by guns, and bayonets. The woods re-echoed to their
howls, and it was not long until captain, crew and passengers were on
deck.
Colonel Fraser, Mr. Holditch of Port Robinson, and several others, had
enjoyed their evening; they took wine together, and then went to bed,
their berths in a row. Soon they heard a noise which they imagined to
be a scuffle among the crew; but in a twinkling five men stood by the
berths where they still lay, four armed with bayonets and muskets and
the fifth with a sword. At the command to get up at once Mr. Holditch
laid his hand upon Colonel Fraser’s military coat, and the ruffian with
the sword, seeing the colour, called out, “He is a British officer--run
him through!” A general disowning of Her Majesty’s uniform ensued, but
a lively fight took place for possession of the pocket-book, which
contained a large sum of money. After much kicking and knocking down
most of the men were forced into a small cabin, lighted by a skylight
through which muskets were pointed at them, keeping them quiet until
a panel was broken out of the door and one by one they were allowed
to leave. The women were all driven on deck in their night-clothes;
their cries were distressing, but Captain Bullock, formerly of the _St.
George_, and the stewardess, contrived to mitigate circumstances for
them. The dramatic Sea-King was not going to allow such an opportunity
for the tragic to escape him. As he knocked at the ladies’ cabin door a
courageous female tried to stop his further entrance, begging time to
dress. “Come with me,” said Bombastes, “come with me and I will save
you--THE NATIONS ARE AT WAR.”
It was a most inclement night, and they took refuge in the shanty.
There one of the brigands remarked that the occupants of the _Peel_
had got their deserts, whereupon Captain Bullock knocked him down
and dragged him out by the throat. The amount of booty was not
inconsiderable, and as soon as the vessel was rifled of it she was set
on fire and allowed to drift. The mate must have been a sound sleeper,
as he knew none of the happenings until rescue was nearly past. His
shrieks for help came after the pirates had departed and the passengers
dispersed, but some of the latter managed to reach him in a skiff. They
were barely in time, for he had to jump into the water so badly burned
that he had to be tended by the half-dressed passengers all night.
It was supposed to be the intention to thus serve all British steamers,
so that Johnston’s whaleboats should have no interference in St.
Lawrence waters thereabouts in piracy and invasion. In this particular
instance, one of the passengers, an Irishman, vigorously protested from
the island:
“The divil saze the likes of ye, ye’re worse than the Connaught
Rangers, wid yer injun naygur faces.”
“Remember the _Caroline_, Pat,” retorted a pirate.
“Is it Caroline Mahoney, ye mane?--sure it’s not at the likes of you
she’d be after lookin’.”
They essayed to get Pat on board, telling him to “come and get his
duds.” “Do ye think I’ll go aboard and see myself kilt?” he asked. They
then tried to get near him, but with “Bad luck to ye, there’s two can
play at that, me darlin’,” he sped into the woods. One of the party was
a prisoner from Abel’s Island, and he was left to look after Scanlan,
one of the crew, who had been badly wounded in the scuffle. By sunrise,
while the _Robert Peel_ still burned, the pirates were back at Abel’s
Island, washed and clothed. The passengers were taken off Wells’ Island
by the U. S. steamer _Oneida_ and left at Kingston. After this the
pirate boats were mounted with two and three-pounders, while Johnston
and his followers played hide-and-seek with his pursuers, managing to
elude two steamboats, one schooner and a number of gunboats which were
doubling and cross-cutting in his wake.
When Governor Marcy, of New York, received information of this act,
which Johnston himself allowed to be piracy, he went to the frontier
and took active measures to guard his own border from the retaliation
which he dreaded, and also to combine with the Canadians in offering a
reward for Johnston’s arrest. Such banditti, like the cowboys of the
Revolution, argued that it mattered not who was plundered, provided
there was booty to be found. In the grandiloquent words of their own
chronicle, the _Sir Robert Peel_ was “a burnt-offering to the shades
of the _Caroline_.” As to Canadian reprisals, there was much talk of
firing upon United States vessels wherever found, an unjust opinion
existing that they were at one with “Admiral” Johnston’s crafts.
But better sense prevailed, and as one newspaper says, “Let their
steamboats depart from our shores in peace.” Such a _Nunc Dimittis_,
opening with an exhortation to high-mindedness, “Men of Chatham! the
eyes of Europe are upon you!” was penned at Chatham, where the burning
of an American vessel was insisted upon as retaliation for a local act
of outrage.
The action taken by Sir George Arthur concerning the indictment of
similar outlaws elsewhere after they were caught, treating them as
prisoners of war, exasperated the Loyalists; they claimed it was
establishing a precedent for all the Bill Johnstons and marauders,
who were either rebels in their own country or filibusters from
the one opposite: “This is, in fact, a bounty upon invasion, and
taken in connection with Mackenzie’s reward of 300 acres of land,
made it easy for a man to hedge with tolerable assurance of not
coming to grief either way.” “These be indeed Liberal times.” What
Bill Johnston thought of it all may be seen from his proclamation,
issued immediately, after he had first openly paraded the streets of
Ogdensburg with his belt stuck full of pistols, dirks and bowie knives:
“_To all whom it may concern_: