Death or Victory: The Battle for Quebec and the Birth of Empire

At Louisbourg Wolfe’s army got the opportunity to make up for the scarcities of peacetime. Gunpowder and musket balls were issued to every soldier; the daily crackle of musket volleys echoed around the bay. Malcolm Fraser was a 26-year-old subaltern. He was an unlikely redcoat. His father had been ‘out’ for Charles James Stuart in the ‘45 rebellion, when Bonnie Prince Charlie had attempted to seize the throne of Britain back from his distant cousin George II. Charles’ depleted, exhausted, and starving army was annihilated on Drumossie Moor, a battle known to history as Culloden. With suicidal bravery the Highlanders had charged into withering British musketry and artillery fire, leaving the moor heaped with dead. Among the fallen was Malcolm Fraser’s father. The rebellion lingered on long enough to give the Duke of Cumberland an excuse to launch a systematic and brutal campaign of counter-insurgency throughout the Highlands. Settlements were burnt, men transported to the New World, and Highland dress, weapons, and bagpipes were all banned. Wolfe had served during the campaign and remained in Scotland long afterwards as part of what was effectively an army of occupation.

Now, only a decade later, the British government’s need for troops forced them to swallow their mistrust of the Highlanders and acquiesce to some recruitment among the more loyal clans. The prospect of economic and social advancement as well as the chance to don traditional Highland garb and assemble with their fellow clansmen on the field of battle ensured that the new Highland regiments were inundated with volunteers. Men begged to serve in the army that had recently slaughtered their fathers and uncles. Malcolm Fraser appears at ease with his inverted allegiance. Loyalty to the family and clan were far more important than the external allegiance of their chief. It mattered little to him which descendant of James VI and I sat on the throne in London. Men like him were happy if they were among their peers, a brace of pistols and a long Highland sword at the waist, accompanied by the clan piper playing traditional airs. Fraser described this period of intensive training after a long winter of isolation with excitement in his journal. ‘We are ordered ashore every day while here,’ he wrote, ‘to exercise along with the rest of the Army.’66 On 31 May four regiments ‘performed several manoeuvres in presence of the General Officers, such as charging in line of battle, forming the line into columns, and reducing them; dispersing, rallying…Which were all so well executed, as to afford the highest satisfaction to the generals.’67

While Fraser, Knox, and the other soldiers trained, Wolfe continued in his attempts to scrape together every last man for the expedition and ensure that they were fed and kept as healthy as possible. The garrison at Louisbourg was under the command of the Governor, Brigadier Edward Whitmore. It consisted of four regiments, one of which, Colonel Bragg’s 28th, was ordered to join Wolfe’s army. Each regiment in the British army also had a grenadier company. This was made up of the elite of each regiment, physically fit and experienced veterans, distinguished by different uniforms and headwear. Wolfe was given the three grenadier companies from the remaining regiments of the Louisbourg garrison, who would make up a small but crack regiment in his army known as the ‘Louisbourg Grenadiers’ consisting of thirteen officers and 313 men. Wolfe wanted more; as well as a grenadier company, regiments in North America had recently formed companies of ‘light infantry’. It was hoped that these units would give the British army more flexibility when fighting in the woods of North America. Ideally, they were the regiment’s best marksmen and the quickest witted, agile men who were encouraged to fight in a more open, irregular style than the classic infantryman.

Wolfe begged Whitmore for all of his light infantrymen as well as his grenadiers. ‘We are disappointed of the recruits which were intended to be sent from the West Indies to join us,’ he wrote, ‘and as several regiments are much weaker than they were thought, in England, to be, I must further represent to you that good troops only can make amends for the want of numbers in an undertaking of this sort.’ He reminded him of the strategic situation: ‘upon the success of our attacks in Canada, the security of the whole continent of north America in a great measure depends’.68 Wolfe did not hold Whitmore in high esteem; they had both served as brigadiers in the siege of Louisbourg the year before, and with Whitmore approaching his seventieth birthday, Wolfe had described him as a ‘poor, old, sleepy man’, and claimed that ‘he never was a soldier’.69 It is possible that Wolfe’s difficulty to hide his contempt for people contributed to Whitmore’s refusal. He would not part with any more men than London had specifically ordered. Whitmore had sailed on Quebec as a young man in 1711 and had seen the fleet wrecked on the river and hundreds of men drowned; his duty was to protect Louisbourg not send his finest troops on a dangerous mission to satisfy the thirst for glory of the lanky young Major General. Wolfe informed London, ‘I applied to Mr Whitmore for three companies of light infantry of his garrison…If Brigadier Whitmore did not consent to my proposal it has proceeded from the most scrupulous obedience to orders, believing himself not at liberty to judge and act according to circumstances.’70

Wolfe’s disappointment at Whitmore’s defiance did not interfere with his furious activity. He and his staff were busy planning the next phase of the operation: getting the army on board transports and up the St Lawrence as far as the city of Quebec. Daily orders were issued concerning every aspect of the men’s lives. It was ‘particularly necessary’ that a large stock of shoes was provided, given the difficulty of getting them during the campaign. Axes, picks, shovels, and bill hooks were handed out in proportion to the numbers of men in each regiment. Fraser’s large 78th Regiment with its 1,000 men was given 100 pick axes, Amherst’s smaller 15th was only issued with fifty. Regimental quartermasters, the all-important officers responsible for a unit’s equipment, were to go and claim for ‘one hundred and forty tents’ per regiment from the Fair American transport. Every man was issued thirty-six rounds of ammunition as well as musket balls and spare flints, a vital part of the firing mechanism on their ‘flintlock’ muskets. More powder and balls were stored in casks aboard each transport. It was a reminder that as soon as the fleet left Louisbourg they were in hostile waters. Every attempt was also made to obtain ‘as much fresh provisions as can be procured’; each regiment would send a party daily to the barren ground to the north-east of the town, Pointe de Rochefort, at half an hour intervals to receive their daily supply. On 4 June the Neptune’s log recorded that she ‘received on board six live bullocks’.71 Although eighteenth-century medical knowledge was sketchy they had certainly grasped that fresh meat was better than salted. Meanwhile ‘lines and hooks’ were placed aboard the transports so that they could eat fresh fish on the way up the river. ‘To prevent the spreading of distempers in the transports, the hospital ship will receive any men that may fall ill on the voyage,’ Wolfe ordered. Transports would raise a flag at the mizzen peak, the end of the yard that carried the mizzen sail, to notify the fleet that they had sick men on board who needed hospitalization, while the hospital ships themselves flew a red banner from the top of their foremast. The men were not to be ‘too much crowded’ and each commander was to report on the state of their transport and whether it was fit to proceed. Officers were told that ‘a quantity of spruce beer…would be of great use to their men’. Any men who were already ‘weak and sickly’ were ‘not to embark with their regiments’. But they were not to worry: ‘measures will be taken to bring those men to the army as soon as they are perfectly recovered’.72

By 1 June, Wolfe could be stayed no longer. He was almost a month behind schedule already and he still had to brave the treacherous waters of the St Lawrence before he could even lay his eyes on the enemy. His order for the day stated that ‘the troops land no more’. Flat-bottomed boats, innovations designed specifically for amphibious operations, were ‘to be hoisted in’ and ‘washed every day to prevent leaking’. The ships and crews must now be ready to ‘sail at the first signal, when three guns are fired from the saluting battery, all officers to repair on board’.73 The next day the sick were finally sent ashore and those men too old or disabled to have a hope of recovery were sent aboard a transport for the crossing back to Britain. Wolfe and Saunders announced that they were intent on ‘sailing on the first fair wind’. Instructions were left at Louisbourg for any latecomers to follow the fleet into the St Lawrence.74

The laborious process of weighing anchor began in the early morning of 4 June. On the biggest ships like the Neptune it was a Herculean task. Ten sailors worked each of fourteen wooden bars that slotted into a giant winch or ‘capstan’ on the middle gun deck just forward of the mainmast. Below them another ten men worked each of twelve bars on a ‘trundlehead’, essentially another capstan working on the same axis. These teams, 260 strong, could lift approximately ten tons. Depending on the length of cable, the wind and tide, an anchor could take six hours to raise. In emergencies, the captain could order the crew to ‘let slip’ and simply leave the anchor and cable behind on the seabed. The twenty-four-inch cable was made from the intertwining of three regular ropes and was too wide for the capstan and so a smaller ‘messenger’ rope was attached to the cable with ‘nipper’ cords that had to be slid along at regular intervals as the cable came in. To lighten the load on the seamen, if the wind favoured it, ships could set some sail to bring them ‘a-peek’, a point at which they were vertically above the anchor. Once it was raised almost out of the water, it had to be ‘catted’: another team of men hauled on a tackle which brought it up out of the water, while keeping it away from the hull, making sure the heavy flukes did not puncture the wood, and lashed it to the side of the forecastle. Meanwhile, the cable was stored right down in the bottom of the ship, below the waterline. When it dried off the soft manilla rope made an excellent mattress and sleeping in the cable tier became a perk of the senior members of the ship’s company.

Knox watched the operation from the 337-ton, London-based transport ship, the Goodwill, under its colourful master, Thomas Killick. One hundred and seventy-nine officers and men of the 43rd Regiment were on board. He watched the transports as they ‘got their anchors a-peek’, with the soldiers on board sweating at the capstans alongside the seamen. The time it took to get the entire fleet out of the harbour meant that the brief window of favourable weather was missed. It turned ‘foul, with a thick fog [and] little or no wind’. Those ships not already out of the harbour had to drop their anchors again and wait for the weather to change. One of Wolfe’s senior officers recorded that the wind remained ‘contrary’ until the sixth, ‘during which time the Admiral kept in the offing’, sailing backwards and forwards off Louisbourg until the rest of the fleet could get out of harbour.75

At 0400 hours on 6 June it was the Goodwill’s turn to crawl out of Louisbourg. By 1000 hours she joined the waiting fleet. The weather was fair, with a variable, light breeze. ‘Now that we are joined, imagination cannot conceive a more eligible prospect,’ enthused Knox. ‘Our whole armament, naval and military, were in high spirits,’ he recorded, and despite the grave challenges ahead he had no doubt that under ‘such Admirals and Generals’ together ‘with so respectable a fleet’ and ‘such a body of well-appointed regular troops’ there would be ‘the greatest success’. He reported that ‘the prevailing sentimental toast among the officers is—British colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in America’.76 Not everyone shared Knox’s enthusiasm. Fraser made an ominous entry in his diary: ‘I hear a Lieutenant on board one of the men of war has shot himself—for fear I suppose the French should do it.’ Fraser was surprised to hear of the suicide given the dangers that certainly beckoned. ‘If he was wearied of life, he might soon get quit of it in a more honourable way.’77

Wolfe was relieved to be underway and finished a dispatch that day on board the Neptune in which he was upbeat about the prospects for the operation. He attached a return of the troops embarked at Louisbourg and wrote that he expected ‘to find a good part of the [French] force of Canada at Quebec’, but his army was ‘prepared to meet them. Whatever the end is, I flatter myself that his Majesty will not be dissatisfied with the behaviour of his troops.’ A senior member of Wolfe’s staff wrote that the ‘whole force was now assembled’ and ‘amounted to 8,535 soldiers, fit for duty, officers included’. It was far short of the 12,000 that Wolfe had been promised and it would almost certainly be fewer men than the French could muster to defend Canada.78

It was the largest naval expedition in North American history: forty-two men of war, fourteen of which carried sixty guns or more and were known as ‘ships of the line’. In the eighteenth century, the weight, accuracy and range of cannon meant that ships were designed to carry many of them firing at ninety degrees to the direction of the vessel. As a result action was joined when the enemy was alongside rather than in front or behind. The mighty capital ships of powers like Britain and France would form lines and exchange crashing broadsides with their opponents. The Neptune, on whose quarterdeck Wolfe and his staff took their daily exercise, was one of the most powerful ships of the line in the world. Weighing nearly two thousand tons, she was 171 feet long and crewed by just under eight hundred officers and men. She had twenty-eight cannon on her lower gun deck, each firing a thirty-two-pound ball, termed 32 pounders, and on her middle and upper deck another sixty 18 and 12 pounders. In a second the Neptune was capable of blasting a ton of lead into the hull and rigging of an enemy ship. Other warships had different roles; lighter, quicker frigates could harass an enemy’s merchant fleet or provide support for land forces in shallower waters. Some ships carried mortars or acted as scouts. Saunders was well supplied with all varieties.79

The main role of the naval vessels was to protect the vast array of civilian vessels on which the success of the operation relied. In all there were between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and forty transport ships of all rigs and sizes. They were carrying not just the troops but all the supplies that would allow the force to sail deep into enemy territory. It had to be assumed that no food would be available around Quebec and so the expedition was forced to bring every sack of flour as well as every spade and ounce of gunpowder with it. The Hunter, Resolution, and Scarboro from Boston carried cattle; ships like the Phoenix, Martha, and Hannah had all the paraphernalia associated with artillery in their holds: siege guns, spare carriages and ramrods, in all 163 pieces of artillery of all shapes and sizes. Other ships carried just powder and shot. The expedition’s 75,000 cannonballs sat low in the holds, providing extra ballast. The Industry and Sally from the south coast of England carried some of the 65,000 shells for the mortars. There were 1.2 million musket cartridges, 10,862 barrels of powder, and even 250 primitive rockets. The New England-based Good Intent and Peggy & Sarah weighing in at just over a hundred tons were designated sounding vessels: shallow-draught ships that could go ahead of the main fleet and check the depth of water by taking regular soundings using a lead weight thrown over the side and measuring the depth on a marked line.80

Such a massive fleet needed tight organization if it was to avoid the twin perils of getting scattered across the North Atlantic or of crashing into each other. Saunders had issued a long set of sailing instructions at Louisbourg.81 The fleet would travel in three divisions: white, red, and blue. Wolfe’s army had been divided into three brigades and appropriately enough, each brigade was assigned to one of the divisions. Every single ship would fly ‘vanes’ (long, thin flags) denoting which division they were in and exactly what or who was on board. The twenty-eight-gun frigate Lowestoft would command the lead, white division and would ‘wear a white broad pendant’ during the day and a light on the stern of her poop deck and another at the top of her mainmast at night. All the transports in the division were distinguished by smaller white vanes. Each regiment had a slight variation. Ships carrying Knox and his fellow soldiers of the 43rd had white vanes with one red ball. Malcolm Fraser in the 78th sailed in a ship with a white vane with two blue balls. Next, was the red division, commanded by Captain Schomberg on the Diana flying a red pendant and trailed by transports with the second brigade on board all flying red vanes. This was followed by the blue division with the third brigade of Wolfe’s army on board. Ships carrying artillery flew red-and-blue striped flags; those carrying provisions, blue-and-yellow. Saunders used a series of intricate signals using flags and cannon fire to maintain command and control of his unwieldy fleet. He could summon all the key personnel on board, masters of transports, regimental commanders and staff. If he or Wolfe wished to see Knox’s commanding officer, Major Robert Elliot, for example, a blue-and-white chequered pendant would be flown from the head of the main topmast. The masters of the transports had been unambiguously told to obey orders, they were ‘as far as they are able to keep their respective divisions, and carry sail when the men-of-war do, that no time may be lost by negligence of delays’. Saunders emphasized that ‘the regular and orderly sailing of the fleet’ was ‘of the utmost consequence’. The master of every transport was ‘strictly enjoined to look out for and punctually obey’ all the signals that his divisional commander made. Alarmingly for the transports, if they failed to notice or act on a signal, ‘the Captains of his Majesty’s ships are directed to compel them to a stricter observance of their duty by firing a shot at them’. The cohesion of the fleet was vital. The most vulnerable phase for any amphibious force was before it had the chance to deploy on land. The greatest threats to the expedition were the treacherous waters of the St Lawrence, French ships and summer storms. These had the capacity to defeat Wolfe more surely than French muskets outside Quebec.82

The soldiers found themselves in a different world, with its own language, hierarchy, mores, and even calendar. They had to know how to behave. To save their red coats from the harsh climate they wore them inside out. On the passage across the Atlantic Knox had almost been fired upon by an American privateer when they saw a deck full of men wearing off-white coats, the colour worn by the French infantry. Wolfe had ordered the soldiers to ‘be as useful as possible in working their ships’. Wooden ships carried great quantities of pitch, tar, gunpowder, and canvas, and were, as a result, horribly vulnerable to fire. Soldiers who were unused to life afloat had to be made aware of this threat. An order to men crossing the Channel to Flanders during the previous war stated that ‘a sergeant, a corporal and 12 men of each transport to be as a guard to keep things quiet and to place sentries on the officers’ baggage and to suffer no man to smoke between decks’.83 Wolfe was equally careful to ensure discipline and fire prevention on board ship and zealous in the preservation of his men’s well-being: ‘when the weather permits the men are to eat upon deck, and be as much in the open air as possible. Cleanliness in the berths and bedding and as much exercise as their situation permits, are the best preservatives of health.’84

For a landsman, his first passage in a tall ship was extraordinary. Upon entering this new realm for the first time one young man wrote: ‘Nor could I think what world I was in. Whether among spirits or devils. All seemed strange; different language and strange expressions of tongue, that I thought myself always asleep or in a dream, and never properly awake.’85 Their lives were now regulated by ‘watches’. Every half hour a petty officer would turn the hourglass and strike the bell. At ‘eight bells’ the four-hour watch had come to an end and half of the crew could go below and sleep. All the watches were four hours, apart from two watches of two hours each, known as the ‘dog watch’, between 1600 and 2000 hours. At four bells in the morning watch, 0600 hours, the bosun would pipe, ‘Up Hammocks’, at which point the watch below roused themselves and brought up their hammocks on deck to stow in the netting which ringed it. There was no chance of a lie-in. The bosun patrolled the gun deck with a knife and would simply slice through the ropes holding a hammock to the deck beams if its occupant was slow to wake up. The ships were cleaned every morning. The bilges were pumped out, and the decks washed with seawater and holystones. Hours of maintenance and odd jobs followed until the bosun’s pipe signalled dinner, a large meal in the early to mid-afternoon followed by the doling out of the grog ration. In the evening the crew would practise ‘Beating to Quarters’ or going to their action stations. Rich captains, who had supplemented the ship’s gunpowder supplies out of their own pocket, would practise the crew at firing their cannon at this time; those of more moderate means had less opportunity to do this since the navy was stingy with its powder allocation and it had to be hoarded in case of an action with the enemy.

Sailing as part of a massive fleet, close to the shore, in largely unknown waters was a challenge to those in command. Constant adjustments to the course of the ship and the sail plan were made as winds varied, or other transports came too close. Collisions were not unusual. Knox’s religious observations were interrupted when on Sunday, 10 June, ‘as we were going to prayer, about ten o’clock, we got foul of another transport, which obliged us to suspend our devotions’.86 Other accounts are full of near misses. Exhausted captains could expect not to leave their quarterdecks for days in such conditions.

Soldiers provided useful muscle on the passage. Under the command of a quartermaster they formed teams to ‘attend to the braces’, pulling the yards around to optimize the position of the sails in relation to the wind. They could not be forced to climb the rigging and work aloft. That was the province of the topmen, men with a fixed conviction in their own immortality. A seaman wrote that this job ‘not only requires alertness but courage, to ascend in a manner sky high when stormy winds do blow…the youngest of the topmen generally go highest’.87 They handed and made sail, reefed and carried out repairs, all while balancing precariously up to one hundred and fifty feet above the deck. Inshore waters demanded the keeping of a good lookout, which along with extensive use of a line with a lead weight on the end to measure the depth, was the basis of all navigation. Sharp-eyed members of the crew stayed high in the rigging reporting every sighting to the deck. Rewards were given to those with the keenest eyes.

Since the days of Drake there had been an informality born of intimacy on board naval ships; he had always emphasized that officers should lend a hand and haul on ropes. The eighteenth-century navy was a far more harmonious community than has often been assumed; examples of hanging and flogging were exceptional. Many officers had started their careers as common seamen and were promoted, if not always to the highest ranks, through aptitude. The safety of the ship and the lives of everyone who sailed in her depended on officers knowing their business. There was far less opportunity than in the army for venality or the well-connected incompetent. Intruders from the more hierarchical army world were often surprised. Knox was shocked to hear the master of his transport crossing the Atlantic using ‘some of the ordinary profane language of the common sailors’.88