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

By the second week of June the expedition had reached the Gulf of St Lawrence, the largest estuary in the world. It was named by explorer Jacques Cartier who had arrived here for the first time on the feast day of St Lawrence. Nearly two thousand miles inland lay its furthest headwater in today’s Minnesota. It drains nearly four hundred thousand square miles, an area which includes the Great Lakes, the world’s largest system of freshwater lakes. Underneath Saunders’ ships 350,000 cubic feet of water a second discharged into the North Atlantic.

The St Lawrence is the greatest tidal river in the world. It is hugely difficult to sail up thanks to the torrent of water surging to the sea, south-westerly winds that tend to prevail in the summer months and a vast amount of local variation in conditions caused by shallows, reefs, and islands. The amount of deviation that compasses will experience from true north varies and squalls regularly tear down off the high ground. Even the easterly winds that Saunders was praying for were often a mixed blessing as winds from that direction were often accompanied by rain and fog.

Captain John Montresor was a 23-year-old engineer on the expedition. He was the son of an engineer and had been raised on that rocky outcrop of empire, Gibraltar, where he had learnt his trade from his father. They had both been sent to America on the outbreak of hostilities and he was already the veteran of several abortive operations, picking up a wound in the Pennsylvanian backcountry at the hands of the Native Americans. Although his age belied his experience, Wolfe had been unimpressed when he had met him the year before during the Louisbourg expedition, describing him, rather hypocritically, as just a ‘boy’.89 Engineers were scarce in the British army and even scarcer in North America and Wolfe would have to tolerate Montresor’s youth. The young engineer kept a careful journal of the passage up the St Lawrence, recording the weather each day and all the important landmarks, headlands, and islands that guided the expedition into the river mouth. On the evening of 11 June, a gale blowing hard out of the Gulf of St Lawrence scattered the fleet. The gale continued until dusk on 12 June when the ships were suddenly becalmed, left to drift east-north-east with the tide. By the fourteenth the fleet saw land in the distance on both sides. On the north shore it was ‘very craggy, irregular’ while the south was ‘very high being mountains of Notre Dame’. The ships took frequent soundings with eighty fathoms of line (480 feet) and ‘found no bottom’. Montresor could tell because the depth, like everything else, was communicated to the fleet. If an ensign fluttered at the main topmast of the Neptune the depth was over forty fathoms (240 feet); if a yellow pendant was hoisted in its place the depth was five fathoms (thirty feet), if it was hoisted twice in succession the depth was six fathoms (thirty-six feet), three times, seven fathoms (forty-two feet), and so on.90

It was clear to the British that the St Lawrence was a formidable barrier. One marine officer wrote that ‘the whole of this channel is exceedingly dangerous, and the passage up so nice, that it might with some propriety be considered as the principal outwork of Quebec, and in ordinary attacks more to be depended upon, than the strongest fortifications or defences of the town’.91 The further the expedition progressed up the Gulf of St Lawrence the more challenging it became. The strength of the tide grew more pronounced. Knox’s host, Killick, described the flood tide as ‘extremely curious’ and the winds ‘perverse’. Montresor reported typical gulf weather on 15 June. The wind was ‘small and very changeable never continuing long in the same quarter. We observed several vessels having a fresh breeze when others within a quarter of a mile have been becalmed, this circumstance is very frequent, owing to the eddies of the wind from off the high lands.’ Few British subjects had ever ventured into these waters; there is an other-worldly tone to the accounts of both men as they watched the shores close in on the fleet. Knox noticed that ‘the low as well as the high lands are woody on both sides’. The water had gone a ‘blackish colour’ with weird ripples and swirls. Montresor thought ‘the land on the south shore very mountainous and romantic, forming in some parts a kind of table land, its appearance was very green. The trees seemed to be of Birch-Beach [sic] and fir.’92

The sixteenth of June saw the fleet smothered in a heavy fog which tested the admiral’s sailing instructions. The bigger ships tacked in the middle of the channel to avoid shallow water, the Neptune’s cannon roaring out, seven times if she was going to port, nine if starboard and with additional guns after four minutes to notify the fleet by how many degrees. The smaller ships risked shallower waters, some sailing ‘within a league of the shore’.93

The winds had so far favoured the expedition. Progress had been swift down the Gulf of St Lawrence but not fast enough for the young commander. Wolfe’s frustration is palpable in his journal entries. On 10 June he records, ‘Fog and contrary wind obliged the Fleet to anchor. I intimated my design of going up with the very Troops to the Admiral, and hinted the pushing on of the Transports, leaving the men-of-war to come up at leisure.’94 The Admiralty in London had assumed that Saunders would keep the larger ships at the mouth of the St Lawrence to lie in wait for any French fleet that dared to interfere with Wolfe’s expedition or threaten Louisbourg and Halifax. Instead, Saunders obviously intended to push as much of his fleet as far up the river as possible. It may have slowed progress up the St Lawrence but Saunders no doubt believed that his ships with, in all, nearly two thousand cannon and approximately thirteen thousand five hundred officers and men on board could play a decisive role not just in transporting Wolfe’s army safely to the target but an active one in operations once they had arrived.

On 18 June, with Île du Bic eight miles to the south-west, a sail was sighted. Five days before Durell had sent Captain Hankerson and his frigate Richmond with many of the captured French pilots on board to wait for Saunders. Wolfe was about to get his first news from Durell since he had sent him packing from Halifax.95 Knox records that the Richmond sent a midshipman aboard his transport to inform them that Durell had occupied the Île aux Coudres further upstream where the river was very narrow. The fleet finally learnt that although he had managed to take three prizes with ‘flour and other provisions’ on board, dozens of other French ships ‘had escaped them’ laden with ‘provisions, especially bread, that are scarce in the French army’.96 Wolfe’s journal oozes a barely controlled rage, it records that letters were captured on some of the prizes which ‘mention the most extreme want of everything at Quebec’ before the supply ships arrived, ‘so that if Mr Durell had come up the river in time every one of the ships might have been taken and Quebec obliged to surrender in a very few days, instead of which they now have plenty of everything’. He repeats himself the next day, 19 June, saying that he had ‘read a number of [captured] letters from Quebec, painting their distress in the liveliest manner. All in general agree that they must have starved if the succours from France had not arrived.’ To cap it all, ‘Captain Hankerson told Mr Saunders that there had been no ice in the River these two months.’97

The Neptune raised its ‘jack’ on the ensign staff on its stern and fired one gun. It was the signal for the ships to anchor. The jack was the Union Flag of Great Britain with the red cross of St George superimposed on the white saltire on a blue background of St Andrew and usually flew at the bows of naval ships. Three ships had gone ahead of the fleet, one flying the British jack, the second a French flag, and the last displaying the Dutch colours. They were the marker ships and the ships of each division anchored as close to them as possible. The anchorage was in the sheltered water provided by Bic. At the last minute each helmsman turned the bows into the wind and as the ship slowed the final stopper was yanked off and the heavy iron anchor crashed into the water taking the cable whipping after it. As the anchor held, the ship turned to face the direction of the strong St Lawrence tidal flow. In tightly packed anchorages like this one another anchor was rowed out on the ship’s boat and released so that when the tide turned the ship would be held in position and not swing around and risk hitting neighbouring ones. The complexity of the operation was bound to produce the odd accident. Montresor watched one of the transports run afoul of a smaller naval ship and break her bowsprit off. She had to be rescued by the seventy-gun Orford.98

The next day the fleet was underway again but from now on, as one senior officer recorded, ‘we were, for the most part, obliged to take advantage of the flood-tides, and daylight, as the currents began to be strong, and the channel narrow’.99 The fleet would now anchor every night, the treacherous waters, fast tides, and squalls of wind being far too dangerous to press on in the dark. They often anchored during the ebb tide as well. Strengthened by the waters of the St Lawrence flowing downstream the ebb can reach six knots today. Knox reported that he witnessed ‘nine or ten knots’ and called it ‘the strongest rippling current I ever saw’.100 As the tide turned and the sea advanced up the St Lawrence the fleet would weigh anchor and creep another few miles into the heart of the continent. Progress was achingly slow, even if the wind and tide were kind. The sounding vessels had to go ahead and feel their way along the rocky bottom of the river with their lead lines to measure the depth of water. As a result the ships were constantly dropping and weighing anchor.

Brigadier Townshend wrote that ‘the river above Bic is about 7 leagues [around twenty-two miles] in breadth. Both shores very high: the southern very beautiful. Though of a most wild and uncultivated aspect, save where a few straggling French settlements appear. We could now upon this fine river view the whole fleet in three separate Divisions.’ Smaller schooners and sloops dashed between the larger ships carrying messages and personnel, desperately trying to maintain the cohesion of the fleet. This new land had plenty to amuse the soldiers packed on board; Montresor reports a ‘great number of white whales and many seals’. Knox recalls seeing ‘an immense number of sea-cows rolling about our ships…which are as white as snow’. He estimated that their exposed backs were twelve to fifteen feet in length and when he and his men fired muskets at them, the balls bounced off. All the journals make numerous references to collisions and groundings that were becoming more frequent as the channel narrowed. On 21 June a transport struck a shoal and fired three guns, to be towed off. Townshend tells of near disaster when five of the largest warships were ‘nearly running on board each other, the current being strong’ and ‘few would answer the helm at first’. The Diana was ‘ungovernable for a long while’ and there was very nearly a collision with the Royal William and the Orford. Just as the situation reached the ‘critical’ point, ‘a breeze sprung up which…saved us from that shock which but a few moments before seemed inevitable. Had the least fog prevailed or had it been a little later, nothing could have prevented disaster.’101

At 0200 hours on 23 June the Stirling Castle, one of Durell’s squadron which had pushed up the river and now waited for Saunders and the main body of the fleet, anchored off the Île aux Coudres, heard the noise of cannon downriver. As dawn broke her log records that she ‘saw a fleet to the east’ sailing with the wind up the St Lawrence. The captain ordered his ship cleared for action and the shrill noise of the bosun’s whistle sent the watch below tumbling out of their hammocks and ‘to their quarters’.102 A flurry of signalling ensued and it was soon established that this was Saunders’ fleet. Gradually all the ships caught up and anchored in a protected bay on the north coast. The island was bleak; the 400-feet-high cliffs on its north side presented a defiant aspect to the ships as they sailed under them.

Quebec was about fifty miles ahead. But between the fleet and the French stronghold lay by far the most dangerous stretch of river. A passage through ‘the Narrows’ separated Île aux Coudres from the north shore and beyond that the St Lawrence was scattered with low lying islands and reefs just below the surface. A number of channels led through this natural barrier but they were ever-changing because of silting. The ebb tide tore down the river and in certain wind conditions could create steep, short waves that could swamp open boats and even small ships. They were a fearsome physical barrier. To make matters worse as the British fleet approached the heart of Canada, French intervention grew ever more likely. There was every possibility that the defenders of Quebec would take up positions to augment the natural barricades with ships, men and cannon. So far the enemy had hardly shown himself; the odd crack of a musket from the trees along the shoreline had been a fine gesture of defiance but held little menace. However, after years of desperate battles against the French and their Canadian colonists, no one in Wolfe’s army doubted that they would fight to the last extremity to protect their land from invasion. The all-too-visible progress of the fleet ensured that they would have plenty of notice of the British advance and although, as Knox commented, they saw no Canadians, they did see ‘large signal fires everywhere before us’.103 The French knew they were coming.

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