Strange & Supernatural by Barbara Whitby

Author:Barbara Whitby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lorimer
Published: 2013-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

The Duc d’Anville arrived at Jipugtug with the scattered remains of his fleet on September 10, 1746, after three horrendous months at sea. He in turn learned that the rendezvous had been fouled up. The ships he had expected to join up with had already been and gone. His own ships were now largely disabled. They were anchored off a lonely, densely forested coast. His men were dying by the hundreds of a typhoid epidemic, and those that survived faced starvation and thirst. During the week, three more of his transports arrived, but they only added to the misery with their cargoes of sick and dying men.

Within six days, on September 16, 1746, the charming but inept 37-year-old Duc d’Anville suddenly fell ill himself and died on board his flagship. Rumours spread among the troops that he had been poisoned.

That same night Vice-Admiral d’Estournel arrived with the fleet. He quickly took control of the panic and confusion. By the next evening he had the Duc d’Anville’s body buried on George’s Island. His officers denied the rumours that the Duc had been poisoned, and officially announced that he had died of apoplexy.

Meanwhile, the beaches were everywhere cluttered with the sick and dying. In some places bodies lay in heaps. The officers in command gathered to decide whether to abandon the expedition and return to France or to pursue the mission. There followed an extremely heated difference of opinion, which D’Estournel (who wanted the troops to return to France) took personally. He retired immediately to his cabin where he committed suicide by falling on his sword, expiring just as his worried officers battered down his door.

The Marquis de la Jonquiere immediately took command and moved the entire fleet into the sheltered inner harbour now known as Bedford Basin. The sick and dying were carried ashore to small clearings near the present Birch Cove, where rough shelters of canvas and brushwood were constructed. Fresh food was commandeered from some nearby Acadian settlements, and this went some way towards alleviating the scurvy, but the typhoid epidemic ran its full course. At least 1,135 men died on the shores of the Basin and on the beaches of Jipugtug and George’s Island. A few were buried in shallow graves, but the ground was so rocky, and the survivors so weak, that most of the bodies were left littering the shoreline.

On October 13, 1746, the surviving French sick were taken off in five ships designated as hospital ships. After that the crippled fleet of 42 vessels set sail. The death toll was still mounting, however, and all along the western shore of Nova Scotia body after body was flung overboard into the waves.

The tragic story was still unfolding. When the fleet reached Sable Island it ran into another terrible storm and many more ships sank. All but two of the surviving vessels limped back towards France. These two courageously ventured on towards Annapolis Royal to complete their mission, but were forced to flee when they encountered two English men-of-war anchored there.

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