Four Years on the Great Lakes, 1813-1816. Don Bamford
notes as this new adventure in long distance, mostly electronic, collaboration has unfolded.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TITLE OF THE JOURNAL
The diary held by Library and Archives Canada was originally described as the Com. David Wingfield Papers. Wingfield was a little more verbose with his actual title: Four Years on the Lakes of Canada in 1813, 1814, 1815 and 1816 by a Naval Officer Under the Command of the Late Sir James Lucas Yeo, Kt., Commodore and Commander-in-Chief of H.M. Ships and Vessels of War Employed on the Lakes. Wingfield added: Also Nine Months as Prisoner of War in the United States of America. The Library and Archives Canada reference number is MG24F18.
FOREWORD BY BARRY GOUGH
About four decades ago I began a personal odyssey to examine the maritime roots of Canada’s history. I am not the first to launch forth on this great chart of the Canadian experience though I have already probably outlived all who have gone before in this enterprise — and I am by no means near the end of the saga. The seas and waters of Canada are complex in their geographical features, and an historian such as myself learns in the course of day-to-day work that the Arctic is much different from the Pacific Coast just as the Great Lakes are different from the Atlantic shore. Environments dictate the forms of human activity. Yet the seas bind Canada together, and our great cities, with one or two exceptions, are portals on salt and fresh water. Although Canada fronts on the United States along our southern boundary and juts up against Alaska on our far northwestern limit, we Canadians are a maritime people. We may not proclaim this fact but it lies in our past and in our present occupations. We depend on water communication for much of our trade, and in times past the command of the oceans was a vital determinant in what would transpire on the battlefields of Upper and Lower Canada. To all of these themes and sub themes I have been drawn, and the experience has been refreshing and rewarding. So it is with the authors who have brought David Wingfield’s writings into print — at last and for all to enjoy.
The War of 1812 occurred at a time in world affairs when all was topsy-turvy. Napoleon and his revolutionary army had not been beaten, and was fighting its Russian campaign. The United States, which had fought off the British in its Revolutionary War, was still seething with objections and complaints concerning what American politicians, statesmen, and journalists regarded as the overbearing attitude of the British, particularly as expressed in measures to seize British seamen sailing in American ships. But there was another reason the Americans were sore: in the continental interior, Canadian fur traders and British military personnel, who ran the Indian Department, had been successful in winning the Native nations over to the British imperial cause. It was this last theme that brought, and required, the British to send military power into the heartland.
Every cannon, every hank of rope, every pound of ammunition had to be brought via the St. Lawrence River system. From Quebec to Montreal, then to Kingston and York, then to Fort Erie to Detroit, then to Michilimackinac, Sault Ste. Marie and beyond, the power of the British was expressed in one long line characterized by its precarious nature and exposure to the enemy on its flanks. Lieutenant Wingfield was but one naval officer sent to the Lakes theatre, but what sets him aside from so many others of the Royal Navy in the Lakes command was that he kept a journal. Others may also have done so, but it is Wingfield’s that has survived, and a very fine journal it is, too — not the crabbed and brittle statements that have characterized so many such attempts at good literary form. It is clear from this text that Wingfield was not only well educated; he was a perceptive and sensible recorder of the many experiences that naval service, including his being for a time a prisoner of war in American hands, had brought his way.
The War of 1812 was fought over three years. The campaigning began in the spring and concluded by the fall, and then the preparations would begin anew. We are given in this text a view of the wild state of the north country of Canada and, at the same time, a portrait of the much more developed towns and farms of the American interior. The difference in the states of development is striking. For this reason, and others, Wing-field’s text is an important document in the social and urban history of Upper Canada and the northeastern United States.
Don Bamford and Paul Carroll, partners in this historical enterprise, are to be lauded for making a work of this sort accessible to the reading public. It would have been so easy to let the original sit at National Archives Canada, where serious researchers might consult it. But, by making it accessible to the general readership, our authors have crossed the boundary between the professionals and the generalists. It is clear that they possess a passion for things historical, especially those things marine in nature. They know full well that it is from firm knowledge of what happens in the local spheres that a broader understanding can develop of national and even international history. Much harping has been done about Canadians not studying or knowing their history, but is this really so? They know that their history is different from that of the United States, Mexico, or the United Kingdom, and they know that our institutions are different. What may be missing in the Canadian historical psyche is a form of déjà vu — that the same old stories have been told time and time again. We need fresh voices. We need new interpretations. We need new heroes and new heroines, and we could use a few more anti-heroes and anti-heroines as well (for they are there, too, in our past).
David Wingfield is one of the new level of personalities that need to be brought into our historical discussions and knowledge. He is like Lieutenant Miller Worsley of the ill-fated schooner Nancy, a figure who deserves to be better known. Today Lieutenant Wingfield is commemorated in various place names of Ontario, notably Wingfield Basin, east of Tobermory and just west of Cabot Head. I have anchored there many times, safe from wind and surf outside. It is a lovely basin, a haven for boaters and birdwatchers. Its narrow entrance leads to a large basin that is formed on its west and south sides by limestone ramparts. That it is named for a famed young British naval officer of the War of 1812 adds to its charm and reminds us, as this book does, that those who served King and Country answered a higher calling, one whose legacies still endure.
Cabot Head Light Station and portion of Wingfield Basin, circa 1970s. This aerial shot is taken from the collection of lighthouse records compiled by Ron Walker, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canadian Coast Guard, Parry Sound, Ontario.
Wingfield Basin is atypical of Great Lakes harbours, for it seems to be a giant sink formed by a collapse of limestone bluffs east of Tober-mory. The harbour provides safe anchorage for small vessels and is a superb yachtsman’s retreat, secure as it is from raging wind and surf that comes with stiff northers. It is a tight entrance and exit, and can only be safely navigated by lining up two illuminated range markers and keeping on that line. In earlier days, Wingfield Basin was a place for squared timbers to be gathered in large rafts for outward shipment. Later it became a fishermen’s night refuge harbour. Nowadays it is a recreational haven, heritage site of note, and an excellent birdwatchers’ paradise. A small dock has been placed by the Friends of Cabot Head to permit easy shore access to the restored lighthouse, museum, and trails areas.
— Barry Gough
Map 2: Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) chart for Wingfield Basin. Wingfield Basin lies almost directly west of Cabot Head lighthouse, Georgian Bay, where the forested ramparts of the Bruce Peninsula extend south to the bottom of the bay. This small, circular harbour was surveyed by William Fitz William Owen, RN, and named for his fellow officer, Lieutenant David Wingfield, who assisted with part of the survey work in 1815. The results of these expeditions appeared in British Admiralty and later CHS charts down to the present day. The plan of Wingfield Basin comes from the 1996 edition Owen Sound to Cabot Head. (Caption by Barry Gough.)