Wreck of Earl of Dalhousie off Anticosti in 1821

[cecilmcphee]

I am writing an article on the wreck of the Brig Earl of Dalhousie off Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St Lawrence in 1821.

This brig may be of particular interest to Camerons, McPhees and McColls since, together, they made up 50% of the passengers on board. It sailed from Fort William, stopped at Cape Breton Island to let off passengers, and continued on its way up the Gulf bound for Quebec City. It went down 20 miles to the east of the Island on September 6th. All passengers were saved.

At this point it is thought that:

1. all the passengers were related by birth or through marriage;
2. they had decided to emigrate as a group and chartered the brig themselves;
3. some or all of the men had worked on the Caledonian Canal 1802-1821;
4. some or all of the Camerons and McPhees had left Glendessary/Loch Arkaig and gone to live on Corpach Moss shortly before work on the Canal started;
5. some of the passengers ended up in Grenville Township, Quebec, on the north side of the Ottawa River, half way between Montreal and Ottawa;
6. some of them may have worked on the Ottawa River Canals (Grenville, Carillion & St Andrews East) 1819-1834 as labourers or masons;
7. some of them -- Camerons & McPhees -- may have had relations who had emigrated to Canada in 1802 on the ships Friends, Helen and Jane with Archibald McMillan who was living in Grenville Village in 1820.

I would be delighted to receive or share any information about the brig and its passengers, including family folklore. This could be quite an interesting link between Lochaber & Quebec.

Cecil McPhee
Montreal

P.S. I would be especially grateful if Chris Doak would care to comment.

[ChrisDoak]

Hi Cecil,

Welcome to the board,and most especially welcome to a McPhee - one of our Lochaber kinsmen.

I suspect that the unfortunate sinking of the Earl of Dalhousie was not an uncommon event back then,and we should be glad that there were no casualties.Back in Scotland,the sinking received it's first mention in the Glasgow Herald newspaper on Monday 22nd October 1821,reading as follows:

"SHIP NEWS.

Greenock October 21 - Arrived this morning,the CAESAR from Quebec;sailed from thence on the 23rd,and got clear of the river on the 26th September.On the 6th September,the brig EARL OF DALHOUSIE of Greenock,Scott master,from Fort William with passengers,went ashore in thick weather upon the island of Anticosti,about 90 miles from the east end of it,and became a total wreck.Part of the passengers had been previously landed at Cape Breton,and the remainder (about 140) were on shore where the brig was wrecked;but as the CAESAR passed Anticosti,coming down,Captain Scott had arrived on the island,with two schooners from Quebec to take up the passengers.No lives were lost."

I wasn't really aware that many emigrant ships were leaving from Fort William at this period,nor have come across any specific references to them.However,I think it is likely that at least one ship a year was leaving from there to Canada,doubtless encouraged by enthusiastic letters home from from emigrants whom had previously left,and were keen for relatives to join them.For an interesting connection,have a look at a topic entitled "Need Help With a John Cameron of Fassifern",dated 27 May 2004,in this section of the Forum,which relates to a Cameron family who left for Canada in 1818.

As to whom the passengers were on the Earl of Dalhousie it is difficult to say,and also the specific reasons why they were leaving Lochaber.However,economically there just wasn't a good reason for them to remain there - living conditions were very harsh,and with the completion of the construction of the Caledonian Canal,there weren't many more options for paid employment.

Detailed Estate Papers for the Estate of Cameron of Lochiel do not seem to exist in any great detail for this period,but there are plenty in the National Archives of Scotland for the portion of Lochaber owned by the Duke of Gordon (i.e.everything to the east of the River Lochy).I have seen many petitions to the Factor from his tenants,requesting rent abatements for the period of 1816 to 23.A bad run of successive years of bad weather and poor harvest had reduced many of the Lochaber residents to desperate poverty.

To the Duke of Gordon's credit,he reacted with sympathy to his tenants'plight,and most received financial and material assistance.The opposite was the case on the Lochiel Estate,where the management of the affairs of the long-absentee Cameron of Lochiel were handled by his Trustees - the deeply unpleasant Ewan Cameron of Fassifern and his son Duncan.(I am not a fan of this pair,as you can tell).

The tenants on Loch Arkaig ,who had been removed from there in the early 1800s by Trustee Ewan Cameron,had been re-located mostly to small crofts on the shores of Loch Eil and Loch Linnhe.By 1820,many of the 4 or 5 acre crofts had been sub-divided by the Trustees into two.If it wasn't already difficult enough to eke out a living on such a small plot,the enforced conditions and regulations of their tenancies made them even more so.

For instance,the tenants' leases stipulated that there should be no more than one family on each croft,and that when a family member got married,that person had to leave the croft.Also,it was strictly forbidden for any tenant to take in a lodger without the written permission of the Factor,and contravention of any of these regulations would result in a £1 fine (approx.one month's rental) for the first offence,and eviction for a second.Being in long-term arrears with your rent would result in formal proceedings taken against you at the Sheriff Court of Fort William for the public roup of all of your possessions,or mostly ejection from your home.

It is no wonder that Canada seemed so attractive!

I was having a look on the internet to see if I could find the Passenger List for the Earl of Dalhousie,but had no such luck.You have obviously seen it,and I wonder if there was any detail on them relating to whereabouts in Lochaber the individual families had come from?Do any of the Cameron or McPhee male heads of families have rare or distinctive first names which would help track down the specific farms they hailed from?

Regards,Chris.

Chris Doak,
Glasgow.

[cecilmcphee]

Hi Chris,

I have just now realized that you replied to my message a good month ago, and I didn't even know! My apologies! I have checked the message centre several times but even now it shows that I have 0 replies. There is something about this that I don't understand. But that is not important right now.

I would like to thank you very much for your message. I have noticed your posts on the Cameron site in the past, and I have been duly impressed by your vast knowledge of Loch Arkaig and Glendessary. I was hoping to get the opportunity to share information with you.

Thanks for the clipping out of the Glasgow Herald. I found it last September when I was doing research at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. It is in fact the most informative of all the newspaper articles about the Earl of Dalhousie.

I have yet to find the original passenger list for the brig, but TheShipsList website: www.theshipslist.com/ships/passengerlists/1821/lssep25.htm shows the first group to be rescued from Anticosti Island on the steamship Lady Sherbrooke which took them from Quebec City to Montreal on September 25, 1821. I would be happy to send the list to you personally by e-mail if you wish. As you can see, there are no first names for the heads of families, just initials. The second group to be rescued went up on the steamship Malsham on October 28. In this case the first names are shown. This leaves a very small group of identifiable heads of families, none of them McPhees, although there were three large McPhee families on board.

I know beyond any doubt that my great-great-great grandparents, Alexander Murray and Janet Cameron, and their two young daughters, Mary and Catherine (see Lady Sherbrooke, No 46-49) were on the brig. Alexander was born in Anderston (Glasgow) in 1788, son of John Murray and Mary Cameron. John worked on the Crinan Canal and possibly the Caledonian Canal, too, since he was supposed to have two crofts in the Fort William area in about 1804. As far as I know, the Murrays, who were related to the Murrays of Atholl, were not from Lochaber, but their Cameron wives were certainly from Inverness-shire. If John Murray did indeed have two crofts near Fort William, it was probably through his wife's connections. Do you know how I could verify the story about the crofts? In the Quebec Gazette newspaper in 1821, opposite the first mention to the Earl of Dalhousie, there is an intriguing official government notice requesting about a dozen Chelsea Hospital pensioners to contact their local commissary officer. On the list is an Alexander Murray who was in the 42nd Regiment of Foot, the Black Watch. If this is the same Alexander Murray, he was probably at Waterloo. Any suggestions as to how I can investigate this? I also know that my Alexander Murray settled in Grenville Township on the Ottawa River.

Without first names for any of the McPhees it is very difficult to pinpoint them. However, my great-great grandfather Donald McPhee b. circa 1810 in Inverness-shire bought a farm in Grenville Township from a Donald Cameron in 1834. I suspect that he was related to Donald Cameron. The farm was kitty-corner to Alexander Murray's farm. He then married Alexander's daughter Mary about four years later. It is hard to believe that all of this is merely coincidence. There had to be kinship ties connecting all of them.

Two of the passengers on the Earl of Dalhousie were McColls: Dugald and Neal. Both names appear on the 1825 census for Grenville Township, along with Alexander Murray. In 1834 Dugald served as witness to the fact that Alexander has performed his settlement obligations and therefore entitled to his grant of land.

I have been contacted by a descendant of Alexander Cameron and Catherine Boyd who, along with some members of their family, also appear to have been on the brig. There is an A Cameron (Lady Sherbrooke No 34) on the steamship list. The descendant said that some of his children were married adults, and they may be some of the other Camerons on the list. Alexander Cameron's family lived in Muirshirlich in the very early 1800s and had to move to Banavie because their land was taken up by the Caledonian Canal. My own great-great grandfather Donald McPhee talked about climbing Ben Nevis.

On the Malsham list there is an Angus Colquohoun. Last September I discovered in the old section of the cemetery at Corpach Church three tombstones enclosed by a wrought iron fence. The first stone is to Duncan McPhee and Mary Cameron of Kinlocheil by their son John who emigrated to Australia later. The second is to Ann MacPhee and Malcolm Colquhoun, also of Kinlocheil, and the third, to all Colquhouns. DNA tests indicate that I should be closely related to Duncan McPhee and Mary Cameron.

Last September I met two McPhee sisters from Corpach. They are descended from Duncan McPhee b. 1824 and Margaret Cameron. I believe that they are related to my family but they couldn't go back far enough and I couldn't come forward far enough for us to establish a definite connection.

My intuition tells me that the McPhees and Camerons on the Earl of Dalhousie -- and therefore my immediate ancestors -- were from Glendessary/Loch Arkaig and had been evicted just before the construction of the Caledonian Canal. They either made their way down to Corpach Moss or were relocated there, just in time to be forced to move once again. I suspect that they ended up working on the Caledonian Canal as labourers -- or possibly masons since Alexander Murray's father worked on both the Crinan and Glasgow, Paisley & Johnstone Canals as perhaps something more than just a labourer. Once construction was completed in 1821, they decided to emigrate. I think it is safe to assume that they chartered the Earl of Dalhousie to pick them up from Fort William. I know that the EOD was registered in Greenock in 1820. Is there any way that I can investigate this? A passenger list may have been left with the second ship's partner in Greenock -- the ship master being the other partner -- or with the port authorities. If such a list exists, it may give first names for the McPhees and possibly reasons for emigrating or place of origin. Intuition, of course, is not enough. I have to prove the connection. And I desperately hope that with this information, or whatever can be found now, you could help to pinpoint the McPhees to a particular farm in Glendessary/Loch Arkaig.

I would be delighted to hear from you. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. I do have more information. I would be happy to correspond with you privately as well.

Best regards,
Cecil McPhee
Montreal