The Gulf and River St.Lawrence spell death to an incompetent sailor.The fogs, the numerous shoals and islands, make skillful seamanship necessary.It is a long journey from Boston to Quebec by water.For three weeks, however, all went well.On the 22d of August, Walker was out of sight of land in the Gulf where it is about seventy miles wide above the Island of Anticosti.A strong east wind with thick fog is dreaded in those waters even now, and on the evening of that day a storm of this kind blew up.In the fog Walker lost his bearings.When in fact he was near the north shore he thought he was not far from the south shore.At half-past ten at night Paddon, the captain of the Edgar, Walker's flagship, came to tell him that land was in sight.Walker assumed that it was the south shore and gave a fatal order for the fleet to turn and head northward, a change which turned them straight towards cliffs and breakers.He then went to bed.Soon one of the military officers rushed to his cabin and begged him to come on deck as the ships were among breakers.Walker, who was an irascible man, resented the intrusion and remained in bed.Asecond time the officer appeared and said the fleet would be lost if the Admiral did not act.Why it was left for a military rather than a naval officer to rouse the Admiral in such a crisis we do not know.Perhaps the sailors were afraid of the great man.
Walker appeared on deck in dressing gown and slippers.The fog had lifted, and in the moonlight there could be seen breaking surf to leeward.A French pilot, captured in the Gulf, had taken pains to give what he could of alarming information.He now declared that the ships were off the north shore.Walker turned his own ship sharply and succeeded in beating out into deep water and safety.For the fleet the night was terrible.Some ships dropped anchor which held, for happily the storm abated.Fog guns and lights as signals of distress availed little to the ships in difficulty.Eight British transports laden with troops and two ships carrying supplies were dashed to pieces on the rocks.The shrieks of drowning men could be heard in the darkness.The scene was the rocky Isle aux Oeufs and adjacent reefs off the north shore.About seven hundred soldiers, including twenty-nine officers, and in addition perhaps two hundred sailors, were lost on that awful night.
The disaster was not overwhelming and Walker might have gone on and captured Quebec.He had not lost a single war-ship and he had still some eleven thousand men.General Hill might have stiffened the back of the forlorn Admiral, but Hill himself was no better.
Vetch spoke for going on.He knew the St.Lawrence waters for he had been at Quebec and had actually charted a part of the river and was more familiar with it, he believed, than were the Canadians themselves.What pilots there were declared, however, that to go on was impossible and the helpless captains of the ships were of opinion that, with the warning of such a disaster, they could not disregard this counsel.Though the character of the English is such that usually a reverse serves to stiffen their backs, in this case it was not so.A council of war yielded to the panic of the hour and the great fleet turned homeward.
Soon it was gathered in what is now Sydney harbor in Cape Breton.
>From here the New England ships went home and Walker sailed for England.At Spithead the Edgar, the flag-ship, blew up and all on board perished.Walker was on shore at the time.So far was he from being disgraced that he was given a new command.Later, when the Whigs came in, he was dismissed from the service, less, it seems, in blame for the disaster than for his Tory opinions.It is not an unusual irony of life that Vetch, the one wholly efficient leader in the expedition, ended his days in a debtor's prison.
Quebec had shivered before a menace, the greatest in its history.
