Ashore and Afloat: The British Navy and the Halifax Naval Yard Before 1820

1. Building the Yard, 1758–1783

Chapter One BUILDING THE YARD, 1758-1783 "I am sure the building will stand forever."1 If the organization of naval dockyards by the Tudors, beginning with Portsmouth in 1495, was the surest sign of England's new ambition to play a wider role in European affairs, so the decision by Pitt some 262 years later, in 1757, to build a careening wharf at Halifax represented a resolution to play a decisive role in North America. Then a "decision to construct a careening wharf was tantamount to a decision to establish a base. The logical appurtenances of a careening wharf capstans , capstan house, storehouses - were incorporated into theoriginal plan. It was only a matter of time before the base also acquired a forge, a masthouse, a boat yard, a cooperage, a gun wharf with magazine , living quarters, harbour defences, and perhaps a second careening wharf."2 The building of a naval yard at Halifax merely recognized that a forward base was needed in North America to supplement the major repairs to its ships, work that continued to be completed in the dockyards in England. Such British overseas bases first appeared early in the eighteenth century. Both Gibraltar in 1704 and Port Mahon on the island of Minorca in 1708 came ready-made through conquest. The next three were purpose-built careening yards. First came Port Royal, Jamaica, in the 1730s, then English Harbour, Antigua, in the 1740s, and finally Halifax in the 1750s.3 None of these overseas yards was a dockyard, rather they were known as careening or naval yards. Only yards with drydocks , where ships were built, rebuilt, and cleaned, were referred to as dockyards. This remained the work of the home yards in England.4 4 Part One: Naval Yard Complex Naval officers and resident commissioners appointed to the Halifax yard usually at first mistakenly wrote of the Halifax "dockyard," but after a few weeks they invariably wrote only of the "careening yard." The Navy Board, perhaps because the original overseas bases were acquired by conquest, always called the overseas bases "foreign" yards, just as it also referred to North Americanmasts and timber asof "foreign" growth. Eventually there were other North American sites which became temporarily important bases during the first American war. New York in 1776-83 and Rhode Island and Charleston in 1779-81 served briefly as careening yards. Indeed, the New York facilities on Manhattan Island served, until 1783, as a place for the refitting warships of even more importance to the North Americanfleet than was Halifax. The outbreak of hostilities with France in 1755, not officially declared until the spring of 1756, not only transformed the navy's role throughout North America, but also had a profound impact on the port of Halifax, the newly-built capital of the colony of Nova Scotia.Concentration of naval forces of unprecedented size in the Gulf region between 1755 and 1759 indicated to some in government that a new base was needed for ships on the North American coast. In the summer of 1755 there were usuallybetween ten and seventeen ships of the line in Halifax harbour, pointing to the need for a permanent careening yard in North America. For this Commodore Peter Warren, as commander of the newly-formedNorth Americansquadron at the siegeof Louisbourg, had argued in 1745 when he suggested "establishing a dockyard under proper regulations in the most convenient of the colonies for building ships of war."5 Before such a decision was taken for Halifax harbour, various expedients were employed by ships on the North American station. Between 1746 and 1749, for instance, careening facilities were established at Louisbourg, and naval stores from New England and England housed there under the care of a naval storekeeper, appointed by Warren.6 More commonly,Britishwarships on the North Americanstation careened at commercialwharfsin the principal termini of overseas trade. By the 1740s, this usually meant in Boston harbour,7 at Turtle Bay half-way up the east shore of Manhattan Island, or at Norfolk, Charleston, and Philadelphia.8 For larger ships, Charleston was useless because of the bar at the mouth of the harbour. Commodore Charles Building the Yard, 1758-1783 5 Knowles, while attempting unsuccessfully in 1747 to careen at Annapolis Royal, using the great tides of the Bay of Fundy, warmly recommended Boston.9 There in 1747, in Nantasket Roads, he had beached a large ship, using the hulk Bien Aime...