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

CONCLUSION

"The ship that ploughs the angry waves, what trace is left of her passage?"1 The need for continuous British naval involvement with Nova Scotia in the 1740s and 1750s surprised both the Admiralty and the Navy Board. Until the advent to power of the elder William Pitt, they successfully resisted such pressure for as long as possible. To accept the logic of the "Americans" in either Pelham's or Pitt's administrations required a fundamental change in thinking about North America. Before the 1740s most often the area was viewed as merely an appendage to Britain's primordial interests in the Caribbean and in Newfoundland . If Newfoundland bred seamen and increased commercial wealth from cod, and the West Indies generated even greater wealth from sugar cane, Nova Scotia promised only expense and trouble without much prospect of commercial wealth. Hostilities with France after 1755 triggered the need for a thorough reassessment of naval strategy in the North Atlantic. This was led less by the serving officers at the Admiralty Board than by politicians elsewhere in government. Yet to newly-located settlers and colonial officials in Nova Scotia in the 1750s, the presence of a British naval squadron, however small and not merely a station ship as elsewhere on the coast from Newfoundland to Georgia - was ofcrucial importance to itspreservation as a crown colony. The navy had ensured the defeat of the French at the siege of Louisbourg in 1745. Later, when the British abandoned the fortress -town, the navy together with the military supported the new settlements of Halifax, Dartmouth, and Lunenburg, and attempted unsuccessfully to overawe the Acadiens and Mi'kmaq. The navy, Conclusion 218 Conclusion which alone was able to carry the war to the French in America, transported and sustained the troops who won the crucial land battles. The navy's presence in Halifax was given concrete form in the establishment of two important institutions, first the vice-admiralty court in 1749 and then the careening yard in 1758. The former gave an additional gloss to the range of public institutions established when Halifax became the colonial capital in the hectic summer of 1749. The latter helped to define the navy's new dependence on Nova Scotia as a base for its entire North American squadron. Built initially to confront France, the careening yard was still under construction when the French menace evaporated in mid-1760. The sudden collapse ofFrench ambitions in North America in 1759-60 robbed the yard of its principal initial purpose. Thereafter, as long as that war lasted, naval strategy was directed to other theatres, especially in the West Indies, for which the Halifax base was only remotely useful. With the dozen years of peace beginning in 1763, the new base was not dismantled though its establishment was drastically reduced. Instead, it continued to refit the North American squadron increasingly employed against the king's subjects in North America in the failed effort to impose imperial trade laws on recalcitrantcolonists. As the navy's focus thus shifted south and west along the Americancoast, the northerly location of the yard in Halifax harbour proved less useful . Prevailing winter winds made beating up the coast from either other American ports or the West Indies almost impossible without sustaining great damage to masts, rigging, and sails. A new base, perhaps at New York or Newport, both of which were as ice-free as Halifax but far more accessible in winter, probably should have been established, as Commodore Colvillsuggested at the time. Cycles of war and peace had a powerful impact on the amount of work provided by the yard which otherwise was impervious to the boom and bust cycles of the maritime economy. War expanded employment opportunities at the yard, while peace required less labour as warships were paid off and laid up and the Halifax squadron drastically reduced. The war with rebel America,underway in 1775, gave new purpose to the Halifax naval yard. Had a drydock adjoining the naval yard in Halifax been constructed as appears to have been first imagined in 1771, and the yard's workforce proportionately increased, this would have allowed many more warships to be repaired in North America. This might have had a decisive impact on the naval war in American Conclusion 219 waters fought principally with France from 1778. This in turn could have altered the military outcome. To have taken up the idea would...