One of my favourite local ghost stories has a couple of different versions. This ghost reportedly haunts at least two different locations. A little more restless perhaps than the average wandering spirit.
In 1749, when Edward Cornwallis sailed into Halifax harbour to start building a city, he was met by an impressive welcoming committee. Along the shores of the harbour and scattered within the woods, were skeletons, still dressed in the tattered, decaying uniforms of a French naval fleet. All that remained of the ill-fated expedition of Duc D'Anville three years earlier.
Duc d'Anville, a French aristocrat, was described as a man "worthy to be loved and born to command." He was acting upon the French king's orders to retake Louisbourg, expel the British from Nova Scotia, devour Boston in flames, ravage New England, and destroy the British West Indies. It didn’t quite work out that way. While it is likely that d'Anville had polished manners which served him well at court, it appears that he never received proper naval training. That proved to be a problem.
Nonetheless, d'Anville led a fleet of 70 ships and 13,000 men across the Atlantic. The fleet spent three months at sea. Far longer than planned. Three months of bad luck. Never could they steer a straight course; the winds dictated which way they would go. Weeks passed. Storms battered them. More weeks passed. The men became sick with scurvy and typhus. The drinking water was putrid, the biscuits were buggy, and the contents of the barrels gray and smelly. Men began to die and their bodies were stitched into canvas, together with a cannon ball, and slipped into the ocean. The corpse inside, some would say, was in a better state than those who watched the daily ceremony.
Most of them died. Many just after having arrived at Halifax. Some were buried; others simply left where they had fallen. D'Anville himself died within six days of arrival. Some said of disease. Some said of grief. Some said of poison.
There followed a sad scene which played out on a little grassy island in the harbour: George's Island. A small group of remaining French naval officers were rowed out by an exhausted and sick crew of French seamen, with the remains of their leader, to the shore of this little bleak island in the middle of a huge bleak wilderness. And there he was laid to rest.
But this was not the last to be seen of Duc d’Anville. Because on certain nights there can be seen on the shores of George’s Island, a man in the uniform of an 18th century French admiral, pacing forlornly back and forth. Waiting perhaps for the remains of his fleet to come and return him to France. And he apparently doesn’t remain on the island. For this same uniformed admiral has been known to walk along the shores of Bedford Basin near the place where the broken remains of his fleet had lain anchored. Where he likely spent his last days. And those who have seen him are certain that if the air is still, they can hear the sound of oars moving through the water. But no boat can be seen. The admiral’s few remaining men are coming to claim him.
0 comments:
Post a Comment