The Invisibles: A History of the Royal Newfoundland Companies

THE INVISIBLES

A HISTORY OF THE ROYAL NEWFOUNDLAND COMPANIES

JAMES E. CANDOW

Breakwater Books

P.O. Box 2188, St. John’s, NL, Canada, A1C 6E6

www.breakwaterbooks.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada

Copyright © 2019 James E. Candow

ISBN 978-1-55081-795-9

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation for our publishing activities.

Printed and bound in Canada.

Breakwater Books is committed to choosing papers and materials for our books that help to protect our environment. To this end, this book is printed on a recycled paper that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

In memory of Cyril Byrne

CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

THE LABYRINTH

Army Administration

Regional and Local Organization

CHAPTER 2

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ROYAL NEWFOUNDLAND COMPANIES

Origins

Growing Pains

Signal Hill

Garrison Reduction

CHAPTER 3

THE SCUM OF THE EARTH

The Rank and File: An Overview

Pay and Living Conditions

Diet

Garrison Routine and Duties

Parades and Reviews

Crime and Punishment

The Great Gulf

CHAPTER 4

BALLROOMS AND BATTLEFIELDS

The Officer Corps: An Overview

High Society

Garrison Theatricals and the Regimental Band

The Sporting Life

The Ties that Bound

CHAPTER 5

THE COMING OF THE FROST

The Firetrap

Nineteenth-Century Firefighting

The Military-Civilian Relationship

The Great Fire of June 9, 1846

Aftermath of the Great Fire

CHAPTER 6

CIVIL COMMOTION

Politics and Society

The Poisoning

The Neaven Funeral Riot

Conception Bay

The Reckoning

Dénouement

CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION

Legacy

Patrick Myrick’s Limp

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

APPENDIX 1

COMPOSITION OF THE ROYAL NEWFOUNDLAND COMPANIES, 1845

APPENDIX 2

COMMANDING OFFICERS OF THE ROYAL NEWFOUNDLAND (VETERAN) COMPANIES

APPENDIX 3

PLANS OF SELECTED MILITARY FACILITIES, 1861

3.1 Fort Townshend

3.2 Fort William

3.3 Garrison Hospital

3.4 Ordnance Yard

ENDNOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER 1

Fig. 1 Government House, Commissariat House, and Residence of the Collector of Customs, 1831

Fig. 2 Private of the Royal Newfoundland Companies in full dress, marching order, 1860

CHAPTER 2

Fig. 3 View of St. John’s from Long’s Hill, 1831

Fig. 4 St. John’s, 1844

Fig. 5 The Landing and Reception of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at St. John’s Newfoundland on the 24th. July 1860

CHAPTER 3

Fig. 6 Fort William Barracks from Military Road, 1831

Fig. 7 Government House, 1851

Fig. 8 Narrows, or Entrance of the Harbour of St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Fig. 9 Robert Law, circa 1871

Fig. 10 Sleighing at St. John’s

Fig. 11 St. John’s Cricket Club, Pleasantville, Quidi Vidi Lake site, n.d.

CHAPTER 5

Fig. 12 The Great Fire of June 9, 1846

Fig. 13 Customs House and view of Water Street, October 1841

Fig. 14 Colonial Building, 1851

CHAPTER 6

Fig. 15 Michael Anthony Fleming

Fig. 16 Conception Bay and Environs

Fig. 17 Water Street, Harbour Grace, N.F.

Fig. 18 New road made after the attack on Winton 1835/Saddle Hill.

Fig. 19 N[orth] View of the Harbour Grace Court House Aug. 1841.

Fig. 20 The Prince of Wales leaving St. John’s, Newfoundland for Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Fig. 21 May 13, 1861 Riot

Fig. 22 Court House and Market, 1851

CHAPTER 7

Fig. 23 St. John’s Station – looking northeast from housetop, west of Devon Row, before 1900.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

By an amendment to the Canadian constitution on December 6, 2001, Newfoundland was officially renamed Newfoundland and Labrador. Because that change has no bearing on the past, I use the old name throughout this book except when referring to the present.

To avoid using the dreaded sic in square brackets, I have reproduced all quotations in their original spellings. Except where I thought it necessary, I have not distinguished between an officer’s brevet rank and his rank in the army. Usher’s Dictionary of British Military History defines brevet rank as a superior nominal rank formerly given to an officer, but without extra pay. Hence a brevet major would have the status of a major but be paid as a captain. Finally, the research for this book was conducted intermittently over the course of four decades. During that time archivists changed many of the titles and accession numbers of the records I used. Although it has been a challenge to keep pace, I have done everything possible to ensure that the archival references in the endnotes and bibliography are current.

INTRODUCTION

In the spring of 1866, residents of The Goulds, Newfoundland, were appalled when the disappearing snow revealed not just the usual farmers’ fields, but also a decomposed human body.¹ Somewhat incongruously—because it suggested unfinished business—the deceased’s feet were clad in leather boots, one of which bore the stamp B, 40 R.N.C.This clue, plus the footwear’s martial appearance, led coroner Joseph Shea to the nearby St. John’s British Army garrison, where records showed that boots bearing this inscription had been issued to a Private John Hanlin, who had been missing since deserting from his regiment, the Royal Newfoundland Companies, on July 15, 1860. Although a coroner’s jury was unable to establish a cause of death or to say whether foul play was involved, it concluded that the remains were almost certainly Hanlin’s.

Hanlin’s corpse, which had gone undetected for nearly six years, is an apt symbol of his regiment, for despite being stationed in Newfoundland from 1824 to 1862, the Royal Newfoundland Companies have been virtually invisible to historians of the British Army. Worse still, the eminent Canadian military historian Desmond Morton was unaware that Newfoundland even had a British Army garrison, let alone knew its regiment’s names.² That garrison, incidentally, was Britain’s first in what is today Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador residents are not much different than the historians. When they remember their military history, they usually focus on a single engagement that their ancestors fought at Beaumont-Hamel, France, on July 1, 1916.³ (In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Second World War is second not only chronologically, but also in importance.) This book is a study of soldiers who bore the word Newfoundland in their regiment’s name, but who crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction in earlier times, albeit on behalf of the self-same British Empire.

Between 1697 and 1870, 30 British regiments served in various Newfoundland communities, but mainly in St. John’s and Placentia.⁴ (Established in 1713, the Placentia garrison was withdrawn in 1811.) Despite the army’s lengthy presence, Newfoundland’s security ultimately rested on the Royal Navy, whose ships began accompanying English fishing vessels to and from the island in the 1640s. The relationship between the navy and the migratory fishery was symbiotic: the navy protected the fishery, whose main product—dried, salted cod—was a valuable commodity in Iberian and Mediterranean markets, while the fishery itself had strategic importance as a training ground for men who could be pressed into naval service in wartime.⁵ The Newfoundland squadron’s senior officer, who held the temporary rank of commodore, was informally regarded as governor while he was on the station—that is, until 1729, when the practice became official.

Because St. John’s had an excellent harbour and was roughly in the middle of the English fishing and settlement zone, it became the headquarters of both the squadron and the unique government over which the governor presided, which included a surrogate court system administered by junior naval officers.⁶ Although in peacetime the squadron contained only two or three ships, it expanded in wartime, when some ships overwintered to protect the small but growing resident population (roughly 10,000 people by 1793).⁷ The Newfoundland station would not be permanently staffed until the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815), when, however, Halifax eclipsed St. John’s as a naval base because of its usefulness against the United States of America in the War of 1812.⁸

The wars accelerated both the demise of the British migratory fishery and the growth of fishing and sealing by Newfoundland residents, whose numbers rose to 40,568 in 1815, with 10,018 of them in St. John’s.⁹ With these irreversible changes, Newfoundland could no longer be regarded, as it had been for centuries, as a great English ship moored near the Banks … for the convenience of the English Fishermen.¹⁰ It was now a settled society that deserved the same constitutional trappings as its British North American neighbours, a process that began in 1824-25 with the abolition of the surrogate court system, the creation of civil courts, and the commencement of rule by a governor and appointed council—in short, colonial status. Ironically, these same developments undermined Newfoundland’s strategic value to Britain. Accordingly, in 1824 the Royal Navy announced that the Newfoundland station would be closing and that Newfoundland would henceforth be part of the North America and West Indies station, headquartered in Halifax and Bermuda.i Although one or two Halifax-based ships continued to visit Newfoundland’s waters each summer until the eve of the First World War, the British Army’s St. John’s garrison was once again the colony’s only year-round imperial force.

The Royal Newfoundland Companies’ lifespan coincided with the colony’s achievement of representative government (1832) and responsible government (1855), outwardly progressive milestones that belied times that were as turbulent as they were formative. Elections became outlets for inter- and intra-denominational tensions and local and factional rivalries, spawning violence the police could not always control. On such occasions, the magistrates, as agents of the civil power, requested military aid, plunging the Royal Newfoundland Companies into the maelstrom. Like elections, fires also revealed shortcomings in public services. Civilian firefighting was no more sophisticated than policing, and because St. John’s experienced many fires, here, too, the regiment stepped into the breach. When it did, it encountered conditions that were as dangerous and controversial as when it aided the civil power.

When not suppressing riots or battling fires, the regiment’s men followed a monotonous routine that would have been familiar to British soldiers in other garrisons during the period. Nearly every aspect of army life was shaped by elaborate regulations and a strict, sometimes brutal, disciplinary code. To cope with the tedium and the repression, men used (and abused) alcohol, while the truly desperate, such as the luckless Private Hanlin, deserted. But the Royal Newfoundland Companies’ men had another option not widely available to other British soldiers: they married local women, and they did so in far greater numbers than army regulations allowed. This gave a more personal quality to the regiment’s community ties and, in the process, helped to make it unique within the British Army. Unlike the rank and file,ii the regiment’s officers led lives that were characterized by lax discipline and leisurely pursuits. Officers nonetheless left their own marks on the community, especially in sports, arts, and education.

It is difficult to assign a collective identity to a group whose numbers may have approached 2,000 during their regiment’s existence.iii But if there were such an identity, novelist Robertson Davies’ concept of fifth business would be it. According to Davies, Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the Recognition or the dénouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business.¹¹ The Royal Newfoundland Companies were not major players in the dramas that unfolded in their lifetime, but when they fired into a sea of rioters in downtown St. John’s on May 13, 1861, they unwittingly helped forge a political compromise that would shape Newfoundland society long into the twentieth century. Their legacy would have other dimensions, but none were more important than this fifth business.

Despite the announcement, the St. John’s Naval Office remained open until 1826.

The non-commissioned men of the army (privates, corporals, and sergeants).

For most of its 38 years, the regiment’s strength was approximately 300 men. Assuming an annual turnover rate of 15 per cent, some 1,700 men would have served.

CHAPTER 1

THE LABYRINTH

Army Administration

The British Army was more than just a fighting machine. It was also a sprawling bureaucracy whose ungainly structure was the product of a lengthy power struggle between Parliament and the Crown.¹ As complicated as that bureaucracy was, some knowledge of it is necessary to understand the environment in which the Royal Newfoundland Companies functioned.

There were effectively two armies in our period: the infantry and the cavalry, who answered to the Horse Guards; and the professional corps—the Royal Artilleryi and the Royal Engineers—who answered to the Board of Ordnance. Named after the London building containing the guardhouse and barracks of the royal household’s cavalry, the Horse Guards included the offices of the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary at War. The former, who was appointed by the Crown as its representative,ii was charged with the recruitment, training, discipline, and efficiency of the infantry and the cavalry; the latter, a Member of Parliament, was that body’s watchdog for army finances. (Parliament voted annually to establish the army’s size and budget.) The War Office, as the secretary’s unwieldy fiefdom was known, occupied so many buildings that messengers at one point accounted for a fifth of its workforce.² For the professional corps, the Board of Ordnance oversaw pay and discipline, supplied clothing, weapons, and ammunition, and managed all military lands and buildings at home and abroad.

Numerous other officials also had says in army administration. One of the main ones was the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, or Colonial Secretary for short. Although his primary responsibility was the civil administration of the colonies, in wartime commanding officers abroad reported directly to him, not to the Commander-in-Chief. He also approved senior regimental appointments in the colonies, and in consultation with colonial governorsiii decided on the army’s size and distribution abroad. (A separate official, the Home Secretary, did the same for troops in Britain.) Since it was more convenient for the Colonial Secretary to deal with a single individual on civil and military matters, he tended to appoint ex-army officers as governors.³

In 1862 the Colonial Office staff was a mere 48 bureaucrats, whose workplace at 14 Downing Street was so ramshackle that one employee said, It is to be hoped the building will fall (for fall I believe it will) at night.⁴ Perhaps it was just as well that other government officials and branches, including the navy, had roles in colonial affairs, sometimes exerting more power than the Colonial Office itself.⁵ The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who headed the Treasury, influenced the army both as the government’s chief financial officer and as the minister responsible for the Commissariat Department, a civilian service that at the garrison level administered contracts for the supply of food, light, fuel, forage, cartage, and transportation of men and matériel. The Commissariat was also custodian of the military chest, from which all military personnel, including pensioners and colonial governors, were paid. The Clothing Board ensured that the clothing sent to regiments conformed to army regulations. The Army Medical Department oversaw regimental and staff surgeons and ordered and controlled medical supplies. Medical officers decided if unfit soldiers should be discharged, and submitted their findings to the Board of Commissioners of the Royal Hospital for Soldiers, which was located in Chelsea and thus commonly known as Chelsea Hospital. Comprised of military men and politicians, the Chelsea commissioners managed the hospital’s veterans’ home, and also set pension rates.

Baffling though the system was, Parliament’s efforts to reform it in the relatively peaceful years after Waterloo were stymied by public apathy, limited finances, and resistance from the arch-conservative Duke of Wellingtoniv and his disciples. But after the Iron Duke’s death the spectre of war with Russia alarmed the public and, for a few years at least, gave reformers the upper hand.⁶ Administrative changes were already underway in 1854 when British troops joined the Crimean War (1853-56). The military and civil responsibilities of the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies were divided between, respectively, a Secretary of State for War and a Secretary of State for the Colonies. The following year the Secretary at War’s position was subsumed in that of the Secretary of State for War, who also took on the Commissariat and Medical departments. As well, the Board of Ordnance was dismantled, with the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers now coming under the Commander-in-Chief. There would be no further reforms on a comparable scale until 1868-72, but for now the result was an improved administration that gave Parliament the advantage in its age-old struggle with the Crown.

Regional and Local Organization

The St. John’s garrison—and, while it lasted, the Harbour Grace detachment—belonged to the Nova Scotia command, whose headquarters were in Halifax. With a strength of nearly 1,400 men in 1835, the Halifax garrison dwarfed the eight others in the region, of which St. John’s (276 men) and Fredericton (275 men) were the next largest.⁷ The command was usually headed by the Lieutenant General or Major General Commanding in Halifax,v who himself answered to the Commander of the Forces, British North America, based in Québec until 1836 and Montreal thereafter.⁸ Although the Halifax garrison’s standing ordersvi were supposed to apply to St. John’s as far as they can be rendered applicable to the circumstances of the place, the St. John’s garrison also had its own standing orders.⁹

The command structure underwent several changes in our period, often because of the outsized egos of the men involved. After the death of Lieutenant General Sir Benjamin D’Urban at Montreal on May 25, 1849, Nova Scotia Governor Sir John Harvey, a lieutenant general in the army, temporarily assumed the position of Commander of the Forces, British North America.¹⁰ A month later Nova Scotia became a separate command, making Harvey the equal of Lieutenant General Sir William Rowan, newly appointed to the Canada command.¹¹ Not to be outdone, in January 1852, Newfoundland Governor Sir John Gaspard Le Marchant assumed exclusive command of his colony’s troops.¹² Newfoundland’s days as a separate command were fleeting, because when Le Marchant replaced Harvey as Governor of Nova Scotia that June, Newfoundland reverted to its former status within the Nova Scotia command. The last realignment occurred in 1856, when all British troops in North America were constituted as a separate army division under Lieutenant General Sir William Eyre in Montreal.¹³ The division consisted of two brigades, with Colonel Charles Trollope commanding the Canada brigade and now Major General Sir John Gaspard Le Marchant the Nova Scotia brigade, which, as before, included Newfoundland.

Despite the end of naval government in 1824, Newfoundland’s governors continued to be drawn from naval ranks until Harvey’s appointment in 1841. Harvey had an army background, as did his next three successors, but in 1857 the mould was broken by Sir Alexander Bannerman, a civilian whose appointment came after the Colonial Office had been stripped of its military responsibilities. In theory, a governor’s peacetime military role was limited to advising the Colonial Secretary on larger issues such as troop deployment; in practice, governors did not hesitate to poke their noses into garrison affairs. Admittedly, this was a grey area. As the Crown’s representative, a governor was titular commander-in-chief of his colony’s armed forces, including militias and volunteer companies where these existed.¹⁴ Also, since governors’ instructions were often vague and filled with obsolete clauses, and because news travelled slowly before cables circled the globe, office-holders enjoyed considerable leeway.¹⁵

Around St. John’s there were ample signs of the governor’s martial side. His private secretary was invariably an army officer, and from about 1780 until 1831 his residence, known as Government House, was inside Fort Townshend. The military orientation of the new Government House and its vast grounds (more than eight hectares) was pronounced.¹⁶ To the south they faced the aptly-named Military Road, built in the 1770s to link Forts William and Townshend; to the northwest they were bordered by the Garrison Hospital;vii and to the east they abutted the Royal Engineer and Commissariat establishments, and St. Thomas’s Anglican Church.

Source: City of St. John’s Archives Photo No. 12-01-003

Figure 1: (Left to right) Government House, Commissariat House, and Residence of the Collector of Customs, 1831. By Lieutenant Colonel John Oldfield.

The governor was not the only official with civil and military responsibilities. Under representative government, the garrison commandantviii was a member of the governor’s Council,ix and he would have been under civil government as well had not the commanding officer at the time, Irish native Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Kirwan Burke,