November 30, 2012

The fall of 2012 marks the 400 anniversary of the voyage of the bark Indeavour, the first decked, ocean-going vessel known to have been built in Canada. Constructed at Cupids over the winter of 1610-1611,  in the fall of 1612 she carried John Guy, Henry Crout, and twelve other colonists on a voyage of discovery into Trinity Bay. Alongside her sailed another five colonists in a shallop. The main purpose of the voyage was to meet and establish friendly relations with the Beothuk with whom the colonists hoped to develop a fur trade. The voyage is well documented: both Guy and Crout kept journals and Crout later wrote a letter in which he described the voyage.

This fall the Baccalieu Trail Heritage Corporation (BTHC) is working with communities in Conception Bay, Trinity Bay, and Placentia Bay to mark the 400 anniversary of the voyage of the Indeavour by unveiling history boards at ten locations visited by the colonists. The ceremonies have been timed to correspond as closely as possible with the 400 anniversary of the arrival of the colonists at each location.

In the early 17th century the English were still using the Old Style or Julian calender which is thirteen days behind our modern Gregorian calender. To ensure that each unveiling takes place as close as possible to the actually 400 anniversary, as opposed to the Julian calender date, we have added thirteen days to the dates provided by Guy and Crout. For example, according to the journals, the Indeavour arrived in Dildo Arm, or ‘Savage Bay’ as they called it, on October 24th, 1612  but the actually 400 anniversary falls on November 6th.  Standing in these places exactly 400 years after the events took place gives one a real sense of what these people were facing in a small wooden sailing ship with winter closing in.

To date panels have been unveiled in Harbour Grace, Bay de Verde, Hopeall, Dildo (for both Dildo Arm and Dildo Island), Thornlea, Come By Chance, and Heart’s Content. Two more ceremonies are scheduled for next week:one at Job’s Cove on Conception Bay’s North Shore on December 4th  and another in Carbonear on December 5th . These final two unveilings commemorate the overland journey of the crew of the shallop, George Wichalle, William Hadden, Bartholomew Pearson, George Frewin and Samuel Butler, who were shipwrecked in Bay de Verde on the return voyage and walked the roughly 38 miles (60km) from Bay de Verde to Carbonear where they found a boat in which they sailed back to Cupids.

Bartholomew Pearson, who later wrote a letter in which he described the journey, said that “by God’s providence in the end we made it home by land [but]...with great famine and much hunger [we] were like to be starved. For we were ten days traveling without any food but what we found by fortune at [fishing] stages of rotten, stinking  fish ... and mussels upon the beach”. According to Henry Crout, the crew of the shallop arrived back in Cupids on November 23, 1612,  “about nine of the clock at night being almost famished”. That’s December 6th by our modern calender.

The Indeavour made it home two days later, “by ten of the clock in the forenoon”. Since the wreck of the shallop, she had traveling south to Renews, stopping into Torbay, been blown back to Bay de Verde, and spent two days moored off the south side of Bell Island. Crout, who kept a daily record of the weather during the voyage and throughout the following winter, reported that it snow all day on the day the Indeavour arrived home and that in the night there was “frost and good store of snow”.

Photo above: Looking south along the North Shore of Conception Bay. The crew of the shallop walked along this coast 400 years ago on their way home to Cupids.