8 Building a Royal Navy Dockyard

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BUILDING A ROYAL NAVY DOCKYARD

with the depArture of the fleet And improved weAther, the dockyard was left with two vacant slips and 900 fewer people. In the last days of July, more than 100 additional French-Canadian shipwrights arrived in time to assist in completing and arming the Lord Melville. The additional workers made the timing opportune to accelerate a large shipbuilding program. And yet the next large warships, two full ship-rigged frigates, would not slide into Navy Bay until the following year. One reason for the pause was the pressing need for more gunboats. At least three would be completed over the summer.1 But a more compelling reason for the delay was the necessity to build a larger yard.

As the master shipwrights John Goudie, George Record, and William Bell considered the challenges of a building war with the Americans, it was clear the cramped little Provincial Marine dockyard was not suitable for the Royal Navy. An expansion was needed. The large warships they would build with keel lengths of 150 to 200 feet required a far greater range of support facilities. Some necessities were immediately evident. A much larger, more comprehensive rigging and mould loft with a large, open, well-lit floor was crucial. Larger slipways with cradles capable of bearing the great weights and sizes of the vessels being planned were also vital.

A new mould loft was built of wood on a stone foundation, adjacent to and just south of Slip No. 1. It measured 136 by 36 feet and consisted of a

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Slip 4

Slip 3 Slip 2 Slip 1

Fig. 8.1: The

locations of Slips No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 on today’s landscape are marked by the underwater remains of slipways built in 1813 and 1814. mast house, mould loft, and sail loft.2 The upper floor was utilized for laying out the full-scale design drawings of the vessel. Using the drawings, carpenters made wooden moulds to guide the fabrication of parts and sections of the ship. The mould loft was built in 1813 when it became evident that larger ships would be required. The location of the mould loft between Slips No. 1 and No. 2 allowed it to service up to three concurrent shipbuilding projects.

The yard also needed longer and heavier slipways. Numbered from north to south, Slip No. 1 was at or inside the old Provincial Marine yard perimeter and dated from 1791. It was the initial site of vessel construction. Slip No. 2 was likely constructed late in 1812 to accommodate the Wolfe. Slip No. 3 was built later in 1813 as the second of the two slips to accommodate the two new frigates begun in the autumn of 1813. Slip No. 4, the largest, was erected farther south later in the war. The slips can be found in painted images, drawings, and early photographs. They were plainly visible from the air when the water was clear in 2020, as shown in Fig. 8.1.

To build the ships, the men needed sheds and shops close to the slips, according to their different skills. The Provincial Marine yard sheds were

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arranged near Slip No. 1, likely inside the perimeter fence. With the yard getting larger, the master shipbuilders expanded the operation to the south and west. The foremen and a quartermaster had dwellings on-site close to the shops and sheds and in full view of the construction. A shop plaza was located straight west of the slips and soon consisted of two smith’s shops, an engine house, and a steam box. The joiners built a shop for themselves in the mould loft, where there was a separate cabin for general stores and another for cannon shot. South of Slip No. 3 were the saw pits, manned by the many “sawyers” who shaped and squared the lumber.3 This busy area where hundreds of men worked each day stretched from today’s Panet House to the Senior Staff Mess and then west into the sports field.

Construction was done under Commander O’Conor’s authority. He had broad spending power and was allotted regular sums by the deputy assistant commissary general that increased in amount and frequency as the war progressed. By the end of his tenure, O’Conor spent nearly £108,000 sterling, equivalent today to more than $1 billion Canadian. The money covered the myriad needs of a major construction and equipment project that included ship timber, masts and yards, wages, hospital and supplies, barracks, guardhouses, offices, slipways and wharfs, launching of ships, wages of transport seaman, pay of working parties, compensation for servants, pilotage, printing stationery, and all contingencies.4

Clues of the frantic pace of building are found in the demands for huge supplies of building materials. These included shingles, pine boards, scantling, squared pine, cedar pickets, stone, bricks, logs, lime, sand, and oak.5 O’Conor also dealt with the urgent need for accommodation. With Kingston filled, regiments were living in tents at Point Frederick. Tents would not do for the shipbuilders who worked outside in all weather to build the two frigates. Those from Quebec despaired of leaving their families, although some were accompanied, adding to the shortages.

By early September 1813, O’Conor had prepared an estimate for the cost of building 12 barrack buildings for officers and artificers.6 The dimensions of the three that were built were later measured and recorded. Located on the hill north of the dockyard gate, two were plotted along a north-south axis, with the third aligned east-west, forming a distinctive reverse L (see Fig. 8.2). These buildings provided winter accommodation for officers and some of the newly arrived French Canadians. A one-minute walk from the barrack along

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Fig. 8.2: This 1841 view shows two of the artificers’ barracks built on the hill in 1813. The third and most northern one is not visible in this view.

Fig. 8.3: Detail from an 1815 British Admiralty map showing shanties. There were upward of 70 separate apartments or rooms. In some cases, there were single-room shanties. In others, the shanties shared walls with neighbours or were single buildings with multiple rooms. Note the privy at Navy Bay Inlet, which must have received plenty of traffic. the back road placed them at the dockyard gate where they reported to work. With the trees removed from the peninsula, a view from the upper rooms of these barracks would have allowed a complete sight of the naval operations.

But three barracks were not enough. Many new arrivals found little or no accommodation. Soon, small log cabins, or shanties, began to appear on the shallow, broad slope of the hill near the three barracks. According to storekeeper Edward Laws, the shanties were constructed by the workers after hours using “offal” wood from the yard. The government supplied them with nails and glass. The wood consisted of anything available, but especially logs that were not lathed or plastered. The roofs were covered with slabs rather than shingles. The dwellings were heated by stoves, also supplied. They did not have stone chimneys, although evidence has been found of one shanty with a fireplace.7 When completed, the shanties evidently became the property of the builder and could be bought or sold. There is a record of one couple paying £5 for a “cabbin to live in.”8

The practice of erecting shanties probably started in the fall of 1813 when the crush of artificers and naval officers faced the approaching winter.

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Most maps and images do not depict the village that developed, perhaps a quiet admission that the Royal Navy was not proud of its inability to shelter its workers.

There is one map from 1815 that does show the shanties in detail. The map depicts the location of each of the 70 small buildings, many adjoined (see Fig. 8.3). According to the map, many shanties were loosely placed in straight east-west-oriented rows that traversed the upslope of the hill. This arrangement provided a shallow terrace that facilitated long views of the yard, access to breezes from the lake, and drainage of water and waste downhill away from the buildings. Some shanties broke the pattern by being built along the west shoreline, offering views of Kingston.

Susan Greely, late in her life, described the frustrations of log homes:

Those who had fixed their fancy upon log houses soon found that all their pains in finishing them nicely was of no avail … for they would settle, and thus draw all the casings, doors, windows and floors apart, and thus render them very uncomfortable … any kind of wood would do if you could get logs perfectly straight, maple, basswood, poplar, or anything you could get…. Our neighbors had wooden latches and stick chimneys … clay was also used for plastering the houses, that is, filling up the spaces between the logs, and those who wished to be very neat and stylish whitewashed their one-room houses with blue clay, a kind of pipe-clay which was found in many of the little streams.9

It takes little imagination to picture lanes and paths between the rows of small buildings. When fully occupied, together with the barracks, there were enough people for a rousing village. Children and pets were likely part of a community of workers sharing outdoor space with those lucky enough to inhabit the barracks. A canteen in one of the barracks would have been a social centre and pub where mixes of French and English were spoken and people formed friendships and had conflicts. This was a military community, complete with births, deaths, and dramas played out on the grassy and treed upslope north of today’s RMC gate. Large “amounts of building materials, nails, glass, window glass, mortar and plaster were encountered, indicated the presence of former structures.”10

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Fig. 8.4: A

conjectural schematic looking south to the naval yard. The building in the foreground left is the hospital, which partly hides the surgeon’s house. The three white buildings left centre are barracks, with the shanties to the right near the front road. The dockyard is beyond the fence.

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Some of these shanties may have been used by sailors and soldiers, but there were some solutions closer to the dockyard. With the arrival of 300 more sailors, marines, and soldiers, accommodation was increased by converting the old 1785 Provincial Marine storehouse to a barrack. When completed, the structure included a covered walkway to a shoreside privy. A smaller workmen’s barrack was erected north of the slipways.

The Duke of Kent remained tied close to the shoreline, still serving as a barrack and hospital. Some of the senior shipwrights lived in a “hulk,” probably the Duke of Kent. Life on board included at least one family with small children whose mother was employed as a cook. The rough society featured plenty of drinking, jealousies, and violence.11

The growing shanty village near the dockyard gate brought emphasis to the needs for security and control of worker access. Without a broad perimeter fence, the yard could be approached by water at almost any unguarded spot, although the land between the inlets was soon controlled by the fence and yard gate. Complicating the issue of yard security was the artillery battery, a growing presence on the south part of Point Frederick. The artillery unit was independent of the navy but provided its defence. It co-operated with the Kingston garrison and the artillery battery on Point Henry across the bay. A road soon developed along the west shoreline from the dockyard gate to the battery on the tip of Point Frederick. A “commodore’s wharf” was

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soon built on the west shore, giving Commodore Yeo and his messengers a convenient boat launch and access to the Kingston garrison.

Materials arriving on wagons from the scow ferry landing, or farther up the Cataraqui River at Kingston Mills, followed wagon paths along Point Frederick that wove through the shanty village. Teamsters would have lined up at the control point at the dockyard gate. The gate saw traffic increase as the pace of shipbuilding grew. The road continued through the gate, coursing uphill and toward the shipbuilding area. This section survives today as a small part of the RMC’s Valour Drive. Other roads within the yard were defined by 1813 by the ruts left by teamsters, artificers, and seamen. As they became evident, roads spread from the commodore’s residence outward to the shops, wharves, yard gate, and victualling storehouse and office (see Fig. 8.4).

The location of the dockyard gate has not changed since 1813, when the fence was built across the isthmus. Workers living outside the dockyard gate on the nearby hill were locked out after hours. With the ringing of the yard bell, they were called to work, allowed to check in, and walked to the work site. Wooden detached buildings were erected inside the yard gate on the north side of the road. Sentry boxes were situated on both sides of the gate. One of the sentry boxes was later replaced with a small frame building, a precursor of today’s RMC Guard House.12

Commander O’Conor had an office and dwelling house13 within the dockyard enclosure. Although the site of the office is unclear, there was office space in the building near the naval officers’ quarters by the wharf. While O’Conor may have used these offices, his dwelling and offices were likely within the frame dwelling house near the centre yard north of Yeo’s residence (the light blue house on the left in Fig. 8.4).

Fig. 8.5 is a conjectural schematic of the location of buildings in the yard. From O’Conor’s office (blue house in the centre), there was a direct view of the yard gate, the commodore’s quarters, and the dockyard. From the rear garden of O’Conor’s house, the artillery battery on Point Henry and the entire shoreline could be seen. To the right were the shipbuilding activities. The commodore and his offices were directly across the small infield area where wood for shipbuilding was carefully sorted and stored (not depicted).

As the yard expanded, the need for more storehouse space became acute. When storehouse space was unavailable, materials were piled outside, exposed to the weather. Some of the storehouses built during the Provincial Marine

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Fig. 8.5: In this elevated conjectural illustration viewed from Kingston, the blue house on the left is probably Acting Commissioner Richard O’Conor’s quarters and office, the site of today’s RMC Mackenzie Building. Right centre is Commodore Yeo’s quarters and offices.

3 4 5

2

1

Fig. 8.6: The heart of the naval dockyard shown 60 years later. These structures were all present during the War of 1812: (1) upper remnants of the Provincial Marine wharf; (2) the paint house; (3) roof of a storehouse; (4) partially hidden, the likely dwelling of Richard O’Conor when acting commissioner; and (5) original guardhouse, later the storekeeper’s office.

era were still being used. One of them, a spacious, well-built frame building on a stone foundation near the Provincial Marine wharf, became the paint shop (see Fig. 8.6). Three more storehouses were constructed west of the paint shop in addition to the long, narrow rigging shed that predated the war.

Obtaining and storing foodstuffs became more challenging as the Point Frederick population increased, made worse by wartime demand. A primary task of the victualling agent was providing food for workers and sailors and

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provisioning the vessels during cruises on the lake. Reliable sources of storable food were essential. The area to the east of the dockyard (Pittsburgh Township) was agriculturally poor, and farming immediately around Kingston was indifferent. The Bay of Quinte area supported mature farmlands that could supply seasonal needs to the civilian populace and military. More reliable were the regular supply shipments from Lower Canada. Surprisingly, a considerable quantity of food came from another source — the Americans. Prévost indicated in a letter to Lord Bathurst, British secretary of state for war and the colonies, that two-thirds of the army in Canada ate beef produced in Vermont and New York sold by American contractors. In fact, Americans were experiencing food shortages because of the exports to Canada.14

Food supplies were likely brought by scow ferry from Kingston to a victualling storehouse building on the west shore, north of the shanties. A purpose-built wharf and storehouse (see Fig. 8.7) was later built by Commissioner Robert Hall in 1815, probably while the west fence was constructed. The victualler’s wharf was just north of the commodore’s wharf. The location was convenient to both the Point Frederick battery, dockyard, and workers quarters north of the gate, and allowed for food distribution without interfering with dockyard activities (see Fig. 8.7).

The road pattern on the Point Frederick peninsula north of the dockyard gate evolved to meet the demands of the increased traffic. While there is evidence, both in Gother Mann’s plan and in Joseph Bouchette’s map of 1796, of an earlier road running along the centre line of the peninsula, changes occurred that favoured two shoreline roads. The “front road” along the shoreline facing Kingston (west shore) probably developed early to accommodate wagon traffic moving from the scow ferry to the yard. Starting as a path, it paralleled the west shoreline before angling toward the centre of the peninsula and down the hill to the dockyard gate. It was eventually developed into an 18-foot-wide road with a pavement of limestone spall pressed into clay.15

The “back road” followed higher ground along the east shoreline facing Point Henry and evolved in response to increased traffic between the Point Henry artillery battery, dockyard, and Point Frederick battery. Contributing to this traffic was the presence of wagons hauling wood from Kingston Mills to the dockyard.16 The back road was an extension of Point Road, which originated at Kingston Mills and ended at an intersection with the front road near the dockyard gate.

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1

2

3 5

Fig. 8.7: Detail of an 1816 map showing the wooden fence across the isthmus (1) and the western boundary fence ordered by Commodore Robert Hall in 1815 (2). The commodore’s quarters are at (3). The workmen’s quarters, including shanties (not shown), are at (4), and the newly built St. Lawrence wharf (circa 1815) is at (5).

In addition to dealing with the supply of food and provisions, the agent victualler administered the hospital that O’Conor wanted built. He had already purchased the house on the Kingston side that was used as a temporary hospital and was still using the old Duke of Kent as a hospital ship but wanted to press forward with construction. O’Conor was not only concerned about his wounded men, but the medical care of the contracted shipwrights and artificers, as well.17 This undoubtedly included their families to the greatest degree possible.

To develop the hospital project, surgeon Thomas Lewis was appointed the “Surgeon of the Hospital at Kingston” on October 29, 1813. He was confirmed by the British Admiralty in a letter dated April 13, 1814.18 Lewis had come to Point Frederick with Commodore Yeo, arriving in May 1813. He was assigned to HMS Prince Regent19 as a surgeon until put in charge of the hospital. Since his appointment included the phrase “surgeon and agent,”20 it is likely Lewis was given a free hand to organize medical care and construct the hospital. His approved package included hospital rations and a housing allowance that allowed him to reside in Kingston.21

Staying in Kingston made sense, since Lewis had to care for patients

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in Kingston, at the temporary naval hospital in Kingston, on vessels, and aboard the Duke of Kent. One can visualize him visiting his Kingston patients, then commuting by boat or ferry to Point Frederick to assess dockside patients. In between, he might have stopped to inspect the site of the new hospital. It would be located in Gother Mann’s residential area on the low plateau north of the yard gate.

Although work began on the hospital in 1813, the building would not be completed and the first patient admitted until well into the following year.22 There would be other priorities. Aside from accommodation, there was the thorny problem of defending Kingston from attack.

And winning the shipbuilders’ war.

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