Mystery vessel # 3

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Nomann
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Mystery vessel # 3

Post by Nomann »

Off Sable Island Canada an unknown transport vessel was lost in February 1761 a Major Elliott of the 43d regimen t of Foot was rescuded p.276
http://www.britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital%20BNJ/pdfs/1911_BNJ_8_15.pdf

Note postscript explains remains of a young soldier from Elliots regiment found 1963 on Sable ISland .p.414 National Geographic September 1965

What was the name of the ship lost?
Navclio
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Re: Mystery vessel # 3

Post by Navclio »

Have you checked older histories of Acadia or Nova Scotia? They often have details for such incidents that “modern” histories disdain. I have for other purposes downloaded the following from the Internet, probably from Google Books but possibly from www.archive.com:

Richard Brown, A History of the Island of Cape Breton with Some Account of the History and Settlement of Canada, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland (1869).

Thomas C. Haliburton, An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova-Scotia. (2 vols., 1829). (I downloaded vol. 1 for the 1745 attack on the French fortress at Louisbourg, so anything in 1716 should be in that volume.)

Beamish Murdoch, A History of Nova-Scotia or Acadie (2 vols.?, 1866). (Vol. 2 starts in 1740, so 1716 should be in vol. 1.)

There might be others.
Navclio
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Re: Mystery vessel # 3

Post by Navclio »

You can order Lyall Campbell, Sable Island Shipwrecks for $17.95 (I don’t know whose dollars; Canadian, I suppose) from https://www.nimbus.ca/store/nautical-re ... recks.html or look for it in a library (publisher: Nimbus Publishing Ltd. & Vagrant Press, 2001)

Also, someone named Aron Mior has compiled a database of Sable Island shipwrecks. I found a PowerPoint, from a presentation at the Science and History of Sable Island Conference on May 2, 2015, explaining the sources and data, but not the database itself. The title slide had a degree (“M.MA.”) but no institutional affiliation. There is a download feature at https://www.academia.edu/25276809/How_M ... ble_Island but to download via Google you have to give Academia.com access to all of your contacts. I think Academia.com is a scam; I get spam from them frequently claiming that some important scientific paper has mentioned the fake name I use on my gmail account (maybe there really is someone with that name). I’m not a member of Linked In but Googling “Aaron Mior” got a hit on a Linked In entry for Aaron Mior as a staff archaeologist or “underwater and terrestrial archaeologist” at Golder Associates.
Navclio
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Re: Mystery vessel # 3

Post by Navclio »

I misread the date in the original post as 1716, but my previous responses still apply. There is a list of Nova Scotia shipwrecks at https://novascotia.ca/museum/wrecks/wrecks/ but searching on year brings up only one in 1761, Auguste, wrecked in November.
A list of Canadian shipwrecks organized by province (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... _of_Canada) gives further details: “A full-rigged transport, run aground on the northeastern side of Cape Breton Island,” so it wasn’t on Sable Island.

The Mior Powerpoint includes a slide with the names and years of all the ships in the database. Doing a <Ctl-F> on that slide finds one 1761 entry “Unnamed 1761.”

If you really have to have the name of the ship, you might have to trace it another way. If it was wrecked in February, it could not have been outbound from Quebec. It might have left England in December 1760 or January 1761. Transport Board records at the National Archives in Kew should tell you what transports left England in that time period, and which ones were carrying elements of the 43rd Foot.

What about a regimental history? The 43rd Foot became the Monmouthshire Regiment and in 1881 became the 1st and 2nd battalions of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, in 1908 the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. There would have been later amalgamations, especially after World War II, but earlier regimental histories might say something. The Wikipedia article for the 43rd Foot says that the regiment served in Canada from 1757 to 1759 but then returned to England. Its next foreign service was in the capture of Martinique in the West Indies in January 1762. Sable Island would be an odd place to be wrecked on the way from England to the West Indies, but Atlantic storms could force sailing ships far off course.

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