Marryat, Frederick (1829) The Naval Officer, or Scenes in the Life and Adventures of Frank Mi/dmay. Henry Colburn, London. [Re—published (date not given) by Peter Fenelon Collier, New York.]

It may seem odd to include in a scientific and historical work such as this, an extract from an early nineteenth century sea-faring novel, but the reference to the forests of Prince Edward Island contained in The Naval Officer is based on an event that occurred on the island in 787 7. The author, Captain Frederick Marryat (b. 7792, d. 7848), served in the Royal Navy from 7806 to 7830. In 787 l he was stationed at Halifax on the frigate Aeolus under the command of Lord James Townshend, who happened to be the proprietor of Lot 56 in Kings County. While they were at Halifax another naval vessel landed a batch of lrish emigrants who had been removed from an emigrant ship on route to New York, the able-bodied men among them having been press-ganged. According to the fictionalised account that Marryat wrote up in his novel, the remaining emigrants were persuaded to settle on Prince Edward Island. Undoubtedly Marryat was involved in the conveyance of the emigrants to the island: The Naval Officer was undisguised/y autobiographical, and the veracity of the event is further supported by historical documents cited by O’Grady {2004). As well, the procedures used in the construction of a log cabin, including the particular trees used for the walls and roof, are in agreement with contemporary accounts from the island. After The Naval Officer, Marryat went on to become a successful writer of naval novels, some of which have always been popular and are still in print.

REFERENCES:

Lloyd, C. (1939) Captain Marryat and the Old Navy. Longmans, Green & Co., London. pp. 140-41, 235-39.

O’Grady, B. (2004) Exiles and islanders: The Irish Settlers of Prince Edward Island. McGill-Oueen's University Press, Montreal. pp. 100—04.

The bECkg’OUHd We had not been long at sea before we spoke an Irish Guineaman from Belfast loaded ’0 the S’O’V- with emigrants for the United States — I think about seventeen families. These were contraband. Our captain had some twenty thousand acres on the Island of St.

John’s, or Prince Edward’s, as it is now called . It occurred to our noble captain that these Irish people would make good clearers of his land, and improve his estate. He made the proposal to them, the proposal was accepted, and the

captain obtained permission of the admiral to accompany them to the island to see

them housed and settled. [Frank Mildmay or the Naval Officer (Collier edition), p. 193]

Building a A large part of the ship’s company came on shore with the carpenter, bringing with log‘cab’" them every implement useful in cutting down trees and building log houses. Such on Lot 56' was to be our occupation, in order to house these poor emigrants. Our men began to clear a patch of land by cutting down a number of pine-trees, the almost exclusive natives of the woods; and having selected a spot for the foundation, we placed four stems of trees in a parallelogram, having made a deep notch in each end, mutually to fit and embrace each other. When the walls by this repeated operation were high enough, we laid on the rafters, and covered the roof with boughs of the fir and the bark of the birch-tree, filling the interstices with moss and mud. By practice I became a very expert engineer, and with the assistance of thirty or forty men, I could build a very good house in a day. [Frank Mi/dmay or the Naval Officer (Collier edition), pp. 195-96]

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