“Saw Mount Surratt [and] Saint Kitts Is.”: Navigation, Notation, and Record-Keeping in an Acadian Merchant Captain’s Voyages from Nova Scotia to the West Indies
- colbygaudet6
- Aug 13, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: Sep 15, 2024
Documents authored by eighteenth-century Acadians are rare. The French settlers known as the Acadians had been deported from Nova Scotia by the British in 1755 and Catholic education in the province was soon reduced to non-existence. The generation of eighteenth-century Acadians born and raised in exile seldom had access to formal education.[1] However, there were exceptions, and some Acadians born in the tumult of the 1750s rose to prominence through lucrative connections they made during their American odyssey. Among the surviving papers of the Acadian merchant captain Pierre Doucet are several journals of his trading voyages from Nova Scotia to the West Indies between 1784 and 1792.[2] I have published in Acadiensis a case study of Captain Doucet as a slave trader whose heirs were later slaveowners in rural Nova Scotia.[3] Here, I wish to attend to more general aspects of the same sources. Doucet’s journals and ledgers (which he kept in English) offer valuable glimpses into one Acadian man’s ambition and his extensive Atlantic commercial and social relations. Doucet’s papers, especially his navigational notes and diagrams, suggest the uniqueness of his education among his generation of otherwise seldom literate fellow Acadians. Doucet’s experience thus isn’t representative of most eighteenth-century Acadians (who lived largely subsistence lives), yet he demonstrates an instance where an Acadian was participating with skill and success in a very wide Atlantic world.
Born and baptized at Annapolis Royal in 1750, Pierre Doucet was deported to Massachusetts as a five-year-old boy. He was removed from his family and was apprenticed by a sea captain from whom he received an education.[4] In the first pages of his earliest journal, a young Doucet recorded his “Rules for Keeping a Journall”, or as he also called it, ‘a reckoning’. He wrote: “By keeping a Reckning is meant keeping such account of the Ships way That at any Time you may be able to know what Latitude and Longitude the Ship is in.” Such a record was necessary “When a Ship is Bound from any Place to another that Lies so farr from it that Shee is obliged to go out of Sight of Land for any Considerable Time as Supose from New England to the West Indies.” It is apparent from his geographical references that Doucet began making these navigational notes before his relocation to Nova Scotia, while still residing in Massachusetts with a wife and young child. When describing proper notations Doucet repeatedly used the examples of "Cape Ann or Piscatiqua” from which the captain "Takes the bearing and Distance of that Land according to his Judgment and Sets it Down in the Logg Book Against the Time it was Taken.” These instructions were followed by a series of navigational sketches and diagrams revealing Doucet’s mathematical acumen. These records thus give intimate voice to an Acadian life, and they attest to the source of Doucet's literacy.
The first of Doucet’s trading voyages for which a record exists is a July 1784 “voyage to Antigua on board [the] schooner Hannah, Peter Dousett, commander.” This journey transported a cargo of Nova Scotian timber and shingles – primary Maritime exports of the time[5] – to the Caribbean. In turn, rum, sugar, and molasses were imported from the West Indies to Nova Scotia, only after first stopping in American ports along the return journey. Merchant captains such as Doucet were thus important movers of goods and commodities along circuits of North American triangular trade.
Doucet spent the month of August 1784 in Antigua, filling his vessel’s hold with sugar and rum to trade on his return. On Monday, August 30, he noted: “getting Ready to Sail at 12 . . . at 4 PM got under way at 6 Saw Mount Surratt [and] Saint Kitts Is[land].” Departing Antigua, Doucet observed the volcanic island of Montserrat dominating the horizon in the hour before sunset. The captain and his crew sailed through the late summer night. An hour before sunrise Doucet “Saw Saint Ustacia” and “at 10 AM Came to Anchor at Saint Martins.” The next day, the crew was “employd in Hoisting out freight on Board Brig Prudence.” On September 4, the Hannah “Got Underway at 9 AM abreast of [the vessels] Dog and Prikley Pear.” Doucet sailed “From St Martins towards Boston.” The following spring, in May 1785, Doucet voyaged “From Cape Sabels [Cape Sable Island] Towards Barbadoes.” After a brief return home to St. Mary’s Bay, in January 1786, he “Saild from Grand Passage . . . Bound for Jamaica.” Gone from his Nova Scotian family for the entire year, in December 1786, Doucet was homeward bound from Philadelphia to Annapolis Royal.
In his log, Doucet necessarily recorded observations on the weather. One August day in Antigua, he reported “Squally Weather all this 24 Hours with Showers of Rain.” A couple days later, there was “thunder in the Night with Rain.” Amid these anodyne observations, there is no hint of the captain's personal feelings. Did the rain remind him of the driving Nova Scotian rain? Did he miss his wife? The distance between Doucet and his Acadian family must have been apparent at certain moments more than others, such as his wedding anniversary or other family milestones. But, as Pierre and his wife Marguerite had seven children between 1774 and 1788, he certainly missed the births of some, or many, of his children.
“This 24 Hours Pleasant Weather.”
"Pleasant all Day."
"Pleasant Weather."
"This Morning Plesent."
"This Morning Cold."
“Ready for sea fresh Breezes and Squally Weather.”
The uncertain maritime conditions also made Doucet’s voyages perilous, and his records indicate the necessity of shipboard religious observances. As a captain, Doucet was responsible for the spiritual services on his vessel, and he officiated at occasional prayers. In May 1786, on a voyage from Georgia to Jamaica, Doucet’s cook, Thomas Kinsey “Fell over Board [and] . . . was Drown[ed].” After an effort to retrieve Kinsey alive, Doucet recorded, sadly, “Caught him again Dead.” The following day, “Att 4 Pm Buried the Corpse.” Giving Kinsey a burial at sea, Captain Doucet exhibited his responsibility for the souls in his charge aboard his vessel. His notes occasionally recorded prayers for the safety of the crew at sea. In August 1786, Doucet passed Cape Florida Island on a homeward voyage, bound for Annapolis, when he wrote: “So God find us Safe over the Seas To our Entended Port.” Again, in February 1790, sailing from Wilmington, Delaware, to Jamaica, he implored the almighty: “God Send us Safe over the Seas. Amen.” While Doucet was an observant Catholic, these pastoral services were universal enough for crews who were most likely Protestants, although it's possible Doucet had Catholic tars from any port.
We can also learn something of the American nature and origins of Doucet’s crew. On the 1784 voyage to Antigua, Doucet recorded that “John Kelley Came on Board [as] Hand.” Four days later, “John Manning Came on Board Hand.” In Philadelphia, in November 1786, Ephraim White was paid by Doucet “the Balance of five Pounds fourteen Shillings Halifax Currency in full of my wadgers [wages] Unboard [on board] the Brig Hannah.” In Boston, in July 1792, Stephen Erlap was paid “the Sum of Thirty One Pounds Ten Shillings in full for Seven Months Wadgers unboard the Schooner Peggy.” Closer to home, at Digby in 1787, Doucet paid James Hunter for work aboard the Betsey. In Jamaica, in the summer of 1786, Doucet’s disbursements included several payments to Black labourers for repairing and cleaning his vessel. In Halifax, he paid a Black worker for “picking Okham [oakum]”, a hemp fiber used to caulk vessels and obtained from picking apart old rope. Taken together, all of these entries, tediously made by Doucet, permit a reconstruction of the mundane details of day-to-day life aboard Atlantic trading vessels. These entries also attest to the Acadian captain’s broad American connections.
In ports of call, Doucet described the crew’s work unloading and loading the ship’s hold. In Antigua in 1784, Doucet’s crew laboriously ferried their cargo of timber ashore: “Got one Raft on Shore of about 4000 [boards] made Another Raft to go on Shore to Morrow.” The next day: “one Raft on Shore Cleard the Decks of the Boards” and soon the crew “Cleard and Washt Decks got all the loose Shingles out.” The following week, Doucet was prepared to start loading import cargo as his crew “swept the hold and sett up the Shrouds Ready for to take in to Morrow.” Over the next several days came the following notations:
August 24, “employd in taking on Board Rum and Stowing it away sent on shore some Shingles.”
August 26, “Employd in Taking on Board Rum & Sugar Sent all our Shingles on Shore.”
August 28, “got Sundries stowd on Deck took on Board our Water.”
Other instances recorded more shipboard labour. In January 1786, heading to Jamaica: “All hands Employd Knotting yarns and Spinning Spun yarn.” And at port in May: “People Employd in Sitting Oup our Riggon [rigging] and Sundry Jobs.” Fishing for their food also occupied the crew while at sea. On various occasions, Doucet recorded: “caught a Dolphin”; “caught a Shurk”; “Caught a Allebecore [albacore, a kind of tuna]”. The rigour of these daily activities – the tedium of knotting ropes and rigging sails, the excitement of catching a shark, the grief of preparing a drowned crewmember’s body for burial at sea – occupied captain and crew and ensured the successful operation of the vessel, and, in the end, of Doucet’s commercial enterprises.
Among the extant records of Doucet’s last voyages to the Caribbean are papers from his trade in the port of Havana, Cuba. While Doucet’s prior voyages were to the British West Indies – specifically Jamaica, Antigua, and Barbados – in 1791 and 1792 he passed through Spanish Havana on his return to Nova Scotia from Jamaica. Such trade movement between Jamaica and Cuba was not uncommon in the decade following the American Revolution. In the 1780s, Britain had capitalized on the inter-imperial trade agreement known as the asiento, which permitted British slave importation into the Spanish colonies where Cuba predominated such imports.[6] Captain Doucet took advantage of this intercolonial business opportunity and, in August 1791, he paid duties on ten slaves he transported between Kingston and Havana.[7] The following year, in May 1792, Doucet was again in Havana when he paid two traders for a full ship’s cargo of molasses that he would transport to Nova Scotia to be consumed by Acadians at St. Mary’s Bay.
While no known paintings or visual images depict Captain Doucet or any members of his family or immediate community, his written records strongly evoke the Atlantic nature of his commerce and the panorama of his voyages. The daily scratching of his pen across the pages of his journals recorded his activities and interactions with so many others over several years. His terse entries account for everyday life and labour up and down the Atlantic seaboard, spanning thousands of kilometres. Having studied Doucet’s papers over the last several years, I have assembled clues that have helped me to construct new knowledge about his life as an exemplary Acadian. Still, the surviving sources leave plenty of questions unanswered, but from certain evidence we can sense wider dimensions, or contours, of the worlds Doucet occupied.
Personally, as I’ve learned about the events in Doucet’s life from his own records, the American painting Watson and the Shark (1778) by John Singleton Copley has provoked my imagination. Copley’s famous scene depicts the chilling drama of an eighteenth-century shark attack in Havana harbour. The painting contains several elements that echo (separate and otherwise unrelated) details from Captain Doucet’s papers: an encounter with a shark, a man overboard and an attempted rescue, the port of Havana, and the generally active tenor of an interracial, urban yet nautical setting in the revolutionary Atlantic. And, like Doucet, Copley had Massachusetts origins. In Copley’s image, amid the horrific scramble, a Black man predominates, extending a hand over the action as if in serene blessing. Copley’s backdrop of the Havana skyline features the towers of the city’s Catholic cathedral, suggesting the slow peal of distant bells amid the calamity occurring on the water. Captain Doucet could have heard those same cathedral bells as he sailed the schooner Peggy into Havana harbour on an August day in 1791 with a cargo of slaves to sell at the city’s market.
The vignettes I've culled from Doucet's papers show him active in settings far afield from his family and his home community at St. Mary's Bay in rural Nova Scotia. Doucet was a commercial leader for the Acadians on the ground back home, but on the other, distant legs of his ventures, he transported enslaved Africans to sell in Caribbean ports like so many other white merchant captains of his time. While the diasporic perspectives of Acadians who lived in the decades following their eighteenth-century removal and dispersion can be difficult, or impossible, to glean due to a paucity of sources (especially sources from their own hands), Doucet's journals and ledgers offer compelling details of a truly Atlantic early modern life.
[1] Gérald Boudreau, “«L’ignorance est une vice»: une démarche de scolarisation en Acadie,” Études d’histoire religieuse 59 (1993): 125-141. On Acadian history, see N.E.S. Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People, 1604-1755 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004); Alphonse Deveau and Sally Ross, The Acadians of Nova Scotia: Past and Present (Halifax: Nimbus, 1992).
[2] All citations presented here are from Doucet's "journal de bord" and "livre de compt", see Fonds Famille Dousett, MG-3, boîte 1, dossiers 1 à 5, Centre Acadien, Université Sainte-Anne. A microfilm copy is at the Nova Scotia Archives, see MG-1, reel 10,234.
[3] Colby Gaudet, “Slavery and Black Labour in a St. Mary’s Bay Acadian Family, 1786-1840,” Acadiensis 52, no. 1 (Spring 2023): 9-35.
[4] Alphonse Deveau, “Pierre Doucet,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, v. 4, accessed 12 August 2024: https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/doucet_pierre_4E.html.
[5] Julian Gwyn, Excessive Expectations: Maritime Commerce and the Economic Development of Nova Scotia, 1740-1870 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998). On eighteenth-century shipboard culture, see Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1987). On the gendered dynamics of seafaring and its impacts on family life, see Lisa Norling, “‘How Frought with Sorrow and Heartpangs’: Mariners’ Wives and the Ideology of Domesticity in New England, 1790-1880,” The New England Quarterly 65, no. 3 (September 1992): 422-446.
[6] Gregory O’Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 294; and Evelyn Powell Jennings, “In the Eye of the Storm: The Spanish Colonial State and African Enslavement in Havana, 1763-90,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 29, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 145-162.
[7] Thomas Watson Smith, The Slave in Canada (Halifax: Nova Scotia Historical Society, 1899), 119; Placide Gaudet, “Unknown yet Prominent: Some of the Acadian Pioneers of Historical and Picturesque Clare, Digby County,” The Halifax Herald, 10 November 1897. Pierre Doucet perished on the evening of 21/22 December 1797 when his vessel was wrecked on “a ledge of rocks” during a home voyage from Saint John, New Brunswick. The Peggy “was cast away on the Southern part of Brier Island” while entering St. Mary’s Bay. The entire crew drowned, and Captain Doucet’s body was never recovered, see The St. John Gazette, 12 January 1798. However, tradition recalls that Doucet’s pocket watch was found along the shore among the debris of the wreck, see Isaiah Wilson, A Geography and History of the County of Digby, Nova Scotia (Halifax: Holloway Brothers, 1900), 84.
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