Four Years on the Great Lakes, 1813–1816: The Journal of Lieutenant David Wingfield, Royal Navy.

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

Sailors who have made passages up or down the Georgian Bay shore of the Bruce Peninsula, or taken parallel ruler and dividers in hand to lay out a line from Haywood Island on the north shore, past Lonely Island to Cabot Head at the north-eastern extremity of the Bruce Peninsula, will have anchored in Wingfield Basin. If they have rolled through the narrow and shifting entrance on the shoulder of a powerful nor-westerly they will have caught their breath as the shingle flashed by on each side. Soon, however, they will find themselves at anchor within the sheltering arms of this remarkable harbour which bears the name of Lieutenant David Wingfield, the author of this journal.

The account begins with Wingfield and his colleagues taking ship at Plymouth on March 31, 1813, “all in as high spirits as the prospect of danger, attended with the hopes of speedy promotion, could make us” and ends abruptly with his curt announcement that peace had given birth to retrenchment in the service requiring him, on September 30, 1816, to “bid adieu to Lake Ontario.” Short as it is, the Journal is a document notable for its revelations about life in the Royal Navy’s fresh water fleet during the War of 1812, the engagements fought on Lake Ontario and in the upper reaches of Lake Huron, the tasks assigned to midshipmen and junior lieutenants, and the efforts and stratagems that Wingfield mustered to discharge them. The most valuable part of the journal describes his adventures as a prisoner of war between October 5, 1813 and August 12, 1814, as he entered upon a “prisoner’s progress” (often at his own expense) from Sackets Harbor to Albany to Concord and Lennox and Philadelphia, then back into Canada by way of Lake Champlain to Montreal and Kingston (where he remained an American prisoner of war under parole until released back into British service in mid-August). The editors have done their best to flesh out the contexts of Wingfield’s life both before and after his Canadian service, and to provide guidance in technical matters in notes and glossaries.

Highly Recommended.