Significant Historical Happenings By Year: 1709-11.
- -1709-
§England was to experience an unusually cold winter. The Thames was frozen over and ports were frozen in; regular communications were stopped up for weeks in a row. "The Great Frost of 1709" was accompanied by dark clouds and comfortless cold; went on for intervals, for an interminable time, while cattle, sheep and birds perished. It was followed by prolonged rains, and a thin harvest that doubled the price of corn in England, and reduced France to starvation.
§May 1709: Preliminary Articles which was to bring peace were signed by Austria, Great Britain and the States general and presented to France as an ultimatum. Louis could not deliver on article 37 by which terms the Bourbon of Spain, Philip, the grandson of Louis, was to give up the throne to the Austrian Charles. The War of the Spanish Succession, though France was on its last legs, was to continue.
§The hardships of the war was telling on everyone; in England, seamen were going unpaid; there were increased charges on many articles, including candles, beer and coal. The English government turned to the device of lotteries to raise money.
§February 11th, 1709: Louis Du Pont Duchambon marries Jeanne Mius d'Entremont de Pobomcoup. Duchambon is one of three brothers (French military officers) who had connections with Port Royal and who married French girls at Port Royal (François, in 1705 and Renon, 1710).
§28th April, 1709: Vetch and Nicholson enter Boston with plans to conquer Canada in 1709; these plans for 1709 fell to pieces.
§August 13th, 1709: Morpain marries one of Louis Damour's girls at Port Royal.
§October, 11th, 1709: A vessel arrives at Boston from England with news that the expected support to be sent to the New Englanders to assist them in their plans to conquer the French in America, had been sent to Portugal instead.- -1710-
§The taking of Port Royal, 1710.
§May 19th, 1710: The British fleet set sail at England carrying Nicholson and other officers to Boston.
§July 15th, 1710 (Saturday): Nicholson arrives Boston aboard HMS Falmouth, together with "a bomb ship and Tender & several transports" and "provisions and stores of War."
§September 18th, 1710: British forces under Nicholson set sail from Boston.
§September 21st, 1710 (Thursday): The fleet anchors at Passamquoddy Bay and weathers a storm.
§September 23rd, 1710: British forces arrive at Port Royal.
§October 2nd, 1710 (the 14th on a French calendar): Port Royal capitulates and Vetch becomes the first English Governor of Nova Scotia.
§October 19th, 1710: The British fleet sails back to the comforts of Boston leaving Vetch to hold the fort at Annapolis Royal with 200 regulars and 250 colonials. By the 26th the fleet is back at Boston.
§October, 1710: The English people are at the polls. The Tories came to power, though of the 45 Scottish members a fair proportion of them were Whigs: "beyond the Border there were no Tories of the English type."
§October 8th (September 27th), 1711: The Articles Leading to the Treaty of Utrecht is signed at London by the French and the English. France gives away much in order to keep their man on the Spanish throne; Acadia and Newfoundland are among the territories that succeed to England.
§Back at Port Royal - now renamed by the conquering British, Annapolis Royal: an English officer by the name of John Livingston, was ordered, in the company of Castin, to go to Quebec and there to arrange for a prisoner exchange.
§November of 1710 Mascarene comes ashore at Mines, and is greeted by the French Acadians at that place.
§December, 1710: Subercase and his entourage are transported by the British back to France.- -1711-
§June 17th, 1711: The Battle of Bloody Creek. (Could have been the 10th or the 21st.)
§Savary writes that Port Royal, in 1711, was attacked by "Indians under the direction of Abbe Gaulin."
§An Act, the 9th of Anne, 1711, is passed to preserve the trees in North America which might be used for "masting." It was the big white pines to be found in the north-east, from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, that attracted the interest of the navy. "Desirable trees not private property to be marked" where they exceed "24 inches in diameter at 12 inches from the ground ... [trees] of this size not to be felled anywhere, without the Surveyor's license."
§October, 1711: Hobby as the commander at Annapolis Royal is replaced by Caulfeild.
§La Ronde, the privateer, (having been there on at least three different other occasions) puts into Boston under the French flag ostensively to deal with the subject of prisoner exchange. He is discovered as a spy and barely escapes.
§July, 30, 1711: The Walker fleet, doomed to failure, sets out from Boston.
§August 22-23rd, 1711: Walker sees seven of his ships go to pieces on the shores of the St Lawrence with the loss of approximately 800 lives.
§September 10th, 1711: Capt. Abercromby and Mascarene with six other Officers are under orders to leave the Garrison and attend on Admiral Walker and General Hill in their aborted expedition to take Canada, leaving Annapolis Royal on the 10th.
§September 15, 1711: "... the whole ffleet sayled from Spanish River." - -1710-