A sail loft was added in 1769 and a dockyard clock was installed on its peak in 1772. The naval yard initially consisted of a capstan house to accompany the careening wharf, a mast house and associated mast and spar ponds, a boathouse and storehouses. It would be a strategically significant base for the Royal Navy for the next century-and-a-half, until Britain‘s withdrawal from Canada in 1906. The new naval yard – the King‘s Yard – was formally established by an Order-in-Council on 7 February 1759 and was the first royal dockyard in North America. Construction began in 1758 and the first careening wharf was in place by the summer of 1759, understood to have been supervised by Sailing Master James Cook – later Captain and famed Pacific navigator and explorer. To the initial two-acre site, seven additional acres were added the following year. The next location chosen, at Gorham‘s Point, was a mile north of the Halifax town walls, where HMC Dockyard now stands. The first attempt was to create a careening wharf on Georges Island in Halifax Harbour, but the work being undertaken in that exposed location was promptly destroyed by a northerly gale. With the nearest naval repair facilities in distant England, Jamaica and Antigua, the Admiralty decided, as a result, to create such a facility in Halifax. In 1757 Vice-Admiral Francis Holburne‘s fleet blockading Louisburg suffered considerable damage from a hurricane. The Royal Navy (RN) began to use the major harbour at Halifax as a fleet anchorage for operations in the region soon thereafter, with the French and Indian War beginning in 1754, leading to the broader Seven Years War in 1756. Halifax was established by the British in 1749 to expand their presence in Acadia – today‘s mainland Nova Scotia – and to counter the fortress at Louisburg on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) that France had built earlier that century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |