A half-century of conflict. France and England in North America. Part ...

1745.] SETH POMEROY. 91"By God, Pomeroy, you here! A cannon-shotwould waken you out of your grave ! "But Pomeroy, with other landsmen, crowded inthe small and malodorous fishing-vessels that weremade to serve as transports, was now in the gripe ofthe most unheroic of maladies." A terrible northeaststorm " had fallen upon them, and, he says," we layrolling in the seas, with our sails furled, among prodigiouswaves." "Sick, day and night," writes themiserable gunsmith, " so bad that Ihave not wordsto set it forth." ^ The gale increased and the fleetwas scattered, there being, as a Massachusetts privatesoldier writes in his diary, "a very fierse Storm ofSnow, som Rain and very Dangerous weather toso nigh ye Shore as we was; but we escaped theRocks, and that was all."^On Friday, April 5, Pomeroy's vessel entered theharbor of Canseau, about fifty miles from Louisbourg.Here was the English fishing-hamlet, the seizure ofwhich by the French had first provoked the expedition.The place now quietly changed hands again.Sixty-eight of the transportsbelay here at anchor, andthe rest came dropping in from day to day, sorelybuffeted, but all safe. On Sunday there was a greatconcourse to hear Parson Moody preach an open-airsermon from the text, " Thy people shall be willing1 Diary of Major Seth Pomeroy. I owe the copy before me tothe kindness of his descendant, Theodore Pomeroy, Esq.2 Diary of a Massachusetts soldier in Captain Richardson's company(Papers of Dr. Belknap).