SPIRITS were already low when they ran into the gale off Newfoundland. The frail wooden ship struggled against the high winds and breaking Atlantic surf. For 14 days the passengers were rocked and shaken right back to where they had started - no nearer their destination and beginning to sicken.
There were more than 200 passengers on board the New World-bound Hector; they had enough supplies to last six weeks. As days became weeks and weeks turned to months, water began to run out. The only food left was mouldy oatcakes and salted meat, wh
ich mocked their thirst. The piper who had so confidently piped on board in Ullapool had changed his tune from songs and jigs, to the
piobrach – the achingly slow lament for the dead. Children were dying from dysentery and smallpox.
The ship began to rot, the wood so soft that they could scoop it out with their fingers in search for grubs, worms - anything to appease their hunger. Cold, tired and despairing, they thought only of the homes and people left behind.
Earlier that year - March 1773 - an advert in the
Edinburgh Advertiser offered passage to Pictou, the Hector's destination. The ship's owner, Dr Witherspoon, and a Greenock merchant, Mr Pagan, had commissioned an agent to find people to bring to the new territory in Nova Scotia.
The agent, John Ross, painted a picture of a land of plenty with a good living for all. He promised passengers a farm and provisions for a year. Many crofters, made homeless by landlords freeing up pasture for sheep, took the voyage. As the ship weighed anchor, a castaway carrying his pipes, begged to be allowed to travel. The captain relented after passengers offered to share their provisions with him.
More than two months later – battered by the strong wind - they were still at sea. Eighteen children were dead, one baby had been born. Finally, the journey's end was near.
The smell of land – the sweet drift of spruce and fir trees - arrived before any other signs. The sky was blue and the ship was bathed in late-summer sunshine, according to a contemporary report, as Pictou harbour came into view on 5 September. Highland dress, proscribed in Scotland, was hastily put on by the passengers to greet their new home.
As they jostled expectantly on deck the piper skirled his pipes, cracking through the silence of the morning air. What they saw looking back surprised and disheartened them. There was dense woodland. There were no houses. There was no shelter. No provisions. Nothing for miles except trees.
According to Alexander Mackenzie, who in 1883 wrote down the oral traditions of the landing, the arrival brought despair:
"Most of them sat down in the forest and wept bitterly. Many of them left. Others, fathers, mothers and children, bound themselves away as virtual slaves for a mere subsistence."
They had arrived too late to plant for the coming year and with the prospect of a harsh winter ahead. They fashioned huts out of bark and branches. The men toiled 80 miles through forests to the nearest inhabited towns where they swapped their labour for sacks of potatoes. Many did not last the snow and bitter cold of winter. Those who did survive owed much to the local Indians, the
Mi’kmaq.
Six months later, in the spring of 1774, only 78 colonists from the original 180 remained in Pictou, yet their indomitable Highland spirit remained intact. They set to work the land - planting and digging, building and settling. They taught themselves to hunt moose and began to trade timber for goods.
More settlers arrived the next year and by 1786 they sent for a minister – a sure sign that a full-fledged community was developing. Rev James MacGregor arrived fully expecting to take up his ministry in a well-established township.
Writing many years later he recalled his first impressions:
"When I looked round the shores of the harbour, I was greatly disappointed and cast down, for there was scarcely any thing to be seen but woods growing down to the water's edge. Here and there a mean timber hut was visible in a small clearing."
However, progress was becoming more noticable. In July 1787, the people of Pictou built two churches. Then came schools. Order was slowly imposed on the rough landscape. Additional settlers began to arrive, enticed by the encouraging letters sent home. Over the next century 120 ships brought nearly 20,000 people from Scotland to Canada.
Today it is estimated that there are more than 140,000 descended from the original Hector people.
A replica of the ship is now on display at Pictou and forms part of a museum that serves as a reminder of the intrepid and resourceful settlers - a group of people driven out of their own country, forced across the sea who eventually found salvation in the New World.
