The History of Fort Wellington Robert B. Stewart |
Historical and Geographical Background
To understand why the British government began construction of Fort Wellington in 1813, it is important to note the historical background of the
Prescott area and the significance of its geography to the economy of Upper Canada and the effect of that geography had on the defence of Upper Canada
from American invasion.
The St. Lawrence River drains the Great Lakes into the Atlantic Ocean. Over its course, it drops from an elevation of 75 meters above sea level at Lake
Ontario to sea level at Quebec City. This descent occurs through a series of rapids which run from Prescott down to Montreal. Large sailing vessels
could ascend the St. Lawrence from the Atlantic to Montreal, but could not pass the rapids which ended there. Likewise, large sailing vessels could
descend from Lake Ontario to Prescott, but could pass no further. To ascend or descend the rapids, cargo had to be transported by smaller,
shallow-draft boats which were crewed by men experienced in the dangers and vagaries of the St. Lawrence rapids.
Although the area was first settled only as recently as 1784 by loyalists from the newly-independent United States, Prescott quickly became an important
port of transhipment because of the rapids. Cargo ascending the rapids by small boats was off-loaded at Prescott and reloaded onto larger sailing ships
for carriage on to points upriver on to Lake Ontario ports. Cargo descending the rapids was off-loaded from the same, larger sailing ships and re-loaded
onto the small, rapid-running vessels. The whole process was called forwarding, and very swiftly after the initial loyalist settlement forwarding became the
most important business in Prescott.
For those parts of Upper Canada upriver from Prescott, all significant quantities of imported materials, supplies, foodstuffs and armaments had to ascend
the St. Lawrence River. There was no other route of bulk entry until the completion of the Rideau and Trent canals in the decades after the War of 1812.
The St. Lawrence River was not merely the main supply line. From Kingston to the border of Upper and Lower Canada, it was the boundary line
between the United States and the British colony of Upper Canada. Prescott was, consequently, very vulnerable to an invading American Army. Had it
been captured and both banks of the St. Lawrence River occupied by an American force, the flow of supplies upriver would have been halted, with
disastrous effect on the defence of the colony. For this reason, a garrison was established at Prescott from the beginning of the War of 1812.
The First Fort Wellington
Initially, a garrison was installed at the Stockade Barracks, a fortified private dwelling originally built by Major Edward Jessup, a loyalist and founder of
Prescott. The Stockade Barracks still stands on East Street in Prescott, one block west of Fort Wellington. In addition, a small earthwork containing an
artillery battery was constructed on the shore of the River. This earthwork has long disappeared, but was probably located on the south side of the
modern Highway 2 directly in front of the Fort. These structures were entirely inadequate to command the River, and so in 1813 the British
government commissioned the construction of an earthwork-based fortification on farmland located to the east of Prescott on land originally granted to
Edward Jessup. Construction of the earthworks began later in 1813.
These original earthworks remain extant today, and were the basis for the reconstructed Fort Wellington of 1838. They comprise a dry ditch on the
south, east and west sides of the Fort and a rectangular earthen rampart of approximately ten meters in height with an attached triangular ravelin
projecting from the earthwork on the northern side of the Fort. This ravelin provides a position from which enfilade fire may be directed at the
approaches to the stone gate, which enters the earthwork on the west end of the north face of the Fort.
The original fortifications of Fort Wellington also included a vertical wooden palisade fence located primarily in the dry ditch as well as a horizontal
palisade fraising projecting from the earthworks a few meters from their tops. Inside the earthworks, casemates were built into the walls to provide
secure storage for munitions and supplies. A two story wooden barrack building stood inside the earthworks.
The main armament of the first Fort Wellington were a variety of artillery pieces mounted on the earthworks. Two twenty-four pounder cannons of
pre-1813 vintage remain mounted at the Fort today, and it is very likely that these pieces have been mounted at Fort Wellington since 1813.
During the War of 1812, neither Fort Wellington nor the Town of Prescott were ever attacked. In November, 1813, General James Wilkinson led an
American army down the St. Lawrence from Sackets Harbout to defeat at Crysler's Farm. The goal of this expedition was to capture Montreal, and
Wilkinson chose to bypass Fort Wellington rather than besiege it so late in the campaigning season. Nonetheless, he feared the Fort's guns, and
disembarked his army to march through Ogdensburg while running his boats downriver past the guns at night to avoid detection. Fort Wellington
became the depot for the British corps d'observation under the command of Colonel Joseph Morrison. Morrison's force followed Wilkinson's army
downriver to Crysler's Farm. On 11 November, 1813, Wilkinson attempted to chase away Morrison's pursuing army. Instead, the American army was
defeated piecemeal and was compelled to retreat into winter quarters at Fort Covington, New York. The most serious threat to the security of Upper and
Lower Canada of the whole war had been defeated.
After the Treaty of Ghent in December, 1814, Fort Wellington was demobilized and abandoned by the British Army. However, the Board of Ordnance
retained ownership of the Fort and surrounding lands. The Board made ambitious plans to vastly expand Fort Wellington's earthworks and to build a
citadel fortification on the site, but these never came to fruition. Instead, the British government commissioned the construction of the Rideau Canal, a
waterway capable of carrying shipping from the Rideau River at Bytown (modern Ottawa) to Kingston. Since the confluence of the Rideau River and the
St. Lawrence River is safely inside the Canadian border, the St. Lawrence River between Kingston and the border of Upper and Lower Canada lost its
strategic significance. Fort Wellington appeared to have become superfluous.
The Upper Canadian Rebellion
By 1837, Fort Wellington was in decrepit condition. Its timber building were in a state of collapse. Its palisades were ruinous. Its casemates a safety
hazard. Only the earthworks remained largely unchanged.
In that year, Upper Canada experienced an armed rebellion. Insurgent rebels, irritated by the power structure of the colonial government, attempted to
seize control of the colonial government at York (modern Toronto). A similar rebellion had broken out in Lower Canada, and the Upper Canadian
governor had dutifully sent all of his regular British Army garrison to Montreal to fight the rebels. When the Upper Canadian rebel leader, the
republican William Lyon Mackenzie, assembled an insurgent army north of York, the colony was defenceless. However, the ruling classes of Upper
Canada were not prepared to surrender their perquisites and the militia was summoned. Approximately 1,000 loyal Upper Canadian militia attacked
Mackenzie's 400 rebels at Montgomery's Tavern, on modern Yonge Street in Toronto, on 7 December, 1837. However untrained the loyal militia may
have been, Mackenzie's men were still more so, and they broke and fled. A smaller group of rebels was similarly routed outside the City of Hamilton a
week later, and Mackenzie and his proteges fled to the United States.
Had the confrontation been limited to these two skirmishes, the military situation in Upper Canada might never have grown more serious. However, in
the United States Mackenzie found ample sympathy and support for his neo-republican cause. Huge numbers of Americans living in the border states of
New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan had organized themselves into a network of militant Patriot Hunters' Lodges. These quasi-Masonic groups
had thousands of members and enjoyed not only strong financial support, but the opportunistic political support of many American politicians. While
the federal government of the United States considered the Patriot Hunters a terrorist organization, state and local governments were often quite friendly,
if not actively collaborating.
Early in 1838, the Hunters began a series of paramilitary incursions into Upper Canada at Windsor, Pelee Island, and on the Niagara River frontier.
Mackenzie himself seized an uninhabited island located on the Canadian side of the Niagara River and declared himself the leader of a provisional
government for Upper Canada. Skirmishing between the Hunters and the Upper Canadian militia culminated in the seizure of an American steamship,
the Caroline, from American waters in the Niagara River.
The British government reacted to the Hunters by moving regular units of the British Army back into Upper Canada and by mobilizing the Upper
Canadian militia. Fort Wellington was designated as a major militia depot for eastern Upper Canada, and reconstruction work was commissioned.
Large quantities of weapons and munitions were moved into buildings on the Board of Ordnance land in Prescott for the use of the militia.
By the summer of 1838, the United States' government had taken steps to suppress the Hunters, but the organization attempted one last incursion in
November, 1838. A significant army of Hunters massed at Sackets Harbour, commandeered several commercial ships, and descended the St.
Lawrence River to Prescott with the goal of capturing the Town and seizing Fort Wellington and the militia stores. Unfortunately, the Hunters found that
recruiting to join paramilitary groups in the border towns was quite a different undertaking than recruiting men to actually invade British soil. The
organizers of the expedition further blundered by promising to confiscate homes and farms from loyal Upper Canadians and to give them to Hunter
volunteers who joined the expedition. When word of this promise reached Upper Canada (and the colonial government's very efficient intelligence
service made sure that it did), any residual sympathy for Mackenzie or the Hunters evaporated.
The Hunters attempted to land at the Prescott waterfront early on the morning of 12 November, 1838. Alert militia sentries spotted the intruders, who
hastily attempted to retreat across the St. Lawrence to Ogdensburg, New York. Several Hunter vessels ran aground on a sand bar off of Ogdensburg,
and when they pulled free later in the morning they steered for Windmill Point, a promontory projecting into a narrow point on the St. Lawrence River
two miles east of Fort Wellington. Here they landed and seized the hamlet of Newport, the most prominent landmark of which was a tall, stone windmill
with a commanding view of the St. Lawrence.
Over the following days, the Hunters were surrounded by thousands of Upper Canadian militia as well as Royal Marines and British regular soldiers
from Montreal and Kingston. The United States' Navy and Royal Navy had also arrived to cooperate in preventing more Hunters from crossing to the
aid of the invaders at Newport. On 16 November, battered by heavy artillery fire, chased from the buildings in the village, and surrounded in the
windmill, the Hunters surrendered.
After the Rebellion
The hastily-commissioned reconstruction of Fort Wellington continued after the Battle of the Windmill and was completed in the early 1840s. The
original earthworks remained, but the casemates were filled with the remains of the 1813 buildings. The most prominent new building was the
three-storey stone blockhouse, which remains today, along with ancillary wooden structures such as the officers' quarters, the cookhouse, and the latrine
building. The earthworks were augmented by new palisades and fraising. The completed second Fort Wellington remains today, more-or-less, as it
appeared in the 1840s.
Although the Fort remained a regional depot for the Upper Canadian militia, the British Army continued to provide a caretaker garrison. After 1842,
the garrison comprised a modest detachment of Royal Artillery to serve the Fort's cannons, and a company of the newly-raised Royal Canadian Rifle
Regiment. The latter was a British regular regiment, but raised for service in Canada. Initially, volunteers were accepted who had completed fifteen
years service in other British regular regiments. These were judged to be men unlikely to take the opportunity of deserting to the United States, desertion
having been a perennial problem for British garrisons along the border in Upper Canada. The Royal Canadian Rifles were organized, uniformed and
trained as a rifle regiment, as opposed to a normal, musket-armed infantry regiment. They were equipped with the modern military rifles with longer
effective firing range and wore a green uniform intended to provide an element of camouflage. The men were also paid at a higher rate than their infantry
colleagues and granted an establishment which included larger numbers of wives and dependents than the British Army normally accommodated. Fort
Wellington was just one of many garrisons occupied by the Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment, which also saw service in Montreal, at Fort Henry in
Kingston, Fort Mississauga at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Fort Malden in Amherstburg and other border garrisons. The Regiment was disbanded in Kingston
in 1870.
In 1863, the British Army left Fort Wellington for the last time. However, the Fort continued in its role as a militia depot. During the Fenian Raids of
the mid 1860s, the Fort served as a large militia rallying point.
In 1867, the British government transferred ownership of Fort Wellington and the surrounding lands to the Ministry of Militia of the new Dominion of
Canada. It continued as a militia depot through the First World War, when it was used as an encampment site for units of the Canadian Army in transit.
In 1923, Fort Wellington was transferred from the Ministry of Militia to the Dominion Parks Service, the antecedent to Parks Canada.
To understand why the British government began construction of Fort Wellington in 1813, it is important to note the historical background of the
Prescott area and the significance of its geography to the economy of Upper Canada and the effect of that geography had on the defence of Upper Canada
from American invasion.
The St. Lawrence River drains the Great Lakes into the Atlantic Ocean. Over its course, it drops from an elevation of 75 meters above sea level at Lake
Ontario to sea level at Quebec City. This descent occurs through a series of rapids which run from Prescott down to Montreal. Large sailing vessels
could ascend the St. Lawrence from the Atlantic to Montreal, but could not pass the rapids which ended there. Likewise, large sailing vessels could
descend from Lake Ontario to Prescott, but could pass no further. To ascend or descend the rapids, cargo had to be transported by smaller,
shallow-draft boats which were crewed by men experienced in the dangers and vagaries of the St. Lawrence rapids.
Although the area was first settled only as recently as 1784 by loyalists from the newly-independent United States, Prescott quickly became an important
port of transhipment because of the rapids. Cargo ascending the rapids by small boats was off-loaded at Prescott and reloaded onto larger sailing ships
for carriage on to points upriver on to Lake Ontario ports. Cargo descending the rapids was off-loaded from the same, larger sailing ships and re-loaded
onto the small, rapid-running vessels. The whole process was called forwarding, and very swiftly after the initial loyalist settlement forwarding became the
most important business in Prescott.
For those parts of Upper Canada upriver from Prescott, all significant quantities of imported materials, supplies, foodstuffs and armaments had to ascend
the St. Lawrence River. There was no other route of bulk entry until the completion of the Rideau and Trent canals in the decades after the War of 1812.
The St. Lawrence River was not merely the main supply line. From Kingston to the border of Upper and Lower Canada, it was the boundary line
between the United States and the British colony of Upper Canada. Prescott was, consequently, very vulnerable to an invading American Army. Had it
been captured and both banks of the St. Lawrence River occupied by an American force, the flow of supplies upriver would have been halted, with
disastrous effect on the defence of the colony. For this reason, a garrison was established at Prescott from the beginning of the War of 1812.
The First Fort Wellington
Initially, a garrison was installed at the Stockade Barracks, a fortified private dwelling originally built by Major Edward Jessup, a loyalist and founder of
Prescott. The Stockade Barracks still stands on East Street in Prescott, one block west of Fort Wellington. In addition, a small earthwork containing an
artillery battery was constructed on the shore of the River. This earthwork has long disappeared, but was probably located on the south side of the
modern Highway 2 directly in front of the Fort. These structures were entirely inadequate to command the River, and so in 1813 the British
government commissioned the construction of an earthwork-based fortification on farmland located to the east of Prescott on land originally granted to
Edward Jessup. Construction of the earthworks began later in 1813.
These original earthworks remain extant today, and were the basis for the reconstructed Fort Wellington of 1838. They comprise a dry ditch on the
south, east and west sides of the Fort and a rectangular earthen rampart of approximately ten meters in height with an attached triangular ravelin
projecting from the earthwork on the northern side of the Fort. This ravelin provides a position from which enfilade fire may be directed at the
approaches to the stone gate, which enters the earthwork on the west end of the north face of the Fort.
The original fortifications of Fort Wellington also included a vertical wooden palisade fence located primarily in the dry ditch as well as a horizontal
palisade fraising projecting from the earthworks a few meters from their tops. Inside the earthworks, casemates were built into the walls to provide
secure storage for munitions and supplies. A two story wooden barrack building stood inside the earthworks.
The main armament of the first Fort Wellington were a variety of artillery pieces mounted on the earthworks. Two twenty-four pounder cannons of
pre-1813 vintage remain mounted at the Fort today, and it is very likely that these pieces have been mounted at Fort Wellington since 1813.
During the War of 1812, neither Fort Wellington nor the Town of Prescott were ever attacked. In November, 1813, General James Wilkinson led an
American army down the St. Lawrence from Sackets Harbout to defeat at Crysler's Farm. The goal of this expedition was to capture Montreal, and
Wilkinson chose to bypass Fort Wellington rather than besiege it so late in the campaigning season. Nonetheless, he feared the Fort's guns, and
disembarked his army to march through Ogdensburg while running his boats downriver past the guns at night to avoid detection. Fort Wellington
became the depot for the British corps d'observation under the command of Colonel Joseph Morrison. Morrison's force followed Wilkinson's army
downriver to Crysler's Farm. On 11 November, 1813, Wilkinson attempted to chase away Morrison's pursuing army. Instead, the American army was
defeated piecemeal and was compelled to retreat into winter quarters at Fort Covington, New York. The most serious threat to the security of Upper and
Lower Canada of the whole war had been defeated.
After the Treaty of Ghent in December, 1814, Fort Wellington was demobilized and abandoned by the British Army. However, the Board of Ordnance
retained ownership of the Fort and surrounding lands. The Board made ambitious plans to vastly expand Fort Wellington's earthworks and to build a
citadel fortification on the site, but these never came to fruition. Instead, the British government commissioned the construction of the Rideau Canal, a
waterway capable of carrying shipping from the Rideau River at Bytown (modern Ottawa) to Kingston. Since the confluence of the Rideau River and the
St. Lawrence River is safely inside the Canadian border, the St. Lawrence River between Kingston and the border of Upper and Lower Canada lost its
strategic significance. Fort Wellington appeared to have become superfluous.
The Upper Canadian Rebellion
By 1837, Fort Wellington was in decrepit condition. Its timber building were in a state of collapse. Its palisades were ruinous. Its casemates a safety
hazard. Only the earthworks remained largely unchanged.
In that year, Upper Canada experienced an armed rebellion. Insurgent rebels, irritated by the power structure of the colonial government, attempted to
seize control of the colonial government at York (modern Toronto). A similar rebellion had broken out in Lower Canada, and the Upper Canadian
governor had dutifully sent all of his regular British Army garrison to Montreal to fight the rebels. When the Upper Canadian rebel leader, the
republican William Lyon Mackenzie, assembled an insurgent army north of York, the colony was defenceless. However, the ruling classes of Upper
Canada were not prepared to surrender their perquisites and the militia was summoned. Approximately 1,000 loyal Upper Canadian militia attacked
Mackenzie's 400 rebels at Montgomery's Tavern, on modern Yonge Street in Toronto, on 7 December, 1837. However untrained the loyal militia may
have been, Mackenzie's men were still more so, and they broke and fled. A smaller group of rebels was similarly routed outside the City of Hamilton a
week later, and Mackenzie and his proteges fled to the United States.
Had the confrontation been limited to these two skirmishes, the military situation in Upper Canada might never have grown more serious. However, in
the United States Mackenzie found ample sympathy and support for his neo-republican cause. Huge numbers of Americans living in the border states of
New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan had organized themselves into a network of militant Patriot Hunters' Lodges. These quasi-Masonic groups
had thousands of members and enjoyed not only strong financial support, but the opportunistic political support of many American politicians. While
the federal government of the United States considered the Patriot Hunters a terrorist organization, state and local governments were often quite friendly,
if not actively collaborating.
Early in 1838, the Hunters began a series of paramilitary incursions into Upper Canada at Windsor, Pelee Island, and on the Niagara River frontier.
Mackenzie himself seized an uninhabited island located on the Canadian side of the Niagara River and declared himself the leader of a provisional
government for Upper Canada. Skirmishing between the Hunters and the Upper Canadian militia culminated in the seizure of an American steamship,
the Caroline, from American waters in the Niagara River.
The British government reacted to the Hunters by moving regular units of the British Army back into Upper Canada and by mobilizing the Upper
Canadian militia. Fort Wellington was designated as a major militia depot for eastern Upper Canada, and reconstruction work was commissioned.
Large quantities of weapons and munitions were moved into buildings on the Board of Ordnance land in Prescott for the use of the militia.
By the summer of 1838, the United States' government had taken steps to suppress the Hunters, but the organization attempted one last incursion in
November, 1838. A significant army of Hunters massed at Sackets Harbour, commandeered several commercial ships, and descended the St.
Lawrence River to Prescott with the goal of capturing the Town and seizing Fort Wellington and the militia stores. Unfortunately, the Hunters found that
recruiting to join paramilitary groups in the border towns was quite a different undertaking than recruiting men to actually invade British soil. The
organizers of the expedition further blundered by promising to confiscate homes and farms from loyal Upper Canadians and to give them to Hunter
volunteers who joined the expedition. When word of this promise reached Upper Canada (and the colonial government's very efficient intelligence
service made sure that it did), any residual sympathy for Mackenzie or the Hunters evaporated.
The Hunters attempted to land at the Prescott waterfront early on the morning of 12 November, 1838. Alert militia sentries spotted the intruders, who
hastily attempted to retreat across the St. Lawrence to Ogdensburg, New York. Several Hunter vessels ran aground on a sand bar off of Ogdensburg,
and when they pulled free later in the morning they steered for Windmill Point, a promontory projecting into a narrow point on the St. Lawrence River
two miles east of Fort Wellington. Here they landed and seized the hamlet of Newport, the most prominent landmark of which was a tall, stone windmill
with a commanding view of the St. Lawrence.
Over the following days, the Hunters were surrounded by thousands of Upper Canadian militia as well as Royal Marines and British regular soldiers
from Montreal and Kingston. The United States' Navy and Royal Navy had also arrived to cooperate in preventing more Hunters from crossing to the
aid of the invaders at Newport. On 16 November, battered by heavy artillery fire, chased from the buildings in the village, and surrounded in the
windmill, the Hunters surrendered.
After the Rebellion
The hastily-commissioned reconstruction of Fort Wellington continued after the Battle of the Windmill and was completed in the early 1840s. The
original earthworks remained, but the casemates were filled with the remains of the 1813 buildings. The most prominent new building was the
three-storey stone blockhouse, which remains today, along with ancillary wooden structures such as the officers' quarters, the cookhouse, and the latrine
building. The earthworks were augmented by new palisades and fraising. The completed second Fort Wellington remains today, more-or-less, as it
appeared in the 1840s.
Although the Fort remained a regional depot for the Upper Canadian militia, the British Army continued to provide a caretaker garrison. After 1842,
the garrison comprised a modest detachment of Royal Artillery to serve the Fort's cannons, and a company of the newly-raised Royal Canadian Rifle
Regiment. The latter was a British regular regiment, but raised for service in Canada. Initially, volunteers were accepted who had completed fifteen
years service in other British regular regiments. These were judged to be men unlikely to take the opportunity of deserting to the United States, desertion
having been a perennial problem for British garrisons along the border in Upper Canada. The Royal Canadian Rifles were organized, uniformed and
trained as a rifle regiment, as opposed to a normal, musket-armed infantry regiment. They were equipped with the modern military rifles with longer
effective firing range and wore a green uniform intended to provide an element of camouflage. The men were also paid at a higher rate than their infantry
colleagues and granted an establishment which included larger numbers of wives and dependents than the British Army normally accommodated. Fort
Wellington was just one of many garrisons occupied by the Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment, which also saw service in Montreal, at Fort Henry in
Kingston, Fort Mississauga at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Fort Malden in Amherstburg and other border garrisons. The Regiment was disbanded in Kingston
in 1870.
In 1863, the British Army left Fort Wellington for the last time. However, the Fort continued in its role as a militia depot. During the Fenian Raids of
the mid 1860s, the Fort served as a large militia rallying point.
In 1867, the British government transferred ownership of Fort Wellington and the surrounding lands to the Ministry of Militia of the new Dominion of
Canada. It continued as a militia depot through the First World War, when it was used as an encampment site for units of the Canadian Army in transit.
In 1923, Fort Wellington was transferred from the Ministry of Militia to the Dominion Parks Service, the antecedent to Parks Canada.
Below: Fort Wellington and the surrounding Board of Ordnance lands in 1816. The Stockade
Barracks is visible to the left of the red circle. The small, three-sided artillery battery on the shore is
visible between Fort Wellington and the River. Windmill Point and the hamlet of Newport are off the
edge of the map to the right. Courtesy: National Archives of Canada.
Barracks is visible to the left of the red circle. The small, three-sided artillery battery on the shore is
visible between Fort Wellington and the River. Windmill Point and the hamlet of Newport are off the
edge of the map to the right. Courtesy: National Archives of Canada.
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