Through Water, Ice and Fire: Schooner Nancy of the War of 1812 (review)

Reviewed by: Through Water, Ice and Fire: Schooner Nancy of the War of 1812 Carl Benn Through Water, Ice and Fire: Schooner Nancy of the War of 1812. Barry Gough. Toronto: Dundurn, 2006. Pp. 213, illus., b&w, $24.99 One of the thrilling stories of the War of 1812 revolves around the adventures of the Nancy, a small commercial schooner built at Detroit in 1789 to serve on Lake Erie and the upper Great Lakes, and entered British service at the outbreak of hostilities in 1812. When the Royal Navy lost its squadron in the battle of Lake Erie in September 1813, the Nancy was away on Lake Huron, and consequently survived as Britain's largest vessel west of Niagara. With Lake Erie in American hands, she helped maintain the alternative supply lines to the upper [End Page 335] lakes, which ran northwest along fur trade routes from Montreal and north from York to Georgian Bay, then across Lake Huron to Mackinac (which the Americans had surrendered in 1812). From there, the British sent aid to the Native peoples of the upper Mississippi, who exercised dominance over the Americans in the war's far western theatre. When US forces tried to cut this lifeline in 1814 but failed to oust the British from Mackinac, they naturally targeted the Nancy, which they found hidden along the Nottawasaga River on Georgian Bay. On 14 August 1814, seventy-five sailors, soldiers, warriors, and fur traders fought 380 Americans for seven hours. However, as the situation became hopeless, the Nancy's captain, Lieutenant Miller Worsley, RN, burned his schooner and ordered a retreat. Then, early in September, under cover of darkness, Worsley and his spirited followers rowed four small boats up to one of the US Navy's vessels on Lake Huron and captured her in a short, sharp fight. Next, they used their prize to seize the other USN schooner on the lake, thereby reasserting British superiority in the northern region for the final months of the war. Meanwhile, the wreck of the Nancy disappeared under the silt of the Nottawasaga River until her remains were discovered in the early twentieth century, in part through the efforts of the well-known marine enthusiast C.H.J. Snider. They now survive as part of the Nancy Island Historic Site at Wasaga Beach, while at Toronto's Fort York a large model of the schooner commissioned by Snider captures the imagination of visitors today, particularly because it was built with wood and metal from the original Nancy. The saga of the schooner retains some currency in Ontario; thus armchair historians wishing to relive a familiar tale or explore the story for the first time might pick up Through Water, Ice and Fire, a popular retelling of the Nancy's adventure by naval scholar Barry Gough. However, they likely will be disappointed. The prose is inelegant and the research seems to be incomplete. For instance, readers might wonder why the author did not present more details about the Nancy's design, or delve more deeply into the schooner's history (such as any role she may have played in the forgotten frontier war of the 1790s). Readers also will find parts of the text confusing because there is not enough context where needed to tell the main story effectively, while in other sections, where the Nancy disappears over the horizon, the author supplies more detail about the larger conflict than is necessary for this particular book. Furthermore, the overall production values are low, as exemplified by poorly reproduced illustrations that often are nothing more than modern artists' conceptions when available [End Page 336] period views of greater documentary value would have been better. (If modern images were to be used, it would have been preferable to limit them to diagrammatic presentations, such as plans of the Nancy, or to maps that would have communicated this geographically driven story with clarity, but neither kind of illustration graces the book.) Barry Gough's Through Water, Ice and Fire seems as if it went to press before it was ready, presumably as a spinoff from his more complete Fighting Sail on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay (Annapolis: Naval...

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