After leaving Otter Cove on Friday morning, September 2nd, we motored north up the Great Bras d'Or to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Once in the Gulf, we turned east and rounded Point Aconi, past Sydney Mines (former active coal mines) on the starboard and entered Sydney Harbour. The Harbour is immense and open, accommodating global shipping. We went well into the Harbour and went just past "the Fiddle" to Dobson Yacht Club.
Across the Harbour from Dobson YC is "The Fiddle", so named in honor of the Celtic music that abounds on Cape Breton. You can also see the Canadian Coast Guard boat stationed to the right. This seems to be the welcoming area for cruise ships, as you can see below. This ship backed into the slip without any tugs or other assistance! Brio was impressed.
On the 3rd, we went off to Louisburg to visit Fortress Louisburg. By comparison to The Citadel in Halifax, the Fortress was poorly defended.
We were corrected several times that it was a fortress and not a fort. Compare the battlements pictured above with those of the Citadel bult 100 years later. The Citadel was designed to defend both a land-based and marine-based attack and was meant to defend Halifax Harbour, a British Navy stronghold, from attack.
Indeed, the settlement that existed around and outside of the Fortress had one major raison d'etre, and that was to catch, dry and ship cod to France. The Fortress was bult to provide some limited defenses for the outpost with its sea-facing defenses. But the Fortress itself was very susceptible to attack from the land. There were areas of higher ground landward of the Fortress where the British could and did launch its attacks on the Fortress. The last of these were part of the Seven Years' War, or, in British North America, the French and Indian War. Once the British took the Fortress, they destroyed its landward defenses, making the Fortress useless as a military emplacement.
There were similarities between The Citadel and Fortress Louisburg, such as the interior compound.
And the cannon at the top of the wall was fired at noon, just as we saw at The Citadel, with lots of pomp and circumstance.
The Canadian government has invested heavily in restoring and rebuilding Fortress Louisburg. It is staffed with re-enactors in period clothing. They seem knowledgeable about the lives of those who lived in the early and mid-1770s in and outside of the Fortress. We easily could have spent a full day seeing all of the exhibits, but these post-colonial feet tired and sought to return to Sydney to meet Brio's new crewmember, Charlie Tarbell.
He and his daughter, Frances, joined us at about 6 pm and we enjoyed a lovely dinner at the restaurant at the Yacht Club. We thanked Frances for the safe delivery of her father and bid her au revoir. The next morning, the Fourth, Brio's crew woke at 5 pm Atlantic Daylight Time so we could cast off by 6:15 am and start our cruise across the Cabot Strait to Saint Pierre, a French island off the Newfoundland coast.
You can spot Sydney on the northeast corner of Cape Breton. And if you look closely, you can see Saint Pierre, Ile Miquelon and Ile Langlade, all French islands. The crossing is about 170 miles and we had waited for a weather window when the seas would be calm. Sunday, the Fourth, provided that in a picture-perfect way. Just wait to see what we found!
Cheers,
Brio
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