Kingston and Samuel Holland
(provided by Terry Hicks)

March 2016

Professor Beaglehole was Chair of British Commonwealth History at Victoria University of Wellington. He states “Captain Cook is the greatest explorer-seaman of all time”. This article concerns the link, personal and professional, between Captain Cook and Samuel Holland and how that link played a part in determining the future of Canada.

“On May 26, 1783, General Haldimand informed Sir John Johnson that he had resolved to send Major Holland, the Surveyor General, to Carleton Island with instructions to inspect the ruined French fort at Cataraqui and to arrange for certain work to be begun if he found the fort ‘correspondent with the views and instructions’ which he had given to Holland orally. Holland was to report on the suitability of the neighbourhood for settlement … “. Holland’s favourable report marked the beginning of continuous settlement in Kingston.

What was the background of this gentleman, Samuel Holland, that rated such confidence being placed in him by General Haldimand? The portion of the story I pursued took place immediately following the fall of Louisburg on the 261h July, 1758.

Brigadier James Wolfe, operating under the command of General Amherst, launched a successful attack through Louisburg’s “back door” at Kennington Cove, an attack which some weeks later played a significant part in the fall of Louisbourg.

HMS Pembroke, under the command of Captain John Simcoe, father of John Graves Simcoe, was at anchor off Kennington Cove the day after the surrender. James Cook was the Master, i.e Navigating Officer, of Pembroke. “His curiosity was much aroused by the behaviour of a man carrying a small square table, supported by a tripod; the man would set his table down so he could squint along the top in various directions, after which he would make notes in a pocket-book. This man in turn noticed Cook, and they struck up a conversation. He was a military engineer and surveyor in a regiment under Wolfe; he was making a plan of the place and its encampments, and the instrument he was using was known as a plane table; with it he was observing angles. His name was Samuel Holland …. Neither he nor Cook knew that the encounter that day was not less important than the great event they had just witnessed”. (that is to say, the fall ofLouisbourg). “Cook expressed an ardent desire to be instructed in the use of the instrument, and, says Holland, ‘I appointed the next day in order to make him acquainted with the whole process; he accordingly attended, with a particular message from Capt. Simcoe expressive of the wish to have been present at the proceedings.”

To make a long story short, Cook and Holland spent considerable time together and became firm friends as well as professional colleagues. The subsequent attack on Quebec City was in the planning stages. It was well known that the biggest stumbling block was treacherous areas of the St. Lawrence. Ships attempted this passage very much at their peril. Cook and Holland had constructed some provisional charts which, with competent navigators, would be of considerable assistance. The ending of course is well-known – the defeat of the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on the 13th September, 1759.

This was the Samuel Holland who, in 1783, gave the “green light” for the future settlement of Kingston.

*It is assumed that Holland Crescent is named after Samuel Holland

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Sources of information:
(1) Kingston before the war of 1812 -Richard A. Preston-428 pages
(2) The Life of Captain James Cook – J.C. Beaglehole -760 pages
Note: Direct quotes inside quotation marks