2/8 – John Smith’s Mermaid

Thursday 25 April 2024

The day started bright, but with a wind that cut right through you. I decided I was going nowhere in the +/- 0ºC temperature. I thought to use the time to adjust the clutch which had been troublesome since France. Even though I didn’t really know what the problem was adjusting things wouldn’t do any harm!

Unfortunately, when moving the bike from the porch where it had sheltered from the cold, I put the side-stand down and just missed the paving stone ; the stand sank immediately into the grass and I had no choice but to let it go. Under normal circumstances, I could have picked it up easily, but with my hamstring still giving me grief, I couldn’t manage it. I tried to engage the help of my hostess – what with her yoga and her headstands, she could probably do it alone – but she wasn’t answering her phone. Then I tried her Father, but all my efforts at indicating to him what I needed were in vain. Finally I knocked on a neighbour’s door, and a very nice Chinese lass, came out and helped me lift it. It’s not hard with two people so even though she was slight, we managed without difficulty.

The rest of the day, I spent trying to make a travel plan for the next days, taking account of the freezing weather forecast for the weekend. I also tried to follow up on my contacts to get some more history of Belfast.

Terry, my contact at St Michael’s had had no luck in contacting the suggested historian, Alan Buchanan. She suggested I try FB myself but this produced nothing. Then I came across an Alan Buchanan associated with a group called “The Irish Scots”, dedicated to celebrating “10 years of Island folk music, folklore and storytelling. I contacted their contact person and shortly afterwards, I had Alan’s email address.

I was thinking how fortunate it was that I had decided to stay another day on PEI, which might increase the chances of getting to speak to him. I needn’t have worried ; my e-mail was answered within half-an-hour with a phone number. I called and he said he was heading my way and would be here in about 10 minutes 

We went to the local Tim Horton’s and Alan regaled me with stories about the island, particularly Belfast, and some of its inhabitants, both present and past. He knew Clayton McKenna, whom I had met the day before and confirmed the jist of the stories I had heard. He also told me a couple more and related some of the local Belfast politics. Finally he resolved the puzzle regarding the name, Belfast … sort of.

There are, it seems, three versions of the story. In the first, it is simply an anglicisation of the French “Belle Face” ; true the earlier occupants of the area, the Acadians, were of French descent, but I could find nowhere that bore that name and “beautiful face” in French would be “beau visage”.

The second option is the most colourful ; the good Scottish Planters were hauling a bell up the hill to the church, it fell off the cart, rolled down a hill and got stuck fast in a swamp – hence bell-stuck-fast, became Belfast ! But Belfast was there before the Scots and the church, so …

The third version had me chasing a story linked to Captain John Smith of Pocahontas fame; Alan told me that a certain Captain John Smith of the SS Mermaid came to the island in 1770, and named a village after his hometown in Ireland.

When I googled the two terms, I discovered that Pochahontas‘ Captain John Smith had, in 1614 in the West Indies, recorded the sighting of a mermaid ! This, as you might imagine, made me somewhat sceptical of the veracity of the story, since even if he was just born in 1614, this made him an unlikely captain of any ship in 1770, even the SS Mermaid.

I delved deeper and found that one Vaughn Scribner, a professor of early American history had looked into this claim extensively. Smith apparently was not even in the West Indies in 1614, and in all his writings – Scribner read, and carefully re-read, everything Smith ever wrote, focusing particularly on the period in question – there was no mention of a mermaid. He persevered, and finally came across something written by Andre Dumas (of The Three Muskateers and The Count of Monte Christopher fame).

Published in a journal named The Gazette of the Union in 1849, the article included an account of Smith’s sighting.

This article dated the event to 1811, but more interestingly the part about Smith was not in quotation marks, as every previous instance Scribner had seen was. Scribner concluded that Dumas had invented this historical “fact” to lend an aura of credibility and authenticity to his wholly fictional story of a Frenchman heading off on an adventure to search for the mythological creatures. Scribner subsequently came across another researcher Don Nigroni, who essentially did the same research and reached the same conclusion. Scribner’s account of his research can be found here.

But back to Belfast. An entry on the IslandImagined website states :

Across the Hillsborough River from Charlottetown is Mermaid Farm named for the ship HMS Mermaid whose captain, James Smith, would give Belfast Village its name around 1770. Belfast would later become the home of the Selkirk Settlers who arrived as part of an early wave of Highland Clearance migration in 1803.

Further research revealed that there have been sixteen ships named HMS Mermaid, but I couldn’t find a list of Captains for the one in service in 1770. I did find a Captain James Smith listed on navyrecords.org.uk ; he is not however listed as commanding any ships.

However ! On islandregister.com, it does state that Captain James Smith owned Lot 57, in which Belfast village was located, although it might have been Lot 58 !

So there you have it, three stories some more plausible than others, but each leaving a hint of doubt. Take your pick !