Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken
A Sailing ship in a bottle, from early 1900’s
So lets talk about old Fort Victoria through the eyes of Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken, who arrived at this post in the HBC ship Norman Morison in March, 1850. The Norman Morison also brought some eighty immigrants to the Colony of Vancouver’s Island. There had been smallpox aboard the ship on their journey across the oceans, and for a while everyone was in quarantine in Esquimalt harbour — or at least the immigrants were in quarantine. It seems that Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken was not, because he had a day to visit at Fort Victoria.
About March 1850, I happened to spend a day in Victoria…
Upon my arrival, I was soon presented to Governor [Richard] Blanshard, Chief Factor [James] Douglas, Mr. [Roderick] Finlayson, and some other gentlemen, and turned over to the care of Dr. [Alfred Robson] Benson, whom I had known in England — a well clothed man known by the soubriquet “Commodore.” There he lived in Bachelors’ Hall, a gentleman good and kind as ever, but his garments! He had on a pair of sea-boots into one of which he had managed to put one leg with the pants in, the other with the pants outside, and the other parts of his dress were equally conspicuous by their eccentricity. “Ah,” said he, “you laugh, but if you were to remain here a few months you would of necessity became the same.” He had a coffee pot, and such a coffee pot! on the stove. The stove was square, made of sheet iron, bent in all directions by the heat, with a cast iron door, and it was fed with large billets of wood, of which plenty existed in the Hall. It looked mean and dilapidated, but it was soon found capital for roasting native oysters upon.
I had thought that there was not much coffee in the HBC’s fur trade, but have learned recently that it was here! Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken and the others who lived in the fort wouldn’t have known about red tide. I wonder how many of these HBC men were sickened by the sometimes toxic oysters? It could partly explain the liver disease that seemed so common among the HBC men.
Bachelor’s Hall was a portion of a large story-and-a-half block building, having a common room in the centre, and two rooms on each side with a door opening into each. One was occupied by the Doctor [Benson], one by J[oseph] W[illiam] McKay, and a third by Captain Nevin, the fourth being the surgery. The latter was unique. It contained a gun case and a few shelves with drugs in bottles or in paper in every direction. The tin lining of a packing case served for a counter; there was a cot slung to the ceiling: to this room I was consigned. The remainder of the building belonged to the chaplain and lady, Mr. and Mrs. [Robert John] Staines, who kept a boarding house for young ladies therein…
Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken may not have known this, but the young boys who attended the school lived in the rat-infested attic of this (or another) building, and they would entertain themselves by peering through their floorboards at the gentlemen-clerks below. However, James Robert Anderson [son of A.C. Anderson] and his friends may have occupied the top floor of another building, as the men he spied on are not mentioned in this paragraph above.
Every room had sporting weapons in it — muskets and rifles of great variety — swords, a saddle and bridle, tobacco and pipes, lots of dust, and the usual utensils, but not all supplied with the necessary articles.
Lots of dust, he says! Of course there is going to be lots of dust in this buildings! It’s another thing to recognize what would have happened over the years at any fur trade fort.
I slept well that night, and was awakened in the morning by the loud ringing of a bell and a concert proceeding from a host of curs — these curs assembled under the bell at every meal, and looking up to it, howled — the howling being taken up by some dogs in the Indian village opposite. Benson called out “Get up quickly; that is the breakfast bell.”
Now the “lions” of Victoria then were the Fort and its contents. It had been built by Mr. Finlayson. The Fort was nearly a quadrangle, about one hundred yards long and wide, with bastions at two corners containing cannon. The whole was stockaded with cedar posts about six or eight inches in diameter, and about fifteen feet in length, which had been brought from near “Cedar Hill,” hence its name (now called Mount Douglas.) There were inside about a dozen large block story-and-half buildings, say 60×40, roofed with long and wide strips of cedar bark. The buildings were for the storage of goods, Indian trading shop, and a large shop for general trade. It contained everything required. The mess-room, off from which lived Mr. Douglas and family, was at the corner (of now) Fort and Government Streets. The “counting house” was near (now) Wharf Street. Mr. Finlayson occupied this post and lived there with his family. A belfry stood in the middle of the yard and its bell tolled for meals, for deaths, for weddings, for church service, for fires, and sometimes for warnings. At meal time it was assisted by a chorus of curs. On Wharf Street there existed a flagstaff and near it a well some eighty feet deep, but which contained but little water. The prevailing colour of the paint was Spanish brown, and whitewash was abundant. The Fort yard was muddy and the sidewalk to the stores consisted of two or three poles, along which my boots and my pants were not a little muddy, and the wretch Benson laughed at me, saying, “I told you so.”
Benson sounds like a nice guy, but he didn’t last at Fort Victoria. James Douglas shipped him down to Fort Vancouver, for one reason or another. And here is the reason, according to Bruce Watson’s Lives Lived. Benson had come out in the Harpooner in May, 1849, and is described as a tee-totaller and somewhat eccentric. It appears that he was prone to complaining about the unsuitable conditions brought on by James Douglas, and so was another supporter of Governor Richard Blanshard. It was probably for this reason that he was shipped down to Fort Vancouver to replace Dr. Forbes Barclay. Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken’s story continues:
As I could not very well get much muddier, we went outside the fort and there lay the Beaver, Captain [Charles] Dodd in command, so clean, so nice, so spruce, as well outside as in, with boarding nettings all round him, cannon on deck, muskets and cutlasses arranged in their proper places, beautiful cabins and good furniture, with a trading place for Indians who, I was told, were only allowed a few at a time on board when on trade. She had a large crew — active, robust, weather-beaten, jolly good tempered men — far from being overworked — some grey, some grizzled, some young; the former had once been similar to the latter in the service. Outside the Fort there were no houses, save perhaps a block cabin or two. Forest more or less existed from the ravine [just north of the fort], Johnson Street, to the north, and the harbour was surrounded with tall pine, and its bowers bedecked with shrubs, many of which at this early period in bloom…
In another section of his description of Victoria, Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken tells us that “All around James Bay roses, red currants, notalia mock orange and spirea grew in abundance — very little wind reached in from the sea because forests of pine between the harbour and the sea intercepted it — in fact forest surrounded the whole space, even coming as close as Cormorant Street (lower downtown.) Thus the climate was delicious, the cold sea breezes having no access. Mr. Douglas would not allow the forest sheltering to be cut down, as he thought if removed the harbour of Victoria would not be sufficiently sheltered. We often wish now that the protecting forests stood there still….” So, when we who live in Victoria complain about the cold winds of springtime, remember that those trees that used to surround us protected us from those breezes.
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If you remember, I told you that Helmcken came in the Norman Morison with a batch of immigrants: colonists who were to settle in the region. When they completed their quarantine they were brought to Fort Victoria, where they were housed and fed. Here is Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken’s story, re the immigrants:
Having left the immigrants by the Norman Morison washing clothes &c, it may be as well to trace them further. They were all located in the Fort, in one or more of the large block buildings. Very little preparation had been made for their reception, excepting that bunks had been fitted up for sleeping places, as tho’ they were still aboard ship. In fact, this for the most part was the fashion of housing the HBCo’s employees — the officers had a Bachelor’s Hall, or residences in the Fort. The married immigrants were housed in the same way (there were only three or four married ones) but soon they had divisions — curtains and so forth. They had to cook their own food, supplied with this and wood; in fact, they had to help themselves. As soon as they tumbled into conditions they appeared tolerably satisfied and were set to work on the farms or doing any labour that might be required. It was not very long, however, before some of them began to desert: the gold fever had attracted them and they wanted to get to California, either by Puget Sound or some sloop and craft sailing thence or from our own port, for even at this time sloops and so forth were beginning to come from San Francisco for piles to build wharves with…
Did you know that? Early San Francisco docks were built on pilings that the American ships brought from Fort Victoria.
In 1850, Dr. Helmcken was sent north to Fort Rupert in the Beaver. “The steamer Beaver starts — armed, boarding nettings all right — clears Victoria harbour and then paddles on and on through Dodd’s Narrows, Cowitchin Gap, the Gulf of Georgia, to her journey’s end. Seymour Narrows were drowsy, so the Beaver passed through without difficulty, although when wide awake ships had to remain until the boiling seething current and whirlpools subsided, not even a steamer being able to overcome them. Some distance further she came to a small island in the middle of Johnstone’s Strait [Ripple Rock], the current on both sides being sufficiently strong to make her stand still, the power of the Beaver and of the current about balancing each other.” There is a little in this post on Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken’s journey north: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/little-stories/
Dr John Sebastian Helmcken must have been at Fort Rupert a year and a half to two years. In his Recollections, “A Pioneer, 1851,” William John Macdonald says this of Helmcken:
The end of this year [1851], Dr. J.S. Helmcken came down from Fort Rupert to Victoria, where he continued to reside as medical man to the company’s officers and men.
The Hon. J.S. Helmcken deserves more notice than I have given him. He was a kind-hearted generous man, aways willing to help others, never asked for a fee for professional services. He was a man of ability, and acted as Speaker for the Legislative Assembly for many years. At the writing of this he is still with us, at the age of ninety-one. May god bless him, and in His own good time gather him to His Kingdom.
If Helmcken was born in 1824, he would have been 91 in 1915, which tells us when William John Macdonald’s recollections were published. Just in case you needed to know…
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2024. All rights reserved.
A nice piece of early history of my GG Grandfather. Thank you.