Section II, 1919 ^ [57] Trans. R.S.C. 



A Contemporary Account of the Navy Island Episode, 1837 

 The Honourable William Renwick Riddell, LL.D., F. R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting, 19"19) 



The following account of the destruction of the "Caroline,' etc., 

 was written by George Coventry at the time, in order to be sent to 

 England, where his people resided. It is dated at Chippewa, Upper 

 Canada, 1838, and is in the form of a letter to his sister in England. 



George Coventry, whom, when I was a boy, I knew in Cobourg, 

 was born at Copenhagen Fields House at Wandsworth Common in 

 the house "at the corner near the city road" and "within the sound of 

 Bow Bell." His father was a ward of Baron Dimsdale of Thetford, 

 and was placed by his guardian with Jones, Havard & Jones, mer- 

 chants, in London. His mother was Elizabeth Thornborrow, from 

 Lupton Hall, Westmorland, who was visiting at Sir Joshua Reynolds , 

 when she was won by Coventry. Coventry, Senior, was afterwards a 

 member of the firm of Jayson & Coventry, and seems to have been a 

 man of literary tastes and considerable ability. The son was born on 

 28th July, 1793. He had the misfortune to lose his mother who died 

 of cancer when Coventry was three years old. The lad was then placed 

 in a Ladies' School, at Peckham, Surrey, kept by Mrs. Freith and her 

 three daughters, one of whom, the elder Coventry afterwards married. 



George Coventry was then sent to a Boys' Boarding School at 

 Hitchin, Hertfordshire, kept by Mr. Blaxland, where he stayed for 

 about three years. On the death of Mr. Blaxland, his undermaster, 

 Mr. Payne, started a school near Epping Forest, which young Coven- 

 try attended until his fourteenth year when he was sent to Dover 

 where he completed his education. He afterwards engaged as an 

 employee in his father's firm, and in that capacity travelled over the 

 greater part of Great Britain. He also visited France, where he thinks 

 he saw at Fontainebleau some flowers, the offspring of certain plants 

 which he had seen leaving Dover, a present from the Queen of Eng- 

 land to the Empress Josephine. He came to Canada in the fourth 

 decade of the 19th century, was an eye-witness of some of the oc- 

 currences of the Rebellion of 1837, and returned to England in 1838. 

 Returning to this Province he lived for a time in St. Catharines; 

 afterwards he was in Cobourg, then in Picton as editor of a paper 

 there, then he returned to Cobourg and made that his home for the 

 remainder of his life. He died at Toronto, February 11, 1870, and is 

 buried in the St. James Cemetery at Cobourg. 



