90 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
October 12, 1783, 3,396 persons connected with the Loyalist regi- 
ments had embarked for the St. John, namely, 1,826 men, 563 women, 
696 children, and 311 servants. A few others left New York later 
in the season,! : 
The fleet of transports on which Colonel Hewlett embarked with 
the fourteen regiments under his command, besides detachments of 
two others, did not reach the St. John until September 27, the Esther 
arriving several days later through her failure to keep to her course. 
The Martha, another vessel of the fleet, was wrecked on a ledge of 
rocks, afterwards known as ‘‘Soldiers’ Ledge,”’ off the Seal Islands, 
and only seventy-five of her 174 passengers were saved. These 
included a corps of the Maryland Loyalists and part of Colonel Hew- 
lett’s battalion. At the end of September the troops disembarked and 
encamped above the Falls. By the 13th of the following month they 
were disbanded, and began to proceed up the river as speedily as the 
lack of small craft would admit. Among these were many men of the 
King’s American Regiment who, together with their associates of other 
corps, passed a distressing winter at St. Anns. Some, however, 
were fortunate enough to find shelter in the hospitable homes of 
pioneer settlers along the river. But the majority remained at Parr 
Town (St. John) until the following spring, and not a few drew lots 
here, including some of the Queen’s Rangers. The Prince of Wales 
regiment was not disbanded until October 10, 1783, and wisely chose 
to spend the ensuing months at the mouth of the river on account 
of the lateness of the season and the great distance of their tract. 
Captain Stephen Hoit and other officers of this corps built houses in 
Carleton (now West St. John), and were evidently still there when 
they presented a memorial to Governor Carleton in December, 1784. 
However, the dissatisfaction prevalent among these officers had been 
freely expressed. in private correspondence previously, one of their 
number, Lieutenant-Colonel Gabriel De Veber, writing from Parr 
Town a year earlier than the date of the memorial that he was alto- 
gether discouraged because of the remoteness of the land drawn by his 
regiment, and would think himself highly culpable if he did not try to 
settle nearer the metropolis, or some other place, where he might edu- 
cate his numerous family. That conditions at Parr Town, the ‘‘metrop- 
olis’’ to which Colonel De Veber referred, were bad enough is evident 
from the testimony of the Reverend John Sayre who, arriving in 
1783, was distressed at the multitudes utterly unsettled, many of them 
\ 
1 Rev. W. O. Raymond’s article on “Early Days of Woodstock” in The Dispatch 
of Woodstock, N.B., Dec. 5, 1906. 
