Loyalist Ships

Many Loyalists came to Canada by ship, especially those who settled in the Maritime provinces and, to a lesser extent, in Quebec. In this section we are developing a list of ships with some basic details about each voyage, along with secondary details including passenger lists etc.

When the terms of peace became known, tens of thousands of the Loyalists shook the dust of their ungrateful country from their feet, never to return. The party sailed from New York, in nine transport ships, on October 19, 1782, and arrived a few days later at Annapolis Royal.

On April 26, 1783, the first or ‘spring’ fleet set sail. It had on board no less than seven thousand persons, men, women, children, and servants. Half of these went to the mouth of the river St John, and about half to Port Roseway, at the south-west end of the Nova Scotian peninsula. All summer and autumn the ships kept plying to and fro.

In June, the ‘summer fleet’ brought about 2,500 colonists to St John River, Annapolis, Port Roseway, and Fort Cumberland. By August 23 John Parr, the governor of Nova Scotia, wrote that ‘upward of 12,000 souls have already arrived from New York,’ and that as many more were expected. By the end of September he estimated that 18,000 had arrived, and stated that 10,000 more were still to come. By the end of the year he computed the total immigration to have amounted to 30,000. As late as January 15, 1784, the refugees were still arriving.

The table below provides basic details on a number of Loyalist ships. Where the name of the ship (in the left-most column) is a link, click for more detailed information. Click on a column heading at the top to sort the table by the contents of that column, in ascending or descending order.

Ship Database

Click on any column heading to sort by the data in that column

Our thanks to Stuart Langridge for the table-sorting script.