Toronto

The new floating magnetic mine, being deployed by the Americans, was not being restricted to the St. Lawrence Seaway. It’s success in the destruction of HMS Druid was discovered, by the US Navy, only a few days after it happened. Of course, no one in the US military, or even the civilian government, realized exactly what that meant for the entire Canadian Front. It was on another body of water where the US Navy was really cheering it’s latest technological terror. The target of this weapon is rather odd in that, for some strange reason, the American Navy and Army often consider each other the enemy more than they do their actual enemies. This is somewhat understandable in that while they only fight real wars every few decades, they are always fighting each other, at the US congress, in the dreaded battle for more money and, as a result, their war or words can grow quite heated.

The victory at Toronto was not exactly the glamorous kind of stand up fight that makes headlines and that either branch of the US military likes to shout about but, it was a victory none the less and the Navy was more than happy to thump their chests over it. The simple fact was that the army had failed and the navy had come to save them. Toronto had been under siege for over a year and repeated attempts to storm the cities defenses had failed rather miserably, only generating long casualty lists and little else. Despite the best efforts of the army, they had failed to starve the city out as well and, naturally, they blamed that situation on the navy. While the two branches of the US military were pointing fingers at each other, they failed to name the real culprits and those were the Canadians.

In this I say ‘Canadians’ and not the Canadian military because, while the Canadian Army certainly gets it’s fair share of credit for holding Toronto, it was the efforts of the civil population that really held the effort together. Naturally, there are many stories of civilians contributing to the efforts along the trenches, of sacrificing, making heroic gestures, and while many of these stories tend to be true they are also mostly anecdotal. The real battle for Toronto was not waged on land but, on the water and in this case, specifically the Great Lake of Ontario.

As noted earlier, the brown water navies of the world had proven themselves largely irrelevant in the early stages of the war. The overpriced, oversized, and awkward barges, that were dubbed with names like “Inland Battleships,” quickly became the butt of many jokes. On Lake Ontario, specifically, the United States found itself operating at even more of a disadvantage, than the other great lakes, to begin with. For these, and any number of other reasons, the US Navy had failed miserably at the attempts to cut off Toronto’s watery life line.

This naturally led to the US Army’s operations to seize the ports, that supplied Toronto, by land. The early stages of these operations were no more successful than any of their other operations in Canada. The attack, across the river, from Watertown, New York had been one such attempt and while the Americans did manage to cross the river they came nowhere near their actual objective which was Kingston, Ontario. This operation did cut the Great Lakes off from the sea but, for the Canadians, it was little more than a nuisance that had the easy work around of railing goods past the breach.

By 1901 the situation had changed for the exact same reason that the entire war in Canada had. The weight of the US was finally telling on the battlefield. For Toronto this meant that her plots were slowly drying up. The US Army gave up trying to storm the city and pushed further up the peninsula, specifically eastward towards Ottawa. A combination of factors began to take their toll. Not only was there a growing problem with rapidly shrinking stock of war materials but, Canada was also running out of soldiers as well. By the summer of 1901, most Canadian units were at well below half strength and fewer and fewer replacements were reaching those units. It has been claimed that Canada spent an entire generation on this war and, in this particular case, it seems to be less of an exaggeration and more of an understatement. The post war figures seem to suggest that the casualty rates in Canada was nothing less than apocalyptic.

Despite the severe losses, the fact was that those Canadian units, still in the fight, knew their business with deadly efficiency. They were taking a high toll from the fresh and inexperienced American formations moving into the line. This level of ferocity certainly made a difference in the attitudes of their enemies but, in the end, the Canadian military could not overcome the single biggest disadvantage they now faced which was geography.

The US Army had now pushed them clear of the peninsula and had them on open ground. There were lakes that created some bottlenecks but, the simple fact was that the Canadian army now had to defend more ground with fewer men. The US Army took full advantage of the room to maneuver and, by June of 1901, all of the ports that supplied Toronto, save one, were in American hands. This last life line to what had become the very symbol of Canadian resistance, was the first port that the Americans had tried to take, Kingston.

The Americans threw one massive assault at Kingston after another, from both the east and west. The attacks were repelled and losses on both sides were horrendous. General Otter was fearful that Kingston would become yet another siege and, as far as the Americans were concerned, it was all they needed. Kingston did not have to be taken, it only had to be neutralized and, in this scenario, it would also pin down the bulk of the troops that Otter had left. Then the matter was settled from the most unexpected of directions. It did not come from the east or west, but rather, the final straw fell quite literally from the sky.

The real end came when the barge, Sara Pine, hauling munitions that were bound for Toronto, detonated a magnetic mine in the safe passage zone leading to the Kingston docks. The explosion rocked the entire city. At first the harbor master assumed that one of their own mines had broken loose from it’s mooring but, when the waters were investigated one of the magnetic mines was found, safely disarmed, and brought back to a warehouse in Kingston. It did not take long before the authorities figured out what was going on and reported it to the military. General Otter was notified of the new enemy activity in less than seventy-two hours and he knew exactly what it meant. He was also not the only one to find out about the problem.

The unions for both the dock workers and the merchant seamen probably knew about the new mines even before Otter did. Their leaders promptly notified Prime Minster Laurier that no barges or merchant vessels would be leaving the docks until the military could assure their reasonable safety. Laurier knew that he essentially had a mutiny on his hands now. His major problem in dealing with it was that, from his own pen, “these men have already sacrificed so much that I find it impossible to ask them for any more.” His words were very accurate and probably even more than he realized. The effectiveness of the mines were not so much the issue here as it was the war weariness that they exploited. It was also not just the merchantmen who were demoralized, Laurier’s own words bear out that he was as well.

Laurier might have been looking at the humanity of the situation but, he was also still a politician. He still knew how to cover his ass and, in this particular instance, he did so by the time honored method called, “passing the buck.” Laurier notified the office of the Governor General and informed him of the work stoppage being threatened by the unions. What Laurier did not do was tell Minto the reason why. We have the official communications between the staffs of these two men and in them, there is not a single mention of the magnetic mines or of Kingston. Maybe Laurier assumed that Minto was already aware of this? I think it more likely that the omission of these circumstances was probably for the same reason that Laurier did not call the Governor personally, he simply had no great desire to deal with Minto.

The inaction of Laurier in this matter created a power vacuum and, like all such vacuums, something will always rush in to fill it. While Laurier was considering his options, and Minto was completely clueless of the rapidly deteriorating situation, two men in Canada had all of the facts in front of them and were prepared to act decisively, even if they were not yet sure what that action was to be. One of the two men was General Otter and his communications with Laurier was met with little more than silence. His communications with Minto was met with deaf ears and then orders to follow, none of which were very realistic.

Minto ordered the Canadian General to send troops to either compel the dock workers and seamen to man their posts or, arrest them and replace them with others who would do the work, even if it meant using army troops to replace them. It is easy to surmise that Otter was shocked by this order seeing as how, when it first arrived, he was completely unaware of the union situation. Still, Otter did not act rashly and found out what was going on before he considered his next move. It would have to be a very careful one because he realized that Minto’s order was beyond their ability at this point. Even so, Otter would still have to do something because Toronto had to be re-supplied.

Strangely enough, it would be the US Army Zeppelin Corps that relieved Otter of his impossible quagmire. While much hype is made of the subsequent attacks on Nashville, the fact was that the first fire bombing by the US Army was on Kingston, Ontario. Shafter had listened to Admiral Sampson boast of the success of their new weapon and Shafter was tired of hearing it. The Army had been working on their own strategic weapon, one aimed at increasing the effectiveness of aerial bombardment, so, Shafter felt it was time for a test run. Everyone knew that Kingston was the most critical target on any front, so, all thirty two airships in the US Army service were armed with the new incendiary munitions, and began their journey from their bases in Ohio.

While these ‘fire bombs’ are easily considered primitive by today’s standards, and are nothing like the combustible petroleum jelly that we call napalm, they were effective enough. They were not that different from the more conventional explosives of the time save, their liberal use of phosphorus and magnesium. These weapons were a direct outgrowth of the anti-aircraft weapons being developed in France where gunners were looking for a method of seeing where their rounds went. While the French continued to develop their tracer rounds, once they shared this technology with their American allies, the US Army found another use for it. The fire bombs were the end result.

An almost continuous train of zeppelins, with another two or three airships arriving no sooner than the last wave was leaving, bombarded Kingston for three days straight. At first it appeared as if the bombing would do insignificant damage but, by nightfall of the second day, when the US airships used the fires to guide them right to the target, it was clear that the docks around Kingston, as well as most of the downtown area, would be completely destroyed. It was not the kind of fire storm known in later wars but, again, it was enough. Now, not only were the water channels out of Kingston blocked but, the city itself had been rendered completely useless.

General Otter realized it was the end. When Toronto fell, and now Otter had little choice but order the garrison commander to seek terms for surrender, Canadian morale would plummet and, in a more practical sense, a large portion of US Troops would now be free to a join a push on the capital of Ottawa from the west. They would be able to roll right up the north bank of the St Lawrence Seaway, capturing Canada’s remaining major industrial cities, trapping their best troops on the other side of the water, and conquer Canada. Otter no longer had any way of stopping this militarily.

Still, General Otter did not want to just give up. So many lives had been lost that he could not bring himself to do it. He had to find a way out of this situation and, oddly enough, it would drive him towards the only other man in Canada that seemed to know what was going on and had a will to do something about it. This man was someone that he had almost ordered arrested earlier in the war. The man was none other than the main leader in opposition to the war, a franphone, a political adversary, and sometimes even suggested an outright traitor. The man was currently not even a government official and we have already met him, Henri Bourassa.