The Last Canadian Piracy Trial
Captain “Sandy” Mackenzie of the British barque Saladin was primarily a guano trader between South America and Britain. While lying in Valparaiso in 1844, Mackenzie offered free passage to a stranded British shipmaster George Fielding and his fifteen-year-old son. Once near the equator, the Fieldings organized a mutiny with the aim of seizing some of the 70 tons of copper, 13 bars of silver, and $9000 in gold and silver coins their host was tasked to transport. Captain Mackenzie, his chief mate, and four other seamen were killed by the Fieldings as at least 3 of the 8 remaining crewman joined the plot.
Between the barbarity of the act and George Fielding’s scheming to further reduce the remaining crew, the ringleaders claimed to be astounded. They threw the Fieldings overboard but continued toward the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to divide the bounty. Without a skilled navigator, however, the Saladin ran aground near County Harbour, Nova Scotia on May 21, 1844. The suspicious circumstances and mismatched defenses led to charges of piracy and murder in what became the last Canadian piracy trial. Four men were found guilty and sentenced to the gallows over Halifax Harbor, and at least one balladist put the predicament of mutineer Charles Gustavus Anderson to song.
Pictured here, what may be the ship’s figurehead now resides at Nova Scotia’s Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.