The same letter was also distributed by Captain Alexander Murray in Pisiguit and Cobequid but there were few people still there, they had run away to P.E.I. or the St.John River.

So, there, one month after the beginning of the transports, the same scenario was being re-enacted: on Friday September 5th 1755, 418 Acadians gather in the Church of St-Charles-des-Mines.

They are told they are prisonners: the speech by Winslow is translated in French by Deschamps, a Protestant Huguenot clerk for the storekeeper MAUGER.

Five transports arrive on Sunday September 7 to start boarding the prisonners on Wednesday September 10 at la Riviere Gaspareaux, a mile and a half from the actual Souvenir-Church at Place Evangeline.

At that time, Grandpre and Le Bassin des Mines had almost 8,000 cattle, 9,000 sheep, 4,000 pigs and 500 horses.

Winslow's journal of the events was found in the Archives of Boston in 1825. In it he tells how the authorities were worried by the agitation, restlessness and secrecy between the people, so they called their best interpretor, le pere Landry (Francois) and explained how they would be separated in groups of fifty per ship, starting with the young men, in the five ships.

First they refused to go without their fathers, but when bayonnets were pointed to their families, they went slowly, praying, singing while crying. By September 19, Winslow informs Lawrence that he has 530 prisonners, of which 230 are in the ships bowels. Because of the delays to get more ships, Winslow allows the wives and children to bring foodstuff to their men on the ships. On October 8 1755, Winslow in Grand Pre and Murray in Pisiguit decide to "pile in" as many bodies and to set sail. Eighty families were then brought on board in GrandPre, but another 98 families of 600 souls were still awaiting shipment.

On October 27 1755, fourteen transport ships of Grand Pre, Riviere-aux-Canards, Pisiguit and Cobequid, which is a total of 2,900 souls, meet the ten other ships which have been waiting for them for a month, in the Bay of Fundy, the previous 1900 souls from Beaubassin area, which are dying by the day from mal-nourishment and pestilence.

Many of the ships had been requesitioned: they were old and in need of repairs. Because of the lenghty proceedings, when expected ships did not arrive on time, especially bad management, the lack of foodstuff killed many who simply died of hunger and the pestilences had easy preys. Yes, there were some ships who shipwrecked and some bodies thus survived and
there is at least one instance, the Pembroke where the crew was subdued, as reported by l'Abbe Casgrain, when a strongman (Casgrain said: Beaulieu, but it was Charles Beliveau) overpowered the Captain, opened "l'écoutille" and after subduying the ship landed it's 32 families (225 people) who came from the Port Royal region at the St.John River. But, in general, it is a certainty, only a fraction of the prisonners survived the first five years of captivity, whence conditions changed when France lost it's foothold in North America in 1759 and the survivors of the Deportation were included in the 1763 Treaty of Paris.

In 1785, permission would be granted to any deportee who had survived the Deportation, or their descendants, to go to Louisiana. At that time, many tried to go back to Nova Scotia, and few of those who made it back chose to remain because everything was changed: the English settlers were now occupying the area. Still they did form Acadian nucleuses, here and there, with old customs mixed with curious ones brought back from wherever they had lived.

On the positive side, this awfull mess was a lesson to the British government which forged future better living terms for the colonists; the British were probably more careful of their handling of the situation. Also, when in 1759 England gained these new possessions, these 1755 tragic events were certainly conducive to a greater obedience from the general population of the newly conquered New France.

In 1755 the population had been dispersed along the Atlantic seacoast, Louisiana and the Seaward Islands or sent to English prisons in Falmouth, Liverpool or SouthHampton, then resettled in France, in regions like the Poitou or in towns like Bordeaux or Belle-Ile-en-Mer which the personal property of LOUIS XV, an island off the coast of Brittany where Alexandre LeBorgne had once lived. READ BELLE-ISLE.

The great kindness of countless French small towns and their inhabitants helped the survivors and many chose to remain there after 1785.