The result of the favourable reports sent in by these agents, and by others who had gone ahead, was an invasion of Nova Scotia such as no one, not even the provincial authorities, had begun to expect.  As the names of the thousands who were anxious to go to Nova Scotia poured into the adjutant-general’s office in New York, it became clear to Sir Guy Carleton that with the shipping facilities at his disposal he could not attempt to transport them all at once.  It was decided that the ships would have to make two trips; and, as a matter of fact, most of them made three or four trips before the last British soldier was able to leave the New York shore.

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.  The voyage was fair, and the ships arrived at their destinations without mishap.  But at St John at least, the colonists found that almost no preparations had been made to receive them.  They were disembarked on a wild and primeval shore, where they had to clear away the brushwood before they could pitch their tents or build their shanties.  The prospect must have been disheartening.  ’Nothing but wilderness before our eyes, the women and children did not refrain from tears,’ wrote one of the exiles; and the grandmother of Sir Leonard Tilley used to tell her descendants, ’I climbed to the top of Chipman’s Hill and watched the sails disappearing in the distance, and such a feeling of loneliness came over me that, although I had not shed a tear through all the war, I sat down on the damp moss with my baby in my lap and cried.’

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.  On that date Governor Parr wrote to Lord North announcing the arrival of ’a considerable number of Refugee families, who must be provided for in and about the town at extraordinary expence, as at this season of the year I cannot send them into the country.’  ‘I cannot,’ he added, ’better describe the wretched condition of these people than by inclosing your lordship a list of those just arrived in the Clinton transport, destitute of almost everything, chiefly women and children, all still on board, as I have not yet been able to find any sort of place for them, and the cold setting in severe.’  There is a tradition in Halifax that the cabooses had to be taken off the ships, and ranged along the principal street, in order to shelter these unfortunates during the winter.