On board the transport Pitt, in the year 1765, at Cork, embarked Captain Godfrey with his regiment, the 52nd foot, for Quebec, North America.

On the passage the Pitt was wrecked in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where Captain Godfrey with his regiment suffered many hardships.

The ship ran ashore in a dense fog, which had prevailed for several days.  The Captain remaining by the wreck for eleven days, assisted in saving the lives of the soldiers wives and children, and in landing the King’s stores.  The transport struck well up the gulf on the Nova Scotian coast (now New Brunswick).  The exact locality is not stated.  The night of the disaster was densely dark, and soon after striking the ship began to pound and leak badly.  Had the wind sprung up during the hours of darkness not a soul on board would have lived to record the tale.  Very early the next morning, as Captain Godfrey was standing on the quarter deck, conversing with the officer in charge of the ship, the rain began suddenly to descend in torrents and the wind to freshen.  The mist that had enshrouded the ship for so many days, began to lift, and the sun shone through by instalments.  Soon it was seen that the Pitt was hemmed in by rocks, almost wedged in among them.  Fortunately the storm soon abated, and the situation of the vessel kept her in an upright position.  The fog settled down again, and for the next ten days all on board were kept busy in saving their effects and the King’s stores.

At the end of ten days all on board were taken off.  General Murray, commanding at Quebec, by some means not recorded, having heard of the disaster, sent a man-of-war schooner to the relief of the sufferers, and they were safely conveyed to Quebec.

Captain Godfrey, through exposure and fatigue, contracted a severe cold, and at last, his life being despaired of, the surgeon of the regiment advised his return to England.  He applied to General Clavering for leave of absence, or to grant him permission to sell out of the army.  The permission being granted, he soon set about preparing to leave Quebec, and rejoin his wife and five children in England.  Captain Godfrey notes in a memorandum his great sorrow in parting from his regiment, and that his zeal for serving his King and country was so great that nothing but extreme weakness would have induced him to part from his regiment and King George the Third’s service.

Before leaving Quebec to return home to his native land, Captain Godfrey visited the spot where, six years before, the gallant Wolfe had poured out his life’s blood in the service of his King and country.  Here the Captain knelt and offered up to Him who guides the stars in their courses, thanksgiving for the brilliant and decisive victory gained by the British arms.

The following is from one of his memoranda:—­“As I stood, and as I knelt where Wolfe fell, I more than ever realized what it is to be a brave soldier and a good man.  As I rose from the spot I whispered to myself, if I am, through the providence of the Almighty, allowed to once again visit my native land, I will go to the widowed mother of General Wolfe and tell her where I have been and what I have seen.  That I have stood on the very spot where victory and death gave the crowning lustre to the name of her great son.”