Ship stories figures all through our family history and at this time I'll just add one more. According to J. G. Lorimer in his book about the island, the war of 1812 was a period when American privateers often came to plunder the boats around the island. Because of the island's isolation and the sparsely populated communities dotted along the shoreline, this made easy game for the would-be privateers.

Elaine Ingalls Hogg
Ingalls, Ships 4
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Ingalls on Grand Manan

Ships
If you look in the History of Grand Manan, SHIPS, you will find the names of at least four ships that John had an interest in. The first was the INDUSTRY, a two-mast schooner, total loss; The DISPATCH was launched in November of 1821 and later sold in Saint John. The PRIMROSE was a schooner built in 1833 and the ALBION was a two-mast schooner built in 1834 by John Ingalls. The owner was Charles Ingalls and the Master William Ingalls.
Unfortunately, this ship was lost only one year later in 1835. On June 7 the schooner was bound from Windsor for Boston, loaded with plaster. She was run down off Mt. Desert by an American coaster. The plaster was thrown overboard to lighten the vessel but the leak gained so quickly that all hands were forced to abandon her and she soon sank.


In another story where William Ingalls was the captain of another Schooner, an Island legend had its beginnings. A Grand Manan vessel, the GRAPESHOT was bound from Boston for Grand Manan under the command of William Ingalls when she was thrown over on her beam-ends in a blustering November gale. All three persons aboard were lost. The local paper, The St. Croix Courier of November 22, 1867 initiated the legend, when it stated that on the night of Wednesday, November 13, the vessel "drifted home and stranded immediately before the door of the Captain's distressed widow."

Ingalls on Grand Manan
John grew up in Sullivan but like his forefathers before him, he too started to wander as a young man. For a while he settled in St. Andrew's and then moved to Grand Manan in the early 1800's.
There is a record of him coming before the Magistrate, McDonald, and taking his oath of allegiance to His majesty. (McDonald's comment about those who came to take the oath was, "Several deponents are men of some property, friends to order and Government, and will probably make useful and Loyal Subjects."
To make a living, one had to raise their own food so John engaged in farming and fishing as well as in partnership with Oliver Wooster and John Ross in a sawmill on the Grand Harbour Brook. John settled near Grand Harbour. According to the McDonald Survey done about 1805, John and his partner Oliver Wooster had claims on all land from the "Thoroughfare" to Grand Harbour Brook, the lots fronting the shoreline of the harbour. The "Thoroughfare" refers to the waterway between Grand Harbour and Ross' Island. On low tide one can walk across a rocky pathway to and fro the island. However, when the tide comes in, boats can travel in the well-marked channel out of the harbour.
By the time John arrived on the island he was married to Rebecca Belcher Newton and they had four children. Unfortunately, Rebecca died in 1805, leaving husband and small children alone to struggle in their new environment. Two years later, John married his second wife, Sarah Cheney. Sarah was born in St. Andrews NB but moved with her family to Cheney's Island around 1800. Here her family claimed about one hundred of the two hundred and fifty acres of the island. Her sister, Barbara was the first white girl born on the island of Grand Manan, while her father, William, was the first male child of permanent residents. William was drowned in 1806 while driving cattle across the passage that divided Ross's Island and Cheney's Island. He made an error in judging the oncoming tide, and like the Thoroughfare, this passage is covered in a high tide.