Unlikely Thespians: The Historical Re-enactors of the Royal George Society

Abstract

On a sunny June weekend in 1985, the sparkling waters of Georgian Bay off Midland, Ontario, were full as usual of powerboats and sailing yachts, coursing the waters of one of the finest boating venues in Canada. Cleaving through the middle of their clustered white fibreglass hulls was a dark little wooden schooner of early-nineteenth-century rig, its tan canvas heeling it over in a fresh breeze as it tacked in incongruous Georgian dignity through the wakes of thundering “cigarette boats” and gleaming sailing machines. The schooner was HMS Bee, a replica of a British naval supply schooner of the year 1817, maintained at a nearby historic site by the Province of Ontario. Crewing it were men and women in the quaint, anachronistic garb of Regency-era sailors, as different in their canvas duck trousers, billowy shirts and sensible straw hats from the bikini-clad passengers of the hurtling powerboats as it is possible to imagine. The Bee’s crew were the first members of a newly formed society of historical re-enactors with the ponderous title of “Ship’s Company and Landing Party, His Britannic Majesty’s Ship Royal George.” They were another manifestation of a distinctly North American and European phenomenon: the hobbyists who seek to recreate historical times by placing themselves within those times as accurately costumed and equipped participants.