At the beginning of 1759 Wolfe was appointed to command the army destined to besiege Quebec.  He immediately submitted Carleton’s name for appointment as quartermaster-general.  Pitt and Ligonier heartily approved.  But the king again refused.  Ligonier went back a second time to no purpose.  Pitt then sent him in for the third time, saying, in a tone meant for the king to overhear:  ’Tell His Majesty that in order to render the General [Wolfe] completely responsible for his conduct he should be made, as far as possible, inexcusable if he should fail; and that whatever an officer entrusted with such a service of confidence requests ought therefore to be granted.’  The king then consented.  Thus began Carleton’s long, devoted, and successful service for Canada, the Empire, and the Crown.

Early in this memorable Empire Year of 1759 he sailed with Wolfe and Saunders from Spithead.  On the 30th of April the fleet rendezvoused at Halifax, where Admiral Durell, second-in-command to Saunders, had spent the winter with a squadron intended to block the St Lawrence directly navigation opened in the spring.  Durell was a good commonplace officer, but very slow.  He had lost many hands from sickness during a particularly cold season, and he was not enterprising enough to start cruising round Cabot Strait before the month of May.  Saunders, greatly annoyed by this delay, sent him off with eight men-of-war on the 5th of May.  Wolfe gave him seven hundred soldiers under Carleton.  These forces were sufficient to turn back, capture, or destroy the twenty-three French merchantmen which were then bound for Quebec with supplies and soldiers as reinforcements for Montcalm.  But the French ships were a week ahead of Durell; and, when he landed Carleton at Isle-aux-Coudres on the 28th of May, the last of the enemy’s transports had already discharged her cargo at Quebec, sixty miles above.

Isle-aux-Coudres, so named by Jacques Cartier in 1535, was a point of great strategic importance; for it commanded the only channel then used.  It was the place Wolfe had chosen for his winter quarters, that is, in case of failure before Quebec and supposing he was not recalled.  None but a particularly good officer would have been appointed as its first commandant.  Carleton spent many busy days here preparing an advanced base for the coming siege, while the subsequently famous Captain Cook was equally busy ‘a-sounding of the channell of the Traverse’ which the fleet would have to pass on its way to Quebec.  Some of Durell’s ships destroyed the French ’long-shore batteries near this Traverse, at the lower end of the island of Orleans, while the rest kept ceaseless watch to seaward, anxiously scanning the offing, day after day, to make out the colours of the first fleet up.  No one knew what the French West India fleet would do; and there was a very disconcerting chance that it might run north and slip into the St Lawrence, ahead of Saunders, in the same way as the French reinforcements