Governor Pickmore, who succeeded Governor Keats in 1816, was confronted with a very difficult state of things. The high prices which had ruled from 1812 to 1815 had attracted emigrants in large and undesirable numbers. The commercial reaction and foreign competition, aided by the bounties, hit the merchants hard, and in 1815 bankruptcy trod fast on the heels of bankruptcy. In the following winter actual starvation menaced the residents, and many owed their lives to the generosity and energy of Captain David Buchan, commander of H.M.S. _Pike_, who put his men on short rations for the relief of the inhabitants. In an address of thanks, which was presented to him when the crisis was past, his services were gratefully recorded: "At this distressing crisis you afforded us from His Majesty's store a supply in aid of our then alarming and terrible wants. You then, with patriotic feeling, placed the company of the ship which you command on reduced allowance, and yielded to the public distress every alleviation which such means afforded." The lean years were still further saddened by the terrible fire of 1817, which left more than a thousand persons houseless, in the full severity of winter. The wooden houses and narrow streets of St. John's made resistance hopeless, when the flames had once gained a hold. It was estimated that the fire caused a loss of L125,000. The wealthier inhabitants and the home Government gave what relief was possible, and in 1818 the crisis yielded before brighter prospects. Pickmore was the first Governor to reside continuously in the island (where he also died), for his predecessors had sailed away with the fishermen in October to reappear with the beginning of summer. In 1817 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was specially appointed to consider the situation of Newfoundland. The merchants, full as ever of vicious political economy, had two remedies to propose for the admitted distresses. One was the concession of bounties to place them on a level with French and American competition; the other was the removal of the population (then numbering 17,000) to Nova Scotia or Canada. Determined to omit nothing which might make them the derision of history, they added an emphatic opinion that agriculture could never thrive on the island. On the appointment of Governor Pickmore, Lord Bathurst had given him the following instructions: "As the colony has of late years, from the rapid increase of the population, assumed a character totally different from that under which it had been usual previously to consider it, I am most desirious of receiving from you your opinion as to the propriety of introducing any and what change into the system of government which has heretofore prevailed."