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diff --git a/24808.txt b/24808.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2e5f43d --- /dev/null +++ b/24808.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5067 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, All Afloat, by William Wood + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: All Afloat + A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways + + +Author: William Wood + + + +Release Date: March 11, 2008 [eBook #24808] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALL AFLOAT*** + + +E-text prepared by Al Haines + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 24808-h.htm or 24808-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/8/0/24808/24808-h/24808-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/8/0/24808/24808-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed + in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page + breaks occurred in the original book. For its Index, a page + number has been placed only at the start of that section. + + + + + +Chronicles of Canada + +Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton + +In Thirty-two volumes + +31 + +ALL AFLOAT + +by + +WILLIAM WOOD + +Part IX +National Highways + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: THE VOYAGEURS ON A MISTY MORNING. From a painting by +Verner] + + + + +ALL AFLOAT + +A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways + +by + +WILLIAM WOOD + + + + + +Toronto +Glasgow, Brook & Company +1915 + +Copyright in all Countries subscribing +to the Berne Convention + + + + +TO + +THE PETRYS + + +EACH AND ALL + +IN TOKEN OF + +A FAMILY FRIENDSHIP + +FOUR GENERATIONS STRONG {ix} + +CONTENTS + + Page + + I. A LAND OF WATERWAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 + II. CANOES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 + III. SAILING CRAFT; THE PIONEERS . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 + IV. SAILING CRAFT: UNDER THE FLEURS-DE-LIS . . . . . . 54 + V. SAILING CRAFT: UNDER THE UNION JACK . . . . . . . . 68 + VI. SAILING CRAFT: THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP . . . . . . 82 + VII. SAILING CRAFT: 'FIT TO GO FOREIGN' . . . . . . . . 92 + VIII. STEAMERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 + IX. FISHERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 + X. ADMINISTRATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 + XI. NAVIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 + + INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 + + + + +{xi} + +[Transcriber's note: The page numbers below are those in the original +book. However, in this e-book, to avoid the splitting of paragraphs, +the illustrations may have been moved to preceding or following pages.] + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +THE VOYAGEURS ON A MISTY MORNING . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ + From a painting by Verner. + +THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Facing page_ 12 + By Lorado Taft, in the Chicago Art Institute. + +SHIPS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY . . . . . . . . . . . " 44 + From Winsor's 'America.' + +CHAMPLAIN'S SHIP, THE 'DON DE DIEU' . . . . . . . . " 54 + From the model at the Quebec Tercentenary. + +A FRENCH FRIGATE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . . . . " 64 + From Winsor's 'America.' + +SHIP 'BATAVIA,' 2000 TONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 92 + Built by F.-X. Marquis at Quebec, 1877. Lost + on Inaccessible Island, 1879. From a picture + belonging to Messrs Ross and Co., Quebec. + +TRANSPORT 'BECKWITH' AND BATEAUX, LAKE ONTARIO, 1816 " 136 + From the John Ross Robertson Collection, + Toronto Public Library. + +THE 'ROYAL WILLIAM' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 140 + From the original painting in possession of the + Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. + + + + +{1} + +CHAPTER I + +A LAND OF WATERWAYS + +Canada is the child of the sea. Her infancy was cradled by her +waterways; and the life-blood of her youth was drawn from oceans, lakes, +and rivers. No other land of equal area has ever been so intimately +bound up with the changing fortunes of all its different waters, coast +and inland, salt and fresh. + +The St Lawrence basin by itself is a thing to marvel at, for its mere +stupendous size alone. Its mouth and estuary are both so vast that their +salt waters far exceed those of all other river systems put together. +Its tide runs farther in from the Atlantic than any other tide from this +or any other ocean. And its 'Great Lakes' are appropriately known by +their proud name because they contain more fresh water than all the world +beside. Size for size, this one river system is so pre-eminently first +in the sum of these three attributes that there is no competing second to +be found elsewhere. {2} It forms a class of its own. And well it may, +even for its minor attributes, when the island of Newfoundland at its +mouth exceeds the area of Ireland; when the rest of its mouth could +contain Great Britain; when an arm of the true deep sea runs from Cabot +Strait five hundred miles inland to where the Saguenay river soundings go +down beyond an average of a hundred fathoms; and when, three hundred +miles farther inland still, on an island in an archipelago at the mouth +of the Ottawa, another tributary stream, there stands the city of +Montreal, one of the greatest seaports in the world. + +But mere size is not the first consideration. The Laurentian waters are +much more important for their significance in every stage of national +development. They were the highway to the heart of America long before +the white man came. They remained the same great highway from Cartier to +Confederation--a period of more than three hundred years. It is only +half a century since any serious competition by road and rail began. +Even now, in spite of this competition, they are one of the greatest of +all highways. Nor does their significance stop here. Nature laid out +the St Lawrence basin so that it not only {3} led into the heart of the +continent, but connected with every other system from the Atlantic to the +Pacific and from the Tropics to the Polar sea. Little by little the +pioneers found out that they could paddle and portage the same canoe, by +inland routes, many thousands of miles to all four points of the compass: +eastward to the Atlantic between the Bay of Fundy and New York; westward +till, by extraordinary efforts, they passed up the giant Saskatchewan and +through the mighty ranges that look on the Pacific; southward to the +Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico; northward to Hudson Bay, or down the +Mackenzie to the Arctic ocean. + +As settlement went on and Canada developed westwards along this +unrivalled waterway man tried to complete for his civilized wants what +nature had so well provided for his savage needs. There is a rise of six +hundred feet between Lake St Peter and Lake Superior. So canals were +begun early in the nineteenth century and gradually built farther and +farther west, at a total cost of $125,000,000, till, by the end of the +century, with the opening of the Canadian 'Soo,' the last artificial link +was finished and direct navigation was established between the western +end of Lake {4} Superior at Duluth and the eastern end of the St Lawrence +system at Belle Isle, a distance of no less than 2340 miles. + +But even the mighty St Lawrence, with the far-reaching network of its +connecting systems, is not the whole of Canada's waters. The eastern +coast of Nova Scotia is washed by the Atlantic, and the whole length of +British Columbia by the Pacific. Then, there are harbours, fiords, +lakes, and navigable rivers not directly connected with either of these +coasts or with the wonderfully ramified St Lawrence. So, taking every +factor of size and significance into consideration, it seems almost +impossible to exaggerate the magnitude of the influence which waterways +have always exerted, and are still exerting, on the destinies of Canada. + +Canada touches only one country by land. She is separated from every +other foreign country and joined to every other part of the British +Empire by the sea alone. Her land frontier is long and has given cause +for much dispute in times of crisis. But her water frontiers--her river, +lake, and ocean frontiers--have exercised diplomacy and threatened +complications with almost constant persistence from the first. There +were conflicting rights, claims, and jurisdictions about the waters long +{5} before the Dominion was ever thought of. Discovery, exploration, +pioneering, trade, and fisheries, all originated questions which, +involving mercantile sea-power, ultimately turned on naval sea-power and +were settled by the sword. Each rival was forced to hold his own at sea +or give up the contest. Even in time of peace there was incessant +friction along the many troublous frontiers of the sea. From the Treaty +of Utrecht in 1713 down to the final award at The Hague, nearly two +centuries later, the diplomatic war went steadily on. It is true that +the fishing grounds of Newfoundland were the chief object of contention. +But Canada and Newfoundland are so closely connected by geographical, +imperial, and maritime bonds that no just account of craft and waterways +can be given if any attempt is made to separate such complementary parts +of British North America. They will therefore be treated as one +throughout the present book. + +But, even apart from Newfoundland, the Canadian interests concerned +rather with the water than the land make a most remarkable total. They +include questions of international waterways and water-power, salt and +fresh water fishing, sealing, whaling, inland {6} navigation, naval +armaments on the Great Lakes, canals, drainage, and many more. The +British ambassador who left Washington in 1913 declared officially that +most of his attention had been devoted to Canadian affairs; and most of +these Canadian affairs were connected with the water. Nor was there +anything new in this, or in its implication that Canadian waters brought +Canada into touch with international questions, whether she wished it or +not. The French shore of Newfoundland; the _Alabama_ claims; the San +Juan boundary; the whole purport of the Treaty of Washington in 1871; the +_Trent_ affair of ten years earlier; the Panama Canal tolls of to-day; +the War of 1812; the war which others called the Seven Years' War, but +which contemporary England called the 'Maritime War'; all the invasions +of Canada, all the trade with the Indians, all Spanish, French, Dutch, +British, and American complications--everything, in fact, which helped to +shape Canadian destinies--were inevitably connected with the sea; and, +more often than not, were considered and settled mainly as a part of what +those prescient pioneers of oversea dominion, the great Elizabethan +statesmen, always used to call 'the sea affair.' + +{7} + +Canada, like other countries, may be looked at from many points of view; +but there is none that does not somehow include her oceans, lakes, or +rivers. Her waterways, of course, are only one factor in her history. +But they are a constant factor, everywhere at work, though sometimes +little recognized, and making their influence felt throughout the length +and breadth of the land. If any one would see what the water really +means to Canada, let him compare her history with Russia's. Russia and +Canada are both northern countries and both continental, with many +similarities in natural resources. But their extremely different forms +of government are not so unlike each other as are their differing +relations with the sea. The unlikeness of the two peoples accounts for a +good deal; but this only emphasizes the maritime character of Canada. +Russia is essentially an empire of the land. Canada is the greatest link +between the oceans which unite the Empire of the Sea. + +Take any aspect of sea-power, naval or mercantile, and British interest +in it is at once apparent. Take the mere statistics of tonnage--tonnage +built, tonnage afloat, tonnage armed. The British Navy has over a third +of the world's effective naval tonnage; the British Empire {8} has nearly +half of the whole world's mercantile marine; and the United Kingdom alone +builds more than three-fifths of the world's new tonnage every year. +When all the other elements of sea-power are taken into +consideration--the people who are directly dependent on the sea, the +values constantly afloat, the credits involved, the enormous advantages +enjoyed, and the clinching fact that British naval defeat means disaster +and disaster means ruin--when all this is brought into the reckoning, it +is safe to say that the combined maritime interests of the British Empire +practically equal those of all the rest of the world put together. When +it is also remembered that Canada, itself a land of waterways, contains a +third of the total area of the Empire, and lies between the Atlantic and +Pacific oceans, the significance of these facts is placed beyond a doubt. + +Take a very different illustration--the speech of Canada to-day--and the +significance is still the same. We have so many sea terms in our +ordinary English speech that we almost forget that they are sea terms at +all till we compare them with corresponding idioms in other languages. +Then we realize that only the Dutch, the Finns, and the Scandinavians can +{9} approach the English-speaking peoples in the common use of sea terms. +Other foreigners employ different phrasing altogether. Their landsmen +never 'clear the decks for action,' are never 'brought up with a round +turn,' or even 'taken aback,' as if by the wind on the wrong side. They +never have 'three sheets in the wind,' even when they do get 'half seas +over.' They don't 'throw a man overboard,' even when the man is one of +those unfortunates who is apt to get 'on his beam ends.' The facetious +'don't speak to the man at the wheel' and the cautious 'you'd better not +sail so close to the wind' have no exact equivalents for the Slav or +Latin man in the street. + +These, and many more, are common expressions which Anglo-Canadians share +with the stay-at-home type of Englishman. But the special point is that, +like the American, the Canadian is still more nautical than the +Englishman in his everyday use of sea terms. 'So long!' in the sense of +good-bye is a seaport valediction commoner in Canada than in England. +Canadians go 'timber-cruising' when they are looking for merchantable +trees; they used to understand what 'prairie schooners' were out West; +and even now they always 'board' a train wherever it may {10} be. But +even more remarkable are the sea terms universally current among the +French Canadians, who come from the seafaring branch of a race of +landsmen. Under the French regime the army officers used to say they +felt as if they were on board a man-of-war as long as they stayed in +Canada. The modern Parisian may think the same to-day when he is told +how to steer his way about the country roads by the points of the +compass. The word _lanterne_ is unknown, for the nautical _fanal_ +invariably takes its place. The winter roads are marked out by 'buoys' +(_balises_), and if you miss the 'channel' between them you may 'founder' +(_caler_) and then become a 'derelict' (completely _degrade_). You must +_embarquer_ into a carriage and _debarquer_ out of it. A cart is +_radou'ee_, as if repaired in a dockyard. Even a well-dressed woman is +said to be _bi'n gre-yee_, that is, she is 'fit to go foreign.' Horses +are not tied but moored (_amarres_); enemies are reconciled by being +re-moored (_ramarres_); and the Quebec winter is supposed to begin with a +'broadside' of snow on November 25 (_la bordee de la Sainte-Catherine_). + +No wonder Canadian French and English speech is full of sea terms. Even +when the {11} Canadians themselves forget, as they are very apt to do, +the indispensable naval side of sea-power, they can account for most +kinds of nauticality by their economic history, which all depended, +directly or indirectly, down to the smallest detail, on the mercantile +marine--especially if we give the name of mercantile marine its +justifiable extension so as to cover all the craft that ply on inland +waterways as well as those that cross the sea. It is calculated at the +present day that it is as easy to move a hundred tons by water as ten +tons by rail or one ton by road; and this rule, in spite of many local +exceptions, is fairly correct in practice, especially as distances +increase. Now, Canada is a country of great distances; and by land she +once was in nearly every part, and she still is in a few parts, a country +of obstructive wilds. What, then, must have been the advantage of water +carriage over land carriage when there was neither road nor rail? As +even pack-horses were not available in the early days, and good roads +were few and only established by very slow degrees, it is well within the +mark to say that the sum-total of advantage in favour of water over land +carriage, up to a time which old men can remember, must have been at +least a thousand to one. + +{12} + +It would be natural to suppose that some knowledge of the sea was widely +diffused among the British peoples in general and Canadians in +particular. But this is far from being the case. Though there is three +times as much sea as land in the world, it is safe to say that there is +three hundred times as much knowledge of the land as there is of the sea. +The ways of the sea are strange to most people in every country, +excepting Norway and Newfoundland. Seamen have always been somewhat of a +class apart, though they are less so now. Ignorance of everything to do +with the water is exceedingly common, even in England and Canada. The +British mercantile marine is one of the biggest commercial enterprises of +all time. It is of very great importance to Canada. It is absolutely +vital to England. Yet it is less understood among the general public +than any other kind of business that is of national concern. Some people +even think that the mercantile marine differs from every other kind of +business in being under the special care of the government. They are +probably misled by the term 'Merchant Service,' which, when spelt with +capital letters, has a very official look and reminds them of the two +great fighting 'services,' the Army and the Navy. In reality {13} the +merchant service is no more a government service than any other kind of +trade is. + +[Illustration: THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKES By Lorado Taft, in the Chicago Art +Institute] + +Ignorance about the Navy is commoner still. Canadian history is full of +sea-power, but Canadian histories are not. It was only in 1909, a +hundred and fifty years after the Battle of the Plains, that the first +attempt was made to introduce the actual naval evidence into the story of +the Conquest by publishing a selection from the more than thirty thousand +daily entries made in the logs of the men-of-war engaged in the three +campaigns of Louisbourg, Quebec, and Montreal. Yet there were twice as +many sailors under Saunders as there were soldiers under Wolfe, and the +fleet that carried them was the greatest single fleet which, up to that +time, had ever appeared in any waters. How many people, even among +Canadians born and bred, know that there have already been two local +Canadian navies of different kinds and two Canadian branches of Imperial +navies oversea; that in 1697 a naval battle was fought in the waters of +Hudson Bay, opposite Port Nelson; that seigneurial grants during the +French regime made reservations of man-of-war oak for the service of the +crown; that while Bougainville, the famous French circumnavigator, was +trying to keep Wolfe {14} out of Quebec, Captain Cook, the famous British +circumnavigator, was trying to help him in; that there was steamer +transport in the War of 1812; that the first steam man-of-war to fire a +shot in action was launched on the St Lawrence four years before the +first railway in Canada was working; that just before Confederation more +than half the citizens of the ancient capital were directly dependent on +ship-building and nearly all the rest on shipping; and that the Canadian +fisheries of the present day are the most important in the world? As a +matter of fact, there are very few Canadians or other students of +Canadian history who fully realize what Canada owes to the sea. How many +know that her 'sea affairs' may have begun a thousand years ago, if the +Norsemen came by way of Greenland; that she has a long and varied naval +history, with plenty of local privateering by the way; that the biggest +sailing vessel to make a Scottish port in the heyday of the clippers was +Canadian-built all through; that Canada built another famous vessel for a +ruling prince in India; that most Arctic exploration has been done in +what are properly her waters; that she was the pioneer in ocean +navigation entirely under steam; and that she is now beginning to revive, +with steam and steel, the {15} shipbuilding industry with which she did +so much in the days of mast and sail and wooden hulls? + +No exhaustive Canadian 'water history' can possibly be attempted here. +That would require a series of its own. But at least a first attempt +will now be made to give some general idea of what such a history would +contain in fuller detail: of the kayaks and canoes the Eskimos and +Indians used before the white man came, and use to-day, in the +ever-receding wilds; of the various small craft moved by oar and sail +that slowly displaced the craft moved only by the paddle; of the sailing +vessels proper, and how they plied along Canadian waterways, and out +beyond, on all the Seven Seas; of the steamers, which, in their earlier +pioneering days, shed so much forgotten lustre on Canadian enterprise; of +those 'Cod-lands of North America' and other teeming fisheries which the +far-seeing Lord Bacon rightly thought 'richer treasures than the mines of +Mexico and of Peru'; of the Dominion's trade and government relations +with the whole class of men who 'have their business in great waters'; +and, finally, of that guardian Navy, without whose freely given care the +'water history' of Canada could never have been made at all. + + + + +{16} + +CHAPTER II + +CANOES + +What the camel is to desert tribes, what the horse is to the Arab, what +the ship is to the colonizing Briton, what all modern means of +locomotion are to the civilized world to-day, that, and more than that, +the canoe was to the Indian who lived beside the innumerable waterways +of Canada. The Indian went fishing, hunting, campaigning, and +sometimes even whaling, in his bark canoe. Jacques Cartier found +Indians fishing in the Gulf of St Lawrence and sleeping under their +upturned canoes, as many a white and Indian has slept since that +long-past summer of 1534. Every succeeding explorer made use of the +Indian canoe, up to the time of Mackenzie,[1] who paddled north to the +Arctic in 1789, along the mighty river which bears his name; and who, +four years {17} later, closed the age of great discoveries by crossing +the Great Divide to the westward-flowing Fraser and reaching the +Pacific by way of its tributary, the Blackwater, an Indian trail +overland, and the Bella Coola. Mackenzie had found the canoe route; +and when he painted the following record on a fiord rock he was +bringing centuries of arduous endeavour to a befitting close: +'Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the 22nd of July, 1793.' +This crowning achievement with paddle and canoe seems very far away +from the reader of the twentieth century. Yet Francois Beaulieu, one +of Mackenzie's voyageurs, only died in 1872, and was well known to many +old North-Westers who are still alive. + +The Indian birch-bark canoe is pre-eminently characteristic of Canada. +But it is not the most primitive type of small craft; and it was often +superseded for various purposes by the more advanced types introduced +by the whites. There are three distinct types of small craft all the +world over. Like everything else, they have followed the invariable +order of evolution, from the simple to the complex. First came the +simple log, which served the earliest man to cross some little stretch +of water by the aid of pole or paddle. Next came {18} the union of +several logs, which formed the clumsy but more stable raft. Then some +prehistoric genius found that the more a log was hollowed out the +better it would float; and so the dug-out was invented. Log, raft, and +dug-out all belong to the first and simplest type, in which there are +no artificial parts to fit together. The second type is exemplified by +the birch-bark canoe, which has three parts in its frame--gunwale, +cross-bars, and ribs--and a fourth part, the skin, to complete it. The +third type is distinguished from the second by its keel, as clearly as +vertebrate animals are distinguished from invertebrates by their +backbone. The common keeled boat, with all its variations, represents +this third and, so far, final type. All three types have played their +parts in Canada, both jointly and separately, and all three play their +parts to-day. But they are best understood if taken one by one. + +First, then, the log, the raft, and the dugout canoe. Any one watching +a 'log drive' to-day can see the shantymen afloat in much the same way, +though for a very different purpose, as their remotest human ancestors +hundreds of thousands of years ago. The raft, like the log, is now a +self-carrying cargo, not a passenger craft. But there it is, much as +it {19} always was. Indeed, it is simpler now than it used to be some +years ago, before the days of tugs and railways. Then it was craft and +cargo in one. It was steered by immense oars, as sailing vessels were +before the days of rudders; other gigantic oars were occasionally used +to propel it, like an ancient galley; it carried loose-footed square +sails, like the ships of Tarshish; and its crew lived aboard in shacks +and other simple kinds of shelter, like the earliest Egyptian cabins +ages before the captivity of Israel. + +The dug-out has the humblest, though the longest, history of any craft +the hand of man has ever shaped. At one time it rose to the dignity of +being the liner and the man-of-war of the Pacific coast; for the giant +trees there favoured a kind of dug-out that the savage world has never +seen elsewhere, except in certain parts of equatorial Africa. At +another time, only a century or two ago, dug-outs of twenty feet or so +were used in trade between the St Lawrence and the Hudson. They were +of white pine, red or white cedar, or of tulip tree; and their crews +poled standing or paddled kneeling, for they had no thwarts. They +carried good loads, went well, with their canoe-shaped ends, and lasted +ten or twelve {20} years if tarred or painted. They were, indeed, +one-piece canoes, which they had a perfect right to be, as the word +canoe comes from the name the West Indian natives gave their dug-outs +when questioned by Columbus. Nowadays the dug-out is generally used +for the dirtier work of 'longshore fisheries. It has lost its elegance +of form, and may be said to have reverted to a lower type. But this +reversion only serves the better to remind the twentieth century of +what all sorts of craft were like, not twenty, but two hundred, +centuries ago. + +Secondly comes the Indian bark canoe, so justly famous in the history, +romance, and poetry of Canada. As in the case of other craft, its +form, size, and material have never been what we call 'standardized.' +Indians living outside the birch belt had to use inferior kinds of +bark. But the finest type was always made, and is still made, with +birch-bark. At least three kinds of tree are necessary for the best +results: the birch for the skin, the fir to caulk it with, and the +cedar for the sewing fibres and the frame. Only a single tool is +needed--a knife; and many a good canoe was built before the whites +brought metal knives from Europe. The Indian looks out for the {21} +biggest, soundest, and smoothest birch tree in his neighbourhood. He +prefers to strip it in the early summer, when the bark is supple with +the sap. Sap is as good for the bark as it is bad for the woodwork of +canoes and every other kind of craft. The soft inside of the bark is +always scraped as clean as a tanner scrapes a hide. If the Indian has +to build with dry or frozen bark he is careful to use hot water in +stripping the trunk, and he warms the bark again for working. Of +course, it is a great advantage to have as few strips as possible, +since every seam must first be sewn together by the squaws and then +gummed over. Occasionally a tree will be found big and suitable enough +to yield a single strip from which a seamless twenty-footer can be +built. But this is very rare. + +The next thing is the frame--the gunwale, ribs, and cross-bars. Where +many canoes are building there is generally some sort of model round +which the ribs are bent. But a skilled Indian can dispense with any +model when making the ribs with every requisite degree of curve, from +the open ribs amidships, where the bottom is nearly flat, to the close +ribs at the ends, where the shape becomes halfway between the letter +'U' and {22} the letter 'V.' The gunwale is quite the most important +part of the canoe, as it holds all the other parts together and serves +some of the constructional purposes of a keel. The voyageurs, +recognizing this, call it _le maitre_. It is laid on the ends of the +ribs, which are made fast to it. Then the frame is completed by the +three or more cross-bars, which keep the two sides of the gunwale from +spreading apart. After this the birch-bark skin is stretched on the +frame as tightly as possible, turned in over the gunwale, and clamped +on there by the _faux maitre_ or super-gunwale. The two ends, both as +sharp as an ordinary bow, are then sewn together by a sort of +criss-cross fibre lacing, and every hole or seam in the bark is well +gummed with melted rosin. The finishing touches are equally important, +each in its own way. Thin boards are laid in lengthwise, either +between the ribs and the skin or over the ribs, so as to protect the +bark bottom from being injured by the cargo. The ends of the canoe are +reinforced inside by the Indian equivalent for a collision bulkhead. +This bulkhead sometimes rises well above the gunwale and is carved like +a figurehead, which accounts for its voyageur name of _le p'ti' +bonhomme_. A third finishing touch, {23} very common in earlier days, +is the decoration of the outsides of both ends, which used to rise with +a sharp sheer, and sometimes actually curved back. The usual +decorations here were totem signs, generally made of porcupine quills, +dyed in many colours, and serving the original purpose of a coat of +arms. + +The familiar shape has never been greatly varied, though some canoes +are built on finer lines for speed, and others on fuller lines for +carrying cargo. But there has always been plenty of variety in size +and material. The smallest canoe would hardly hold two persons, and +could be carried in one hand. The big war canoes would hold more than +twenty well-armed paddlers and required four men to carry them. The +very biggest canoe probably did not exceed forty feet in length, six in +breadth, and two in depth amidships. Fifty men or five tons of cargo +could have been carried in it. But perhaps one quite so large was +never built. When white cedar and birch were not to be had, all sorts +of substitutes were used. Any roots with tough fibres would do for the +sewing, and any light and tough wood served its turn as a more or less +efficient substitute for the white cedar framing. But elm and other +alternative barks {24} were all bad. The elm bark was used inside out, +because the outside was too rough and brittle for the bottom of a +canoe. It made dull paddling and never lasted the whole of a hard +season, unlike the birch-bark, which sometimes had a life of six or +seven years. The most modern material is canvas, which is generally +painted red or green. It is light, easily repaired, and has much to +recommend it, though trappers think it gives a taint which scares their +game away. The paddles were and are of all shapes and sizes, long and +short, broad and narrow, spoon-blade and square; and they were and are +made of all kinds of wood, from the lightest spruce to the much heavier +but handsomer bird's-eye maple. Sails were and are only used with +light winds dead aft, and not often in birch-barks even then, because +there is no 'stiffness' without a keel. + +There were skin as well as bark canoes among the Indians. But the +typical skin canoe is the Eskimo kayak. This is a shuttle-shaped +craft, about fifteen feet long and just wide enough to let its single +paddler sit flat on the bottom. It differs from the Indian canoe in +being entirely decked over. The skin of the grey seal, when that best +of canoe skins can be found, is carefully sewn, so as to be quite {25} +waterproof, and then stretched as tightly as a drumhead all over the +frame, except for the little 'well' where the Eskimo sits with his +double-bladed paddle. As he tucks himself in so closely that water +cannot enter he does not fear to be capsized, for he can right himself +with a sweep of his paddle. Kayaks are very light and handy, as the +frame is made either of whalebone or spruce. The oomiak is the +Eskimo's family boat and cargo carrier, flat-bottomed, not decked in, +and sometimes big enough for twenty people with their gear. It is made +of much the same materials. + +The white man's canoes, so well known--outside of Canada--as 'Canadian +canoes,' are partly true canoes and partly a cross between canoes and +boats. The fact that the skin is not made of bark or hide, but of +canvas, wood, or metal, and the further innovation that machinery is +freely used, make no essential difference, provided always that there +is no semblance of a keel. But once the keel is introduced the whole +constructional idea is changed and the ways of savages are left behind. +A first-rate keeled canoe, built of white cedar, brass shod and copper +fastened, fitted with air tanks and life-line, a lateen sail and +portage handles, is the very perfection {26} of a handy little cruiser +for all sorts of inland waters. One like this, but built of basswood, +proved quite serviceable after more than ten years' work, in the course +of which it covered several thousand miles along the Lower St Lawrence, +where the seas are often rough and the low-tide landings always hard. + +But all similar craft, though looking like canoes afloat, are no more +like the true canoes and kayaks in their constructional detail than a +bird is like a butterfly. The keel makes all the difference. +Everything in naval architecture springs from and is related to the +keel. 'Laying the keel' means beginning the ship in the only possible +way, and 'two keels to one' is an expression which every one +understands as meaning a naval preponderance in that proportion. The +keel is to the ribs of a ship exactly what the backbone is to the ribs +of a man, and any craft built up from a keel, no matter how small and +simple it may be, belongs to the third and apparently final type of +craft, which is as far ahead of the canoe type as that is ahead of the +dug-out, raft, and log. + +An intermediate type that once did much service, and still does a +little, is the white man's flat-bottomed boat, which could be {27} +paddled, rowed, or sailed, according to build and circumstances. The +common punt is the best known form of it; the dory by far the handiest +all round; the cargo barge the biggest; and the old-fashioned 'bateau' +the most characteristically Canadian. The modern 'bateau' is to be +found only among keeled sailing craft. But the old 'bateau,' which +Wolfe's local transport officers spelt _battoe_, was more of a rowboat. +It was sharp at both ends, wall-sided, and fitted with oars, poles, and +a square sail. The bottom had some sheer--that is, it was curved up at +each end--but less than the top. Four men rowed, the fifth steered, +and three tons of miscellaneous goods or thirty-five barrels of flour +made a fair cargo. Bateaux like this were the craft in which the +United Empire Loyalists went up the St Lawrence to settle Upper Canada. +Afterwards the size and crew were increased till the average cargo +amounted to about four tons and a half. But the Durham boat, +introduced by American traders from the Mohawk valley, soon became a +successful rival, which was not itself supplanted till canals enabled +still larger craft to pass from one open water to another. The Durham +was larger than the bateau; long, light, and shallow. It had a not +quite flat {28} bottom and a moderate sheer in the sides. The best +bateaux and Durhams were made with strong white oak bottoms and light +fir sides. + +The bark canoe gave place to the boat, step by step, as civilized +intercourse advanced. It disappeared first from the great national +highway of the St Lawrence and the Lakes, where the French began using +bateaux and sailing craft as early as the seventeenth century. During +the eighteenth the boat gained steadily on the canoe, which was more +and more confined to the Indians. The local craft in chief civilized +use on both sides during the fight for Canada was the bateau; and the +best crews then and afterwards were the French-Canadian voyageurs. + +But everywhere beyond the immediate spheres of French and British +influence the canoe was universal. The Great West then began at the +Lakes and the Mississippi, and was a land of wild adventure, rumour, +and extravagant surmise. The map that formed the frontispiece to the +standard authority of the time--Jefferys' _French Dominions in +America_--is full of geographical romance. Once in the Kaministikwia, +the map has no territorial divisions other than those between the {29} +different tribal hunting grounds, each one of which was watered by a +hundred streams and marked by the 'carrying places' where the canoes +had to be 'portaged.' There lived the 'Nation of the Bear' and the +'Nation of the Snake,' whose special totems of course were worked in +coloured quills on every war canoe; and there flowed many a river 'the +course of which is uncertain.' Along the great Assiniboine lay the +'Warrior's track from the River of the West,' and just where the +prairies ran out into the complete unknown there was the vista of a +second Eldorado in the hopeful suggestion that 'Hereabouts are supposed +to be the Mountains of Bright Stones mentioned in the Map of ye Indian +Ochagach.' + +After the Conquest the tide of trade and settlement flowed faster and +faster west; and with the white man's trade and settlement came the +white man's boats. At last, in 1823, Sir George Simpson, the resident +governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, finding that canoe transport was +half as dear again as that done with boats, ordered that boats should +supersede canoes all over the main trade routes of the Company's vast +domain. This was the death-blow to the canoe as a real factor in +Canadian life. From that time on it has been receding {30} farther and +farther, from waterway to waterway, at first before the white man's +boat with oars and sails, and now before his steamer. But in distant +or secluded wilds it lingers still--the same craft to-day that it was +when the Celtic coracles were paddled on the Thames before the Romans +ever heard of England--the horse, the ship, the moving home of those +few remaining nomads whose life is dying with its own. + +The great historic age of inland small craft--the age of dug-out, +bateau, and canoe; the age of Indian, pioneer, and voyageur--was the +eighteenth century, when fresh-water sailing craft were few, when +steamers were unknown, and when savage and civilized men and methods +were mingled with each other in the fur trade over a larger area than +they used in common either before that time or since. The seventeenth +century saw the slow beginnings of this age after Champlain had founded +Quebec in 1608 and had taken the warpath with the Hurons against the +Iroquois. The nineteenth century saw its almost equally slow decline, +which began in 1815, at the close of the war with the United States, +and may be said to have been practically completed with the two +North-West Rebellions of 1870 and 1885. The latter year, indeed, +closed a real {31} epoch with three significant events: the end of the +last Indian and half-breed war in Canada, the completion of the first +trans-continental Canadian railway, and the return from Egypt of the +first and last Canadians to go on an oversea campaign as professed +voyageurs. + +Under the French regime the fur trade reached well past Lake Superior. +Nepigon and the Kaministikwia were the two most important junctions of +routes at the western end of the lake. Under British rule the Montreal +'fur lords' used the 'Grand Portage,' which ends on a bay of Lake +Superior some way south of the modern Fort William. It was a regular +bush road, nearly ten miles long, made to avoid the falls of the +Pigeon. As early as 1783, the year in which King George III first +recognized the United States as an independent power, the fur lords +kept no less than five hundred men in constant work at the height of +the season, during the latter half of August. Horses and oxen were +used later on; but the voyageur himself was the chief beast of burden +here, as everywhere else. There were two kinds of voyageur. One was +the mere merchant carrier, who went from Montreal to the Grand Portage +in big boats of four tons burden having a crew of ten men. These were +the 'pork {32} eaters' or _mangeurs de lard_, who had nothing worse to +face than well-known rapids. The others were a finer breed, the true +and daring coureurs de bois, or pioneers of the bush, who went west in +comparatively light canoes, each carrying not more than a ton and a +half, who hunted their own game, risked a fight with the Indians, and +were to the duller 'pork eaters' what a charger is to a cart-horse or a +frigate to a barge. The regulation portage load was one hundred and +fifty pounds, and many a man was known to carry this weight the whole +ten miles and back within six hours. + +There was need to hurry. Supplies were going west to Lake Winnipeg, up +the Saskatchewan, and even on to Athabaska; while furs were coming down +for the autumn trade to Europe. As a rule the traders were Scottish +and the voyageurs French Canadian. Indians and half-breeds were fairly +common; they manned the canoes in the farther wilds, guided the +pioneers, and did the actual trapping. To speak in terms of modern +transportation: the Indians and their bark canoes produced the raw +material and worked the branch lines; while the voyageurs met them at +the junctions and took the goods down to {33} the head of ocean +navigation, where everything was, of course, trans-shipped for Europe. +The same sort of trade was carried on, in a slightly different way, in +the Maritime Provinces. There are survivals of it still in Labrador. +At the end of July, Nascaupees, some of whom take months to reach their +hunting grounds by paddle and portage, may be seen at Seven Islands, on +the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, where huge modern pulp +mills make paper for the New York press, and where the offing is alive +with transatlantic shipping all season through. + +These inland voyages are as strange to the average Canadian of to-day +as to contemporary Englishmen and Frenchmen. So it is perhaps worth +while to record the ordinary features of what must soon become +altogether a thing of the past. The incidents would be much the same +with every kind of small craft that has served its turn along the +interlocking network of Canadian waterways, whether an old-fashioned +bateau or a Durham boat, a sharp-end dug-out, or a bark canoe. But the +immemorial birch-bark is the best to choose for example, as it preceded +and outlasted every other kind and is the most typically Canadian of +them all. + +{34} + +Before starting, every broken seam and hole must be gummed over. Water +is poured into the canoe and every point of exit marked for gumming. +Loading must be done with unusual care, as the slightest crankness of +such frail craft in such wild waters is likely to prove fatal. Crews +always were their own stevedores, and it was a poor crew that could not +load to perfection in a short five minutes, once the cargo had been +settled. The actual paddling is not difficult to learn, that is, the +paddling required from an ordinary member of the crew. But the man in +the bow and, still more, the man in the stern need the highest kind of +skilful daring to take them safely through. Paddling by oneself also +requires a special touch, only to be learnt by long practice. Even in +dead water it takes some time before a novice can send the canoe +straight ahead when paddling on one side only. As the paddle goes aft +the bow naturally tends to turn towards the other side. The trick of +it consists in counteracting this tendency by a twist of the blade +which brings the inner edge round, aftwise beside the canoe, till the +blade becomes a rectifying rudder as well as a thrusting propeller at +the end of every stroke. When a fall or impassable rapid is reached, +{35} the 'bowman' jumps out before the canoe touches bottom and draws +her safely ashore. He and the 'steersman' then carry her over the +portage, while the rest carry the cargo on their backs. A man's own +weight is a fair load; but with a sling across their foreheads, and +clasped hands behind their heads, strong men have carried twice as much +and more. When a rapid has to be ascended the canoe is lightened as +much as need be, the steel-shod poles are got out, and the bow and +stern paddlers stand up to their work, balancing themselves as easily +as other men would on dry land. + +But it is when a rapid is to be 'run' that the finest skill is shown. +If there is any doubt the steersman walks down to take a good look +first. Then, if necessary, some or all of the cargo is taken out and +portaged to the next 'steady' in the river. Rapids are so common in +some journeys that canoemen think less of them than foxhunters think of +five-barred gates. In most cases a mistake means death; so every nerve +and muscle is kept tensely ready the whole run through. The current +should be 'humoured'; for it does a surprising amount of the work +itself. If rightly headed with the main throw of it the canoe will +{36} naturally tend to seek the deepest and safest channel just as the +body of the water does. Split channels must be met by instant +decision; and it is when picking out the proper one that steerage way +tells. As the pace of the rapid increases, so does the danger; for the +slightest false thrust of a blade is enough to make a canoe swerve or +upset. But, with the expert bowman on the keenest of look-outs and the +course under the knowing touch of the still more expert steersman, a +rapid may be run in perfect safety through racing waves which only just +fail to leap aboard, on roaring water which drowns the human voice so +completely that the bowman can only make use of signals, past rocks and +snags on which a single graze would mean a wreck, and, often the worst +of all, from one wild 'throw' to another with quite a different set and +a wrench of two fierce currents where they meet. + +All the white man's boats used by the voyageurs approximated more or +less to the shape of the canoe: the various kinds of Hudson river +dug-out, the bateau, the 'Durham,' and the 'York,' which last became +the wooden successor of the birch-bark after Governor Simpson's general +inspection of the Hudson's Bay domain. Only the rather {37} barge-like +'Mackinaw' was completely outside this venturesome class. It was a +useful but humdrum cargo boat, laboriously poled along shallow, quiet +waters, or rowed with lumbering sweeps; or sometimes even sailed, when +it shovelled its way through the water with a very safe wind dead aft. + +This completes the tale of Canadian inland small craft that depended on +pole and paddle, oar and towline, and only used a simple sail as an +exceptional thing. But the human interest would not be complete +without some reference to the tours of inspection made by the magnates +of the Hudson's Bay Company. The greatest tours of all were those of +Sir George Simpson, the governor who took charge after the Company +absorbed its warring rival in 1821. In modern business language he +would be called the executive head of the great Canadian fur-trade +'merger.' He was a young promoted clerk, a Scotsman born, with little +experience of the Canadian wilds, but with the natural faculty of rule +and a good deal of diplomacy--the gauntlet in the velvet glove. + +Simpson soon grasped the salient features of the people he had to deal +with and very sensibly made his tours of inspection as much like a {38} +royal progress as he could. Time and money were never neglected: his +'record runs' across the wilderness and the dividends at headquarters +proved that to the full. He was determined to show every one concerned +that thenceforth there was only one governing company, and that he was +its proper representative. Then, as always, London was the general +headquarters. But the Canadian headquarters were at Montreal; and +Simpson fixed what might be called the field headquarters at Norway +House, near the north end of Lake Winnipeg, a commanding strategic +point in the heart of the great fur territories. Here he was always +busy introducing discipline, enforcing a much-needed reduction in the +ration of rum given to the Indians, and reporting home. As voyageurs, +he thought the French Canadians much better than the men of any other +race. 'Canadians preferable to Orkneymen. Orkneymen less expensive +but slow. Less physical strength and spirits. Obstinate if brought +young into the service. Scotch and Irish, when numerous, quarrelsome, +independent, and mutinous.' He introduced fines as a punishment. But +'this will only do for Europeans. A blow is better for Canadians.' On +July 12, 1828, Simpson left York Factory {39} on Hudson Bay for a state +and business progress across the continent to Fort Vancouver on the +Columbia. One of his staff, Archibald Macdonald, wrote an account of +it, called _Peace River: a Canoe Voyage from the Hudson Bay to the +Pacific_. The best of birch-barks were used to ensure speed; though +the birch-bark had already been superseded as a cargo craft. There was +a doctor in the party, which included nine voyageurs to each of the two +canoes. Simpson's departure was the signal for a salute of seven guns, +which was duly repeated at every subsequent fort. The whole population +lined the waterside as the voyageurs struck up one of their old French +folk-songs to beguile the way. The arrival at Norway House was still +more imposing. The Union Jack, with the magic letters 'H. B. C.' on +its fly, was hoisted, to the admiration of all the whites and Indians +from that most important neighbourhood. Simpson's party had landed out +of sight to put on their best clothes; after which they shot through +the gorge at full speed, to the strains of the bagpipes from Simpson's +canoe and bugles from the other. At Fort St James, the central point +of 'New Caledonia,' the approach was made by land. 'Unfurling the +British Ensign, it was given {40} to the guide, who marched first. +After him came the band, consisting of buglers and bagpipers. Next +came the governor, mounted, and behind him Hamlyn and Macdonald, also +on horses. Twenty men loaded like beasts of burden formed the line, +and finally M'Gillivray with his wife and family brought up the rear.' +On the nineteenth day out from York Factory Simpson reached Fort +Langley at the mouth of the Fraser. + + +How far away it all seems now in this new twentieth century! And yet, +as in the case of Alexander Mackenzie, there is a wonderfully intimate +human link connecting that time with our own; for Lord Strathcona was +born before the amalgamation of the rival companies in 1821; he became +the last resident-governor of the Hudson's Bay Company while Francois +Beaulieu, Mackenzie's centenarian voyageur, was still alive; and he +lived until 1914, the year of the Great World War. + + + +[1] For the canoe voyages of Mackenzie, to the Arctic in 1789 and to +the Pacific in 1793, see _Adventurers of the Far North_ and _Pioneers +of the Pacific Coast_ in this Series. + + + + +{41} + +CHAPTER III + +SAILING CRAFT: THE PIONEERS + +When we call Canada a new country in the twentieth century we are apt +to forget that her seafaring annals may possibly go back to the Vikings +of the tenth century, a thousand years ago. Long before William the +Conqueror crossed over from France to England the Vikings had been +scouring the seas, north, south, east, and west. They reached +Constantinople; they colonized Iceland; they discovered Greenland; and +there are grounds for suspecting that the 'White Eskimos' whom the +Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 noted down for report are some of +their descendants. However this may be, there is at least a +probability that the Vikings discovered North America five centuries +before Columbus. The saga of Eric the Red sings of the deeds of Leif +Ericson, who led the discoverers and named the three new countries +Helluland, Markland, and Vineland. Opinions differ as to which {42} of +the four--Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, or New England--are to +be included in the Vikings' three. In any case, the only inevitable +two are Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, with which the subsequent history +of Canada also begins. + +But even if the Vikings never came to Canada at all, their ships could +not be refused a place in any history of sailing craft; for it is the +unique distinction of these famous freelances of the sea to have +developed the only type of ancient and mediaeval hull which is the +admiration of the naval world to-day. The kind of vessel they used in +the tenth century is the craft of most peculiar interest to Canadian +history, though it has never been noticed there except by the merest +landsman's reference. The special type to which this vessel belonged +was already the result of long development. The Vikings had a way of +burying a chief in his ship, over which they heaped a funeral mound. +Very fortunately two of these vessels were buried in blue clay, which +is an excellent preserver of timber; so we are able to see them to-day +in an almost perfect state. The one found in 1880 at the mouth of the +Christiania fjord is apparently a typical specimen, though smaller than +many {43} that are described in the sagas. She is about eighty feet +long, sixteen feet in the beam, and seven feet in total depth +amidships, from the top of the gunwale to the bottom of the keel. The +keel runs into the stem and stern-post with very gentle curves. The +whole of the naval architecture is admirably done. The lines are so +fine that there is almost the least possible resistance to the water +when passing through it. The only point worth criticizing is the +slightness of the connection between the topsides and the body of the +boat. But as this was a warship, carrying little besides live ballast, +such a defect would be minimized. Iron rivets, oak treenails (or +pegs), clinker planking (each plank-edge overlapping the next below +it), admirably proportioned frame, as well as arrangements for +stepping, raising, and lowering the single mast, all show that the +builders knew exactly what they were about. + +The rudder is hung over on the starboard, or 'steer-board,' side and +worked by a tiller. The ropes are made of bark fibre and the planking +is partly fastened to the floors with ties made of tough tree roots. +Only one sail, and that a simple square one, was used. Nothing could +be done with this unless the {44} wind was more or less aft. The sail, +in fact, was centuries behind the hull, which, with the firm grip of +its keel, would have been quite fit for a beat to windward, if the +proper canvas had been carried. The thirty oars were often used, and +to very good purpose, as the easy run of the lines suited either method +of propulsion. The general look of these Viking craft is not unlike +that of a big keeled war canoe, for both ends rise with a sharp sheer +and run to a point. A classical scholar would be irresistibly reminded +of the Homeric vessels, not as they were in reality, but as they appear +in the eager, sea-born suggestions of the Iliad and the Odyssey--long, +sharp, swift, well-timbered, hollow, with many thwarts, and ends curved +high like horns. + +[Illustration: SHIPS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY From Winsor's America] + +Three Viking vessels discovered in a Danish peat-bog probably belong to +the fifth century, thus being fifteen hundred years of age. Yet their +counterparts can still be seen along the Norwegian coast. Such +wonderful persistence, even of such an excellently serviceable type, is +quite unparalleled; and it proves, if proof were needed, that the +Norsemen who are said to have discovered Newfoundland and Nova Scotia +were the finest seamen of their own and many a later time. The way +they planned and built {45} their vessels was the glory of their homes. +The way they manned and armed and fought them was the terror of every +foreign shore. War craft and crew together were the very soul and body +of strength and speed and daring skill, as, with defiant figurehead and +glittering, shield-hung sides, they rode to battle joyously on the wild +white horses of the mediaeval sea. + + +Five centuries more, and the English, another great seafaring people, +first arrived in Canada. Then came increasing swarms of the most +adventurous fishermen of Europe. After these came many competing +explorers and colonizers, all of whose fortunes directly depended on +the sea. + + +Cabot's English crew of eighteen hands is a century nearer to our own +time than Leif Ericson the Norseman was to Cabot's. Yet Cabot himself +preceded Columbus in setting foot on what may fairly be called the +mainland of America when he discovered Canada's eastern coast in 1497. +He cleared from Bristol in May, reached the new regions on June 24, and +returned safe home at the end of July. It was an age of awakening +surmise. The universal question was, which is the way to the golden +{46} East? America was looked upon as a rather annoying obstruction to +proper navigation, though it was allowed to have some incidental +interest of its own. Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in +the same year that Cabot raised St George's Cross over what afterwards +became British territory. Twenty-five years later Magellan found the +back way through behind Cape Horn, and his ship, though not himself, +went round the world. Then, twelve years later still, the French +sailed into the Canadian scene on which they were to play the principal +part for the next two centuries and a quarter. + +Every text-book tells us that Jacques Cartier was the great French +pioneer and explains his general significance in the history of Canada. +But no books explain his peculiar significance from the nautical point +of view, though he came on the eve of the most remarkable change for +the better that was ever made in the art of handling vessels under +sail. He was both the first and the last mediaeval seaman to appear on +Canadian inland waters. Only four years after his discovery of the St +Lawrence, an Englishman, Fletcher of Rye, astonished the seafaring +world of 1539 by inventing a rig with which a ship could beat to +windward with sails trimmed {47} fore and aft. This invention +introduced the era of modern seamanship. But Cartier has another, and +much more personal, title to nautical fame, for he was the first and +one of the best of Canadian hydrographers, and he wrote a book +containing some descriptions worthy of comparison with those in the +official 'Pilots' of to-day. This book, well called his _Brief Recit +et Succincte Narration_, is quite as easy for an Englishman to read in +French as Shakespeare is for a Frenchman to read in English. It +abounds in acute observations of all kinds, but particularly so in its +sailing directions. Compare, for instance, his remarks on Cumberland +Harbour with those made in the latest edition of the _St Lawrence +Pilot_ after the surveys of four hundred years. Or take his few, +exact, and graphic words about Isle-aux-Coudres and compare them with +the entries made by the sailing masters of the British fleet that used +this island as a naval base during the great campaign for the winning +of Canada in 1759. In neither case will Cartier suffer by comparison. +He was captain, discoverer, pilot, and surveyor, all in one; and he +never failed to make his mark, whichever role he undertook. + +Like all the explorers, Jacques Cartier had his {48} troubles with his +crews. The average man of any time cannot be expected to have the +sustained enthusiasm, much less the manifold interest, which inspires +his leader. Nearly every commander of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and +seventeenth centuries had to face mutiny; and, even apart from what +might be called natural causes, men of that time were quite ready to +mutiny for what seem now the most absurd of reasons. Some crews would +not sail past the point of Africa for fear of turning black. Others +were distracted when the wind held for days together while they were +outward bound, lest it might never blow the other way in North America, +and so they would not be able to get back home. The ships, too, often +gave as much trouble as the men. They were far better supplied with +sails and accommodation than the earlier Viking ships had been; but +their hulls were markedly inferior. The Vikings, as we have seen, +anticipated by centuries some of the finest models of the modern world. +The hulls of Cabot, Columbus, and Cartier were broader in the beam, +much bluffer in the bow, besides being full of top-hamper on the deck. +Nothing is known about Cabot's vessel except that she must have been +very small, probably less than fifty tons, because the crew numbered +{49} only eighteen and there was no complaint of being short-handed. +Cartier's _Grande Hermine_ was more than twice as large, and, if the +accepted illustrations and descriptions of her may be relied upon, she +probably was not unlike a smaller and simplified _Santa Maria_, the +ship which bore Columbus on his West Indian voyage of 1492. Such +complete and authentic specifications of the _Santa Maria_ still remain +that a satisfactory reproduction of her was made for the Chicago +World's Fair of 1893. Her tonnage was over two hundred. Her length of +keel was only sixty feet; length of ship proper, ninety-three; and +length over all, one hundred and twenty-eight. This difference between +length of keel and length over all was not caused by anything like the +modern overhang of the hull itself, which the Vikings had anticipated +by hundreds and the Egyptians by thousands of years, but by the +box-like forecastle built over the bows and the enormous half and +quarter decks jutting out aft. These top-hampering structures +over-burdened both ends and produced a regular see-saw, as the Spanish +crew of 1893 found to their cost when pitching horribly through a +buffeting head sea. The _Santa Maria_, like most 'Spaniards,' had a +lateen-rigged mizzen. {50} But the _Grande Hermine_ had no mizzen, +only the square-rigged mainmast, foremast, and bowsprit. The bowsprit +of those days was a mast set at an angle of forty-five; and it +sometimes, as in the _Grande Hermine_, carried a little upright branch +mast of its own. + +Many important changes occurred in the nautical world during the two +generations between the days of Jacques Cartier and those of Champlain. +The momentous change in trimming sails, already referred to, came +first, when Fletcher succeeded in doing what no one had ever done +before. There can be no doubt that the lateen sail, which goes back at +least to the early Egyptians, had the germ of a fore-and-after in it. +But the germ was never evolved into a strong type fit for tacking; and +no one before Fletcher ever seems to have thought it possible to lay a +course at all unless the wind was somewhere abaft the beam. So England +can fairly claim this one epoch-making nautical invention, which might +be taken as the most convenient dividing-line between the sailing craft +of ancient and of modern times. + +The French had little to do with Canada for the rest of the sixteenth +century. Jacques Carrier's best successor as a hydrographer was {51} +Roberval's pilot, Saint-Onge, whose log of the voyage up the St +Lawrence in 1542 is full of information. He more than half believes in +what the Indians tell him about unicorns and other strange beasts in +the far interior. And he thinks it likely that there is unbroken land +as far as Tartary. But, making due allowance for his means of +observation, the claim with which he ends his log holds good regarding +pilotage: 'All things said above are true.' + +The English then, as afterwards, were always encroaching on the French +wherever a seaway gave them an opening. In 1578 they were reported to +be lording it off Newfoundland, though they had only fifty vessels +there, as against thirty Basque, fifty Portuguese, a hundred Spanish, +and a hundred and fifty French. Their numbers and influence increased +year by year, till, in 1600, they had two hundred sail manned by eight +thousand men. They were still more preponderant farther north and +farther south. Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and other Englishmen left +their mark on what are now Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada. Hudson also +sailed up the river that bears his name, and thus did his share towards +founding the English colonies that soon began their ceaseless {52} +struggle with New France. But even before his time, which was just +after Champlain had founded Quebec, two great maritime events had +encouraged the English to aim at that command of the sea which they +finally maintained against all rivals. In 1579 Sir Francis Drake +sailed completely round the world. He was the first sea captain who +had ever done so, for Magellan had died in mid-career fifty-seven years +before. This notable feat was accompanied by his successful capture of +many Spanish treasure ships. Explorer, warrior, enricher of the realm, +he at once became a national hero. Queen Elizabeth, a patriot ruler +who always loved a hero for his service to the state, knighted Drake on +board his flagship; and a poet sang his praises in these few, fit +words, which well deserve quotation wherever the sea-borne English +tongue is known: + + The Stars of Heaven would thee proclaim, + If men here silent were. + The Sun himself could not forget + His fellow traveller. + +Nine years later the English Navy fought the unwieldy Spanish Armada +into bewildered flight and chased it to its death round the hostile +coast-line of the British Isles. + +{53} + +Meanwhile the quickened interest in 'sea affairs' had led to many +improvements in building, rigging, and handling vessels. Surprising as +it may seem, most of these improvements were made by foreigners. Still +more surprising is the fact that British nautical improvements of all +kinds, naval as well as mercantile, generally came from abroad during +the whole time that the British command of the sea was being won or +held. Belated imitation of the more scientific foreigner was by no +means new, even in the Elizabethan age. It had become a national habit +by the time the next two centuries were over. English men, not English +vessels, won the wars. The Portuguese and Spaniards had larger and +better vessels than the English at the beginning of the struggle, just +as the French had till after Trafalgar, and the Americans throughout +the War of 1812. Even Sir Walter Raleigh was belated in speaking of +the 'new' practice of striking topmasts, 'a wonderful ease to great +ships, both at sea and in the harbour.' + + + + +{54} + +CHAPTER IV + +SAILING CRAFT: UNDER THE FLEURS-DE-LIS[1] + +Every one knows that when Champlain stood beside Lake Huron, wondering +if it had a western outlet towards Cathay, he was discovering the Great +Lakes, those fresh-water seas whose area far exceeds the area of Great +Britain. Every one knows that he became the 'Father of New France' +when he founded Quebec in 1608; and that he was practically the whole +civil and military government of Canada in its infant days. But few +know that he was also a captain in the Royal Navy of France, an expert +hydrographer, and the first man to advocate a Panama canal. And fewer +still remember that he lived in an age which, like our own, had {55} +its 'record-breaking' events at sea. Baffin's 'Farthest North,' +reached in 1616, was latitude 77 deg. 45'. This remained an unbroken +record for two hundred and thirty-six years. Champlain's own voyage +from Honfleur to Tadoussac in eighteen days broke all previous records, +remained itself unbroken for a century, and would be a credit to a +sailing ship to-day. His vessel was the _Don de Dieu_, of which he +left no exact description, but which was easily reproduced for the +tercentenary of Quebec in 1908 from the corresponding French merchant +vessels of her day. She was about a hundred tons and could be handled +by a crew of twenty. The nearest modern equivalent of her rig is that +of a barque, though she carried a little square sail under her bowsprit +and had no jibs, while her spanker had a most lateenish look. Her +mainsail had a good hoist and spread. She had three masts and six +sails altogether. The masts were 'pole,' that is, all of one piece. +The tallest was seventy-three feet from step to truck, that is, from +where the mast is stepped in over the keel to the disc that caps its +top. She carried stone ballast; her rudder was worked by a tiller, +with the help of a simple rope tackle to take the strain; and the poop +contained three cabins. + +[Illustration: CHAMPLAIN'S SHIP, The _DON DE DIEU_. From the mdoel at +the Quebec Tercentenary] + +{56} + +Not long after the death of Champlain (1635) there was a world-wide +advance in shipbuilding. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that +the modern school of wooden sailing-ship designers began with Phineas +Pett, who was one of a family that served England well for nearly two +hundred years. He designed the _Sovereign of the Seas_, which brought +English workmanship well to the front in the reign of Charles I. She +surpassed all records, with a total depth from keel to lanthorn of +seventy-six feet, which exceeds the centre line, from keel to captain's +bridge, of modern 'fliers' with nearly twenty times her tonnage. The +Cromwellian period also gave birth to a most effective fleet, which in +its turn was succeeded by the British fleets that won the Second +Hundred Years' War with France and decided the destiny of Canada. This +long war, or series of wars, begun against Louis XIV in the seventeenth +century, only ended with the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo. La Hogue in +1692, Quebec in 1759, and Trafalgar in 1805 were three of the great +deciding crises. La Hogue and Trafalgar were purely naval; while +Quebec was the result of a joint expedition in which the naval forces +far exceeded the military. The general effect of this whole Second +Hundred {57} Years' War was to confirm the British command of the sea +for another century. + +But the French designs in shipbuilding were generally better than the +English. The French, then and afterwards, were more scientific, the +English more rule-of-thumb. Yet when it came to actual handling under +sail, especially in action, the positions were reversed. The English +seafaring class was far larger in proportion to population and it had +far more practice at sea. Besides, England had more and more at stake +as her oversea trade and empire extended, till at last she had no +choice, as an imperial power, but either to win or die. + +The French kingdom rose to its zenith under Louis XIV, whose great +minister, Colbert, did all he could to foster the Navy, the mercantile +marine, and the French colonies in Canada. But the fates were against +him. France was essentially a landsman's country. It had several land +frontiers to attack or defend, and it used its Navy merely as an +adjunct to its Army. Moreover, its people were not naturally so much +inclined to colonize over-sea possessions as the British, and its +despotic colonial system repressed all free development. The result +was that the French dominions in America never reached a population of +one {58} hundred thousand. This was insignificant compared with the +twelve hundred thousand in the British colonies; while the disparity +was greatly increased by the superior British aptness for the sea. + +French Canada had all the natural advantages which were afterwards +turned to such good account by the British. It had timber and +population along a magnificently navigable river system that tapped +every available trade route of the land. Had there only been a demand +for ships New France might have also enjoyed the advantage of employing +the scientific French naval architects. But the seafaring habit did +not exist among the people as a whole. A typical illustration is to be +found in the different views the French and British colonists took of +whaling. The British on Nantucket Island first learned from the +Indians, next hired a teacher, in the person of Ichabod Paddock, a +famous whaling master from Cape Cod, and then themselves went after +whale with wonderful success. The French in Canada, like the British +on Nantucket Island, had both whales and whaling experts at their very +doors. The Basques kept a station at Tadoussac, and whales were seen +at Quebec. But, instead of hiring Basques to teach them, {59} the +French in Canada petitioned the king for a subsidy with which to hire +the Basques to do the whaling for them. Of course the difference +between the two forms of government counts for a good deal--and it is +not at all likely that any paternal French ruler, on either side of the +Atlantic, ever wished to encourage a sea-roving spirit in Canada. But +the difference in natural and acquired aptitude counts for more. + +The first Canadian shipbuilding was the result of dire necessity. +Pont-Grave put together a couple of very small vessels in 1606 at Port +Royal so that he might cruise about till he met some French craft +homeward bound. Shipbuilding as an industry arose long after this. +The _Galiote_, a brigantine of sorts, was built by the Sovereign +Council and launched at Quebec in 1663. But it was the intendant Talon +who began the work in proper fashion. In 1665, immediately after his +arrival, he sent men 'timber-cruising' in every likely direction. +Their reports were most encouraging. Suitable timber was plentiful +along the waterways, and the cost was no more than that of cutting and +rafting it down to the dockyards. Talon reported home to Colbert. But +official correspondence was too slow. At his {60} own cost he at once +built a vessel of a hundred and twenty tons. She was on the most +approved lines, and thus served as a model for others. A French +Canadian built an imitation of her the following year. Talon vainly +tried to persuade this enterprising man to form a company and build a +ship of four hundred tons for the trade with the West Indies. Three +smaller vessels, however, successfully made the round trip from Quebec +to the West Indies, on to France, and back again, in 1670. In 1671 +Colbert laid aside for Talon a relatively large sum for official +shipbuilding and for the export of Canadian wood to France. The next +year Talon had a five-hundred-tonner on the stocks, while preparations +were being made for an eight-hundred-tonner, which would have been a +'mammoth' merchant vessel in contemporary France. Before he left +Canada he had the satisfaction of reporting that three hundred and +fifty hands, out of a total population of only seven thousand souls, +were engaged in the shipyards.[2] But there were very few at sea. + +The first vessel to sail the Great Lakes was built by La Salle seventy +years after their discovery by Champlain. This was _Le Griffon_, {61} +which, from Father Hennepin's description, seems to have been a kind of +brig. She was of fifty or sixty tons and apparently carried a real +jib. She was launched at the mouth of Cayuga Creek in the Niagara +peninsula in 1679. Her career was interesting, but short and +disastrous. She sailed west across Lake Erie, on through Lakes St +Clair and Huron, and reached Green Bay on Lake Michigan, where she took +in a cargo of fur. On her return voyage she was lost with all hands. + +In the eighteenth century shipbuilding in Quebec continued to flourish. +The yards at the mouth of the St Charles had been enlarged, and even +then there was so much naval construction in hand that private merchant +vessels could not be built as fast as they were wanted. In 1743 some +French merchants proposed building five or six vessels for the West +India trade, besides twenty-five or thirty more for local trade among +the West Indian islands. A new shipyard and a dry-dock were hurriedly +built; and there was keen competition for ship-carpenters. In 1753 +_L'Algonkin_, a frigate of seventy-two guns, was successfully launched. +The shipwrights experimented freely with Canadian woods, of which the +white oak proved the best. But the Canadian-built vessels for {62} +transatlantic trade never seem to have equalled in number those that +came from France. + +The restrictions on colonial trade were rigidly enforced; no +manufacture of goods was allowed in the colonies, and no direct trade +except with France and French possessions. Canada imported +manufactured goods and exported furs, timber, fish, and grain. The +deep-water tonnage required for Canada was not over ten or twelve +thousand, distributed among perhaps forty vessels on the European route +and twenty more that only visited the French West Indies. A complete +round trip usually meant a cargo of manufactures from France to Canada, +a cargo of timber, fish, and grain from Canada to the West Indies, and +a third cargo--of sugar, molasses, and rum--from the West Indies home +to France. Quite half the vessels, however, returned direct to France +with a Canadian cargo. Louisbourg was a universal port of call, the +centre of a partly contraband coasting trade with the British +Americans, and a considerable importing point for food-stuffs from +Quebec. + +French commerce on the sea had, however, a mighty rival. The +encroaching British were working their way into every open water in +America. The French gallantly disputed their advance in Hudson Bay and +won several {63} actions, of which the best victory was Iberville's in +1697, with his single ship, the _Pelican_, against three opponents. In +Labrador and Newfoundland the British ousted all rivals from +territorial waters, except from the French Shore. The 'Bluenose' Nova +Scotians crept on from port to port. The Yankees were as supreme at +home as the other British were in Hudson Bay, though on occasion both +were daringly challenged. All the French had was the line of the St +Lawrence; and that was increasingly threatened, both at its mouth and +along the Great Lakes. + +The British had in their service a powerful trading corporation. The +Hudson's Bay Company was flourishing even in the seventeenth century. +In one sense it was purely maritime, as its posts were all on the Bay +shore, while the French traded chiefly in the hinterlands. The +Company's fleet, usually three or four ships, sailed regularly from +Gravesend or Portsmouth about June 1, rounded the Orkneys and made for +Hudson Bay. The return cargo of furs arrived home in October. This +annual voyage continues to the present day.[3] + +{64} + +As Hudson Bay was the place for fur, so Newfoundland, and all the +waters round it, was the place for fish. 'Dogs, fogs, bogs, and +codfish,' was the old half-jeering description of its products. +Standing in the gateway of Canada, Newfoundland was always a menace to +New France. Thirty years before Champlain founded Quebec a traveller +notes that, among the fishing fleets off Newfoundland, 'the English +rule all there.' In other quarters, too, there was a menace to France. +The British colonies were always feeling their way along the coast as +well as along the Great Lakes. In spite of ordinances on both sides, +forbidding trade between colonies of different powers, little trading +craft, mostly British, would creep in with some enticing contraband, +generally by way of Lake Champlain. + +[Illustration: A FRENCH FRIGATE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY From Winsor's +America] + +The first attempt in the English colonies to trade with Canada by way +of the open sea was made in 1658, when Captain John Perel sailed from +New York for Quebec in the French barque _St Jean_, and was wrecked on +Anticosti, with the total loss of a cargo of sugar and tobacco. The +sloop _Mary_ managed to reach Quebec in 1701 with a miscellaneous +cargo, containing, among many other items, '166 cheses, 20+81+101 Rols +of tobacko, {65} 2 hogheds of botls marckt SR, 70 bunches of arthen +waire pots, 8 barels of beaire, 19 caskes of schotte.' Her return +cargo included '14 barels of brandy, 4 hogsds of Claret, 2 bondles of +syle skins, etc.' She was wrecked before she reached home, but most of +her cargo was saved. Her owner, Samuel Vetch, the son of a 'Godly +Minister and Glorifier of God in the Grass Market' in Edinburgh, was a +great local character in New York. Four years after this voyage he was +sent to Quebec to arrange a truce between New France and New England. +But his return was as unlucky as that of his sloop _Mary_, for he was +arrested and fined L200 on a charge of having traded with his own +country's official enemies. + + +The fashion in ships changed very slowly. As we have seen, what may be +called the ancient period of sailing ships closed about the time +Jacques Cartier appeared in Canada. When the fore-and-aft-trimmed +sails were invented in 1539, the modern age began. This has three +distinctive eras of its own. The first lasted for about a century +after the time of Jacques Cartier; and its chief work was to free +itself of ancient and mediaeval limitations. + +The second, or central, modern era lasted twice {66} as long, from the +middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth. It +thus covered one century under the Fleurs-de-lis in Canada and another +under the Union Jack. It also exactly corresponded with the long era +of the famous British navigation laws, of which more will presently be +heard. During this period sails were improved in size, cut, and +setting. The changes can be described only in technical language. +Jibs became universal, adding greatly to handiness in general and the +power of tacking in particular. Four sails were used on a mast--main, +top, topgallant, and royal. Naval architecture was greatly improved, +especially by the French. But this improvement did not extend to +giving the hull anything like its most suitable shape. The Vikings +were still unbeaten in this respect. Even the best foreign +three-deckers were rather lumbering craft. + +The third era began with the introduction of the clippers about 1840, +and will not end till deep-sea sailing craft cease to be a factor in +the world's work altogether. It was in this present era, when steamers +were gaining their now unquestioned victory, and not during previous +eras, when steam was completely unknown, that sailing craft reached +their highest development. Sails {67} increased to eight on the +mainmast of a full-rigged ship, and they were better cut and set than +ever before. Yachts and merchantmen cannot be fairly compared in the +matter of their sails. But it is worth noting that the old +'white-winged days' never had any sort of canvas worth comparing with a +British yachting 'Lapthorn' or a Yankee yachting 'Sawyer' of our own +time. Hulls, too, have improved far beyond those of the old +three-decker age, beyond even the best of the Vikings'. + +Such broad divisions into eras of shipbuilding are, of course, only to +be taken as marking world-wide nautical advances in the largest +possible sense. One epoch often overlaps another and begins or ends at +different times in different countries. A strangely interesting +survival of an earlier age is still to be seen along the Labrador, in +the little Welsh and Devonshire brigs, brigantines, and topsail +schooners which freight fish east away to Europe. These vessels make +an annual round: in March to Spain for salt; by June along the +Labrador; in September to the Mediterranean with their fish; and in +December home again for Christmas. They are excellently handled +wherever they go; and no wonder, as every man aboard of them is a +sailor born and bred. + + + +[1] The nautical history of New France is all parts and no whole; +brilliant ideas and thwarted execution; government stimulus and +government repression; deeds of daring by adventurers afloat and deeds +of various kinds by officials ashore: everything unstable and +changeable; nothing continuous and strong. It cannot, therefore, make +a coherent narrative, only a collection of half-told tales. + +[2] See in this Series _The Great Intendant_, chapters iv and ix. + +[3] For the narrative of the Hudson's Bay Company the reader is +referred to _The Adventurers of England on Hudson Bay_, in this Series. + + + + +{68} + +CHAPTER V + +SAILING CRAFT: UNDER THE UNION JACK + +When Canada finally became a British possession in 1763 she was, of +course, subject to the navigation laws, or the Navigation Act, as this +conglomeration of enactments was usually called. The avowed object of +these laws was to gain and keep the British command of the sea. They +aimed at this by trying to have British trade done in British ships, +British ships manned by British crews, and British crews always available +if wanted for British men-of-war. The first law was enacted under the +Commonwealth in 1651. The whole series was repealed under Victoria in +1849. Exceptions were often made, especially in time of war; and there +was some opposition to reckon with at all times. But, generally +speaking, and quite apart from the question of whether they were wise or +not, the British government invariably looked upon these navigation laws +as a cardinal point of policy down to the close {69} of the wars with the +French Empire and the American Republic in 1815. + +The first laws only put into words what every sea-power had long been +practising or trying to practise: namely, the confining of all sea +trading to its own ships and subjects. They were first aimed at the +Dutch, who fought for their carrying trade but were crushed. They +operated, however, against all foreigners. They forbade all coastwise +trade in the British Isles except in British vessels, all trade from +abroad except in British ships or in ships belonging to the country +whence the imported merchandise came, all trade between English colonies +by outsiders, and all trade between the colonies and foreign countries, +except in the case of a few enumerated articles. The manning clauses +were of the same kind. Most of the crew and all the officers were to be +British subjects--an important point when British seamen were liable to +be 'pressed' into men-of-war in time of national danger. + +The change of rule in 1763 meant that Canada left an empire that could +not enforce its navigation laws and joined an empire that could. +Whatever the value of the laws, Canadian shipping and sea trade continued +to grow under them. In the eighteenth century {70} there was little +internal development anywhere in America; and less in Canada than in what +soon became the United States. People worked beside the waterways and +looked seaward for their profits. Elias Derby, the first American +millionaire, who died in 1799, made all his money, honestly and legally, +out of shipping. Others made fortunes out of smuggling. An enterprising +smuggler at Bradore, just inside the Strait of Belle Isle, paved his +oaken stairs with silver dollars to keep the wood from wearing out; and +he could well afford to do so. + +The maritime provinces of Nova Scotia (then including New Brunswick) and +Prince Edward Island had been gradually growing for a quarter of a +century before the United Empire Loyalists began to come. Halifax was a +garrison town and naval station. There was plenty of fish along the +coast; and the many conveniently wooded harbours naturally invited +lumbering and shipbuilding. Fish and furs were the chief exports up to +the War of 1812; after that, timber. The Loyalists came in small numbers +before 1783; in larger numbers during the five years following. From +twenty to thirty thousand altogether are said to have settled in the +Maritime Provinces. {71} They were poor, but capable and energetic, and +by the end of the eighteenth century their 'Bluenose' craft began to +acquire a recognized place at sea. Quebec and Montreal did an increasing +business. Quebec was the great timber-trade and shipbuilding centre; +Montreal the point where furs were collected for export. From Quebec 151 +vessels took clearance in 1774. In 1800 there were 21 Quebec-built +vessels on the local register. Ten years later there were 54. + +The Great Lakes had no such early development. Moreover, the days of +their small beginnings were full of retarding difficulties. Nor were +they free from what was then a disaster of the first magnitude; for in +1780 a staggering loss happened to the infant colony. The _Ontario_ +foundered with one hundred and seventy-two souls on the lake after which +she was named. During the fourteen years between the Conquest and the +Revolution only a few small vessels appeared there. On the outbreak of +the Revolution the British government impressed crews and vessels alike, +and absolutely forbade the building of any craft bigger than an open boat +except for the government service. Subsequently the strained relations +on both sides, lasting till after the War of {72} 1812, and the tendency +of the Americans to encroach on the frontier trade and settlements, +combined to prevent the government from giving up the power it had thus +acquired over shipping. The result was that trade was carried on in +naval vessels, some of which had originally been built as merchantmen and +others as men-of-war. There were frequent complaints of non-delivery +from the business community, both on the spot and in England. But +'defence was more important than opulence,' and the burden was, on the +whole, cheerfully borne by the Loyalists. In 1793 twenty-six vessels +cleared from Kingston. Two years later a record trip was made by the +sloop _Sophia_, which sailed from there to Queenston, well over two +hundred miles, in eighteen hours. Two years later again a traveller +counted sixty wagons carrying goods from Queenston, beyond the other end +of Lake Ontario, to Chippawa, so as to get them past Niagara Falls. +Anywhere west from Montreal the unit of measurement for all freight was a +barrel of rum, the transport charge for which was over three dollars as +far as Kingston, where it was trans-shipped from the bateau to a schooner. + +There was very little shipping on Lake Erie {73} till after the War of +1812. The first American vessel launched in these waters had a curious +history. After a season's work in 1797 she was carted past Niagara and +launched on Lake Ontario, where she plied between Queenston and Kingston +under the British flag with the name of _Lady Washington_. The rival +Hudson's Bay and North-West Companies each had a few boats on the western +Lakes at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the government +maintained there a tiny flotilla of its own. But shipping was a very +small affair west of Niagara for several years to come. + +While the War of 1812 killed out the feeble trade on the Lakes, it +greatly stimulated the well-established trade in sea-going craft from +Quebec and the Maritime Provinces. The British command of the sea had +become so absolute by 1814 that the whole American coast was practically +sealed to trade, which was thus forced to seek an 'underground' outlet by +way of Canada, in spite of the state of war. This, in addition to the +transport required by the British forces in Canada, sent freights and +tonnage up by leaps and bounds. The only trouble was to find enough +ships and, harder still, enough men. + +Canadian sailing craft in the nineteenth {74} century had a chequered +career. Many disturbing factors affected the course of trade: the +cholera of '32; the Rebellion of '37; the Ship Fever of '47; the great +gold finds in California in '49 and in Australia in '53; Reciprocity with +the United States in '54; Confederation in '67; the triumph of steam and +steel in the seventies; and the era of inland development which began in +the eighties. + +The heyday of the Canadian sailing ship was the third quarter of the +nineteenth century. This period, indeed, was one of great activity in +the history of mast and sail all the world over. There was intense +rivalry between steam and sail. The repeal of the Navigation Act in +England had brought the whole of British shipping into direct competition +with foreigners. The Americans were pushing their masterful way into +every sea. The rush to California was drawing eager fleets of Yankee, +Bluenose, and St Lawrence vessels round the Horn. India, China, and +Australia were drawing other fleets round the Cape. The American +clippers threatened to oust the slower 'Britishers' and throw the +comparatively minor Canadians into the shade. For the first and only +time in history American tonnage actually began to threaten British +supremacy. {75} But the challenge was met in the proper way, by building +to beat on even terms. The British had already regained their lead +before the Civil War of the sixties; and the subsequent inland +development of the United States, with the momentous change from wood and +sails to steel and steam, combined to depress the American mercantile +marine in favour of its British rival. + +Canada played a great part in this brief but stirring era, when the +wooden sailing vessel was making its last gallant stand against steam, +and the sun of its immemorial day was going down in a blaze of glory +which will never fade from the memories of those who love the sea. +Canada built ships, sailed ships, owned ships, and sold ships. She +became one of the four greatest shipping centres in the world; and this +at a time when she had less than half as many people and less than +one-tenth as much realized wealth as she has now. Quebec had more than +half its population dependent on shipbuilding in the fifties and sixties. +In 1864 it launched sixty vessels, many of them between one and two +thousand tons. About the same time Nova Scotia launched nearly three +hundred vessels and New Brunswick half as many. The Nova Scotians, +however, only averaged two {76} hundred tons, and the New Brunswickers +four hundred. If the Lakes, Prince Edward Island, the rest of Canada, +and Newfoundland are added in, the total tonnage built in the best single +year is found to be close on a quarter of a million. Allowing for the +difference in numbers of the respective populations, this total compares +most favourably with the highest recent totals built in the British +Isles, where the greatest shipbuilding the world has ever seen is now +being carried on. + +It was the change from wood to metal that caused the decline of +shipbuilding in Canada. It was also partly the change to steam; but only +partly, for Canada started well in the race for building steamships. +What proves that the disuse of wood was the real cause of the decline is +the fact that Canada never even attempted to compete with other countries +in building metal sailing vessels. If Canada had developed her metal +industries a generation sooner she would have had steel clippers running +against 'Yankees,' 'Britishers,' and German 'Dutchmen'; for there was a +steel-built sailing-ship age that lasted into the twentieth century and +that is not really over yet. Indeed, even wooden and composite sailers +are still at work; and with their steel comrades {77} they still make a +very large fleet. Singular proof of this is sometimes found. Nothing +collects sailing ships like a calm; vessels run into it from all quarters +and naturally remain together till the breeze springs up. But, even so, +most readers will probably be surprised to learn that, only a few years +ago, a great calm off the Azores collected a fleet of nearly three +hundred sail. + +Canadian shipbuilders had some drawbacks to contend with. One was of +their own making. Certain builders in the Maritime Provinces, especially +at Pictou and in Prince Edward Island, turned out such hastily and ill +constructed craft as to give 'Bluenoses' a bad name in the market. By +1850, however, the worst offenders were put out of business, and there +was an increasing tendency for the builders to sail their own vessels +instead of selling them. + +A second, and this time a general, drawback was the difficulty of getting +Canadian-built vessels rated A1 at Lloyd's. 'Lloyd's,' as every one +knows, is the central controlling body for most of the marine insurance +of the world, and its headquarters are in London. There were very few +foreign 'Lloyd's' then, and no colonial; so it was a serious matter when +the {78} English Lloyd's looked askance at anything not built of oak. +Canada tried her own oak; but it was outclassed by the more slowly +growing and sounder English oak. Canada then fell back on tamarac, or +'hackmatac,' as builders called it. This was much more buoyant than oak, +and consequently freighted to advantage. But it was a soft wood, and +Lloyd's was slow to rate it at its proper worth. Tamarac hulls went +sound for twenty years, and sometimes forty, especially when hardwood +treenails were used--a treenail being a bolt that did the service of a +nail in woodwork or a rivet in steel plating. At first Canadian vessels +were only rated Al for seven years, as compared with twelve for those +built of English oak. A year was added for hardwood treenails, and +another for 'salting on the stocks.' In 1852 Lloyd's sent out its own +surveyor, Menzies, who would guarantee work done under his own eye for +twenty-five cents a ton; while Lloyd's, for its part, would give +preferential rates to any vessels thus 'built under special survey.' +Perhaps Canadian timber is not as lasting as the best European. +Certainly it has no such records of longevity; though there is no reason +why Canadian records should not be better than they are in this respect. +Few {79} people know how long a well-built and well-cared-for ship can +live. Lloyd's register for 1913 contains vessels launched before Queen +Victoria began to reign. Merchantmen have often outlived their century. +Nelson's _Victory_ still flies the flag at Portsmouth, though she was +laid down the year before Wolfe took Quebec. And the _Konstanz_, a +thirty-five-ton sloop, still plies along the Danish coast, although her +launch took place in 1723--a hundred and ninety years ago. + +A third drawback for Canadian builders was the lack of capital. +Shipbuilding fluctuates more than most kinds of business, and requires +great initial outlay as well; so failures were naturally frequent. The +firm of Ross at Quebec did much to steady the business by sound finance. +But the smaller yards were always in difficulties, and no shipbuilder +ever made a fortune. + +Excellent craft, however, came out of Canadian yards: notable craft +wherever they sailed. One of the best builders at Quebec was a French +Canadian, whose beautiful clipper ship _Brunelle_, named after himself, +logged over fourteen knots an hour and left many a smart sailer, and +steamer too, hull down astern. Mackenzie of Pictou was builder and {80} +skipper both. With the help of a friend he began by cutting down the +trees and doing all the rest of the work of building a forty-five-ton +schooner. By 1850 he had built a fourteen-hundred-tonner, the famous +_Hamilton Campbell Kidston_, which greatly astonished Glasgow, for she +was then the biggest ship the Clyde had ever seen. His last ship was +launched in the 'record' year of 1865. The Salter Brothers did some fine +work at the 'Bend,' as Moncton was then called. Their first vessel, a +barque of eight hundred tons, was sold at once in England. Next year +they built a clipper ship called the _Jemsetgee Cursetgee_ for an East +Indian potentate, who sent out an Oriental figurehead supposed to be a +likeness of himself. A peculiar feat of theirs was rigging as a schooner +and sending across the Atlantic a scow-like coal barge ordered by a firm +in England. + +The decline of Canadian sailing craft was swifter than its rise; and with +the sailing craft went the Canadian-built steamers, because wood was the +material used for both, and the use of iron and steel in the yards of the +British Isles soon drove the wooden hulls from the greater highways of +the sea. Once the palmy days of the third quarter of the century were +{81} over the decline went on at an ever-increasing rate. In 1875 Canada +built nearly 500 vessels, and, if small craft are included, the tonnage +must have nearly reached 200,000. In 1900 she built 29 vessels, of 7751 +tons--steam, steel, wood, and sail. Shipowning does not show such a +dramatic contrast, but the decline has been very marked. Within +twenty-two years, from 1878 to 1900, the Canadian registered tonnage was +almost exactly halved. The drop was from a grand total, sail and steam +together, of a million and a third, which then made Canada the fourth +shipowning country in the world and put her ahead of many nations with +more than ten times her population. + + + + +{82} + +CHAPTER VI + +SAILING CRAFT: THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP + +Shipbuilding was and is a very complex industry. But only the actual +construction can be noticed here, and that only in the briefest general +way. The elaborate methods of European naval yards were not in vogue +anywhere in Canada, not even in Quebec, much less in Nova Scotia. It +was not uncommon for a Bluenose crew to make everything themselves, +especially in the smaller kinds of vessels. They would cut the trees, +draft the plan, build the ship and sail her: being thus lumbermen, +architects, builders, and seamen all in one. The first step in +building is to lay the blocks on which the keel itself is laid. These +blocks are short, thick timbers, arranged in graduated piles, so that +they form an inclined plane of over one in twenty, from which the +completed hull can slide slowly into the water, stern first. Then +comes the laying of the keel, that part which is to the whole vessel +what {83} the backbone is to a man. A false keel is added to the +bottom of this in order to increase its depth and consequent grip. +This prevents the side drift which is called making leeway. The false +keel is only fastened to the keel itself from underneath, because such +a fastening is strong enough to resist water pressure and weak enough +to allow of detachment in case of grounding. The slight projection of +the keel itself then gives too little purchase for a dangerous amount +of leverage on the frame. A long keel is made up of several pieces of +square timber, with their ends shaped into scarfs, an overlapping and +interlocking arrangement of great strength. The foremost keel piece is +scarfed into the stem, which is the fore-end of the vessel's bow. The +aftermost keel piece joins the stern-post, on which the rudder hangs. +Elm makes a good keel, especially with oak for stem and stern-post. + +The frame, to pursue our simile, is to the ship what ribs are to our +bodies. In the same way the planking is the skin. The frame, or ribs, +determines the vessel's form. There were, and still are, many +varieties of frame. In a very small vessel there are very few timbers. +The keel is probably all in one piece, and the planks may possibly run +from stem {84} to stern without a break. In this case the unity of +each piece supplies enough longitudinal resistance to strains. But +when a vessel is large, and more especially when she is long, the +strains known as hogging and sagging are apt to rack her timbers apart. + +A ship is not built for mere passive resistance, like a house, or even +for resistance only to pressures and vibrations, like a bridge. She is +built to resist every imaginable strain of pitching and rolling, and so +requires architectural skill of a far higher kind than is required (in +the constructional, not the aesthetic, sense) for any structure on the +land. When a ship is on the top of a single wave she tends to hog, +because there is much less support for her ends than for her centre, +and so her ends dip down, racking her upper and compressing her lower +parts amidships. When the seas are shorter she often has her ends much +more waterborne than her centre, and this in spite of the fact that the +extreme ends are not naturally waterborne themselves. Then she sags, +and the strains of racking and compressing are reversed, because her +centre tends to sink and her ends to rise. Now, a series of hogging +and sagging strains alternately compresses and opens every resisting +join in every {85} timber, with the inevitable result of loosening the +whole. To meet these strains longitudinal strength must be supplied. +The keel supplies much of it, so does the planking (or skin) to a +lesser degree; but not enough; and the ribs, by themselves, are for +transverse stiffening only. Four means are therefore employed to hold +the parts together lengthwise--keelsons, shelf-pieces, fillings, and +some form of truss. + +The keelson is an inverted keel inside the vessel. The floors, which +are the timbers uniting the two sides of the frame (or ribs), are given +a middle seating on the keel. The keelson is then placed over them, +exactly in line with the keel, when bolts as long as the thickness of +all three are used to unite the whole in one solid backbone, and this +backbone with the ribs. Side or 'sister' keelsons were used in the +Navy on either side of the mainmast for a distance equal to about a +third of the length of the keelson. But they were little used in +merchant vessels, and their longitudinal resistance was only partial +and incidental. Shelf-pieces and waterways were adapted from French +models by Sir Robert Seppings, who became chief constructor to the Navy +some years after Trafalgar. They are thick timbers running +continuously under and {86} over the junctions of the deck beams with +the ship's sides, to both of which they are securely fastened. + +The keelson was an old invention and shelf-pieces and waterways were +soon in vogue. But fillings and trusses, both expensive improvements, +were not much favoured in any mercantile marine. The truss is even +older than the keelson, having been used by the ancient Egyptians at +least thirty-five centuries ago, and probably earlier. Four to eight +pillars rose in crutches from the bottom amidships to about six feet +above the gunwale. The Egyptians ran a rope over the crutches and +round the mast, and then used its ends to brace up the stem and stern. +The moderns discarded the rope, took the strains on connecting timbers, +and modified the truss, sometimes out of recognition. But many +Canadian and American river steamers of the twentieth century A.D. +employ the same principle for the same object as the Egyptians of the +seventeenth century B.C. Fillings came from the French, like +shelf-pieces and waterways. Seppings put them between the ribs, in the +form of thick timbers. The whole frame thus became almost solid +against any tendency of the ribs to close together, and quite strong +{87} enough against their other tendency to draw apart. + +All means that strengthen a well-built hull longitudinally have also +been made to add their quota to its transverse strength. The ribs +spring from the solid mass of their own floors bolted in between the +keelson and the keel; and the planking, or skin, is let into the +rabbets, or side grooves, of the keel and firmly fastened to the ribs +throughout by hardwood pegs called treenails. The decks are, in +themselves, a source of weakness. The beams supporting them are like +the rafters of a house, which, of course, work the walls apart under +pressure from the floors--and here, as in every other detail, the +stability required for a house is nothing to what is required for a +ship. The way to overcome this difficulty is to make the decks and +beams so many bridges holding the sides together. At the point of +junction of every beam-end with a shelf-piece, waterway, and rib there +is an arrangement of bolts and dowellings (or dovetailings) which makes +the whole as solid as possible. An extra bolt through the waterway, +rib, and outside planking adds to the strength; and a knee, or angular +piece of wood or iron connecting the shelf with the under side of the +beam, almost completes the {88} beam-end connection. The final touches +are the clamps below the shelves and the spirketing above the +waterways, with short-stuff between the clamps of one deck and the +spirketing of the next below. + +All this is only the merest suggestion of what is done for the main +part of the vessel's hull. The ends require many modifications, +because the shape there approaches a V, and so the floors cannot cross +the keel as holding bodies. But the breast-hooks forward and crutches +aft, the deck transom, which is the foundation for the deck abaft as +well as the assemblage of timbers uniting the stern to the body of the +vessel, with all the other parts that make up the ends, cannot be more +than mentioned here. Then come the decks, which are quite complex in +themselves, and still more complex by reason of the mast-holes and +hatchways cut out of them all, and the windlass, bitts, and capstan +built into the one that is exposed to the storm. To make sure that +whatever strength is taken out by cutting is restored in some other +way, and that the exposed deck which has to resist the strains put upon +the structures built into it is specially reinforced, the most careful +provision must be made for the mast-holes; for the hatchways {89} with +their coamings fore and aft on carlings that reach from beam to beam; +for the riding bitts, which are posts to hold the cable when the vessel +is at anchor, and which must therefore be immensely strong; for the +windlass, which in the merchant service often did the double duty of +the bitts and capstan; and for a multiplicity of other parts. + +A landsman could hardly believe what a marvellous adjustment of +co-operating parts is required for a ship unless he actually watches +its construction. He will then understand why it is by far the most +wonderful structure man has ever built throughout all the ages of his +evolution. It represents his first success in mastering an element not +his own; and, whatever the future may see in the way of aviation, the +priority of seamanship will always remain secure by thousands and +thousands of known and unknown years. + +But we are still no farther than a few parts of the hull. There is the +stepping of the masts, with their heels set firm and square above the +keel, and their rake 'right plim' throughout. Then there is the whole +of the rigging--a perfect maze to look at, though an equally perfect +device to use; the sails, which require the most highly expert +workmanship to make; {90} the rudder, and many other essentials. +Finally, there is all that is needed in every well-found vessel which +is 'fit to go foreign.' No vessel would go far unless its under-water +parts were either sheathed, tarred, or tallowed; for sea-worms burrow +alarmingly, and 'whiskers' grow like the obnoxious weeds they are. +These particulars, of course, leave many important gaps in the process. + +Then the hull has to be transferred from the inclined plane of block +piles, on which it was built, to a cradle, on which it moves down the +sliding-ways into the water. + +When everything is ready, the christening of the ship takes place. A +bottle of wine is broken against her bows and her name is pronounced by +some distinguished person in a formula which varies more or less, but +which is generally some version of the good old English benediction: +'God bless the Dreadnought and all who sail in her.' No matter what +the name may be, the ship herself is always 'she.' Many ingenious and +mistaken explanations have been given of this supposedly female 'she.' +The schoolboy 'howler' on the subject is well known: 'All ships are +"she" except mail boats and men-of-war.' Had this schoolboy known a +very little more he might {91} have added jackass brigs to his list of +male exceptions. The real explanation may possibly be that the English +still spoken at sea is, in some ways, centuries older than the English +spoken on land, and that the nautical 'she' comes down to us from the +ancient days in which all inanimate objects were endowed with life in +everyday speech and neuters were as yet unknown. + +Immediately this most stirring ceremony ceases, the stentorian order +comes to 'Down dog-shore!' on which the dog-shore trigger is touched +off, the dog-shores fall, an awakening quiver runs through the +sliding-ways and cradle; and then the whole shapely vessel, still +facing the land from which she gets her being, moves majestically into +the water, where her adventurous life begins. + + + + +{92} + +CHAPTER VII + +SAILING CRAFT: 'FIT TO GO FOREIGN' + +We will suppose that the ship is complete in hull, successfully +launched, and properly rigged and masted. The two questions still +remaining are: what is her crew like, and how does she sail? + +The typical British North American crew of the nineteenth-century +sailing ship is the Bluenose crew. Newfoundlanders were too busy +fishing in home waters, though some of them did ship to go foreign and +others sailed their catch to market. Quebeckers built ships, but +rarely sailed them; while the Pacific coast had no shipping to speak +of. Thus the Bluenoses had the field pretty well to themselves. +Bluenoses were so called because the fog along the Nova Scotian and New +Brunswick coast was supposed to make men's noses bluer than it did +elsewhere. The name was generally extended by outsiders to all sorts +of British North Americans; and, of course, was also applied {93} to +any vessel, as well as any crew, that hailed from any port in British +North America, because a vessel is commonly called by the name of the +people that sail her. 'There's a Bluenose,' 'that's a Yankee,' 'look +at that Dago,' or 'hail that Dutchman' apply to ships afloat as well as +to men ashore. And here it might be explained that 'Britisher' +includes anything from the British Isles, 'Yankee' anything flying the +Stars and Stripes, 'Frenchie' anything hailing from France, 'Dago' +anything from Italy, Spain, or Portugal, and 'Dutchman' anything manned +by Hollanders, Germans, Norsemen, or Finns, though Norwegians often get +their own name too. A 'chequer-board' crew is one that is half white, +half black, and works in colour watches. + +[Illustration: SHIP _BATAVIA_, 2000 TONS. Built by F.-X. Marquis at +Quebec, 1877. Lost on Inaccessible Island, 1879. From a picture +belonging to Messrs Ross and Co., Quebec.] + +Hard things have often been said of Bluenose crews. Like other general +sayings, some of them are true and some of them false. But, mostly, +each of them is partly true and partly false: and--'circumstances alter +cases.' The fact is, that life aboard a Bluenose was just what we +might expect from crews that lived a comparatively free-and-easy life +ashore in a sparsely settled colony, and a very strenuous life afloat +in ships which depended, like all ships, on disciplined effort for both +success {94} and safety. When national discipline is not very strong +ashore it has to be enforced by hook or by crook afloat. The general +public never bothered its head much about seamen's rights or wrongs in +a rather 'hard' new country managing its own maritime affairs. So +there certainly were occasional 'hell ships' among the Bluenoses, +though very rarely except when there were Bluenose officers with a +foreign crew. + +This was quite in accordance with the practice all along the coast of +North America. Even aboard the famous Black Ball Line of Yankee +transatlantic packets in the forties there was plenty of 'handspike +hash' and 'belaying-pin soup' for shirkers or mutineers. The men +before the mast were mostly foreigners and riff-raff Britishers; very +few were Yankees or Bluenoses. Discipline had to be maintained; and it +was maintained by force. But these were not the real hell ships. +'Hell ships' were commonest among deepwatermen on long voyages round +the Horn, or among the whalers when the best class of foremast hands +were not to be had. Many of them are much more recent than is +generally known; and even now they are not quite extinct. 'Black +Taylor,' 'Devil Summers,' and 'Hell-fire {95} Slocum' are well within +living memory. Black Taylor came to a befitting end. Because the rope +surged at the capstan he kicked the nearest man down, and was jumping +to stamp his ribs in, when the man suddenly whipped out his knife and +ripped Black Taylor up with a New Orleans nigger trick-twist for which +he got six months, though really deserving none. + +But such mates and skippers always were exceptions; and, as a general +rule, no better crews and vessels have ever sailed the sea than the +Yankees at their prime. Their splendid clippers successfully +challenged the slower Britishers on every trade route in the world. At +the very time that the _America_ was beating British yachts hull-down, +the old British East Indiamen were still wallowing along with eighty +hands to a thousand tons, while a Yankee thousand-tonner could sail +them out of sight with forty. The British excuse was that East +Indiamen required a fighting crew as well as a trading one, and that +British vessels were built to last, not simply put together to make one +flashy record. But after the Napoleonic wars the British Navy could +police the world of waters; so double numbers were no longer needed; +and if East {96} Indiamen were built to last, how was it they only went +an average of six times out and six times home before being broken up? + +Nor was it only in speed that the Yankees were so far ahead. They paid +better wages, they gave immeasurably better food, they were smarter to +look at and smarter to go, their rigging was tauter, their sails better +cut and ever so much flatter on a wind, their cargo more quickly and +scientifically stowed, and, most important point of all, their +discipline quite excellent. Woe betide the cook or steward whose +galley or saloon had a speck of dirt that would make a smudge on the +skipper's cleanest cambric handkerchief! It was the same all through, +from stem to stern and keel to truck, from foremast hand to skipper. +Aboard the best clippers the system was well-nigh perfect. Each man +had found, or had the chance of finding, the position for which he was +most fit. The best human combination of head and heart and hand was +sure to come to the top. The others would also find their own +appropriate levels. But shirkers, growlers, flinchers, and mutineers +were given short shrift. The officers were game to the death and never +hesitated to use handspikes, fists, or firearms whenever the occasion +required it. {97} As for sea-lawyers--the canting equivalent of +ranting demagogues ashore--they could hardly have got a hearing among +any first-rate crew. No admiralissimo ever was a greater hero to a +junior midshipman than the best Yankee skippers were to the men before +the mast. There's no equalitarian nonsense out at sea. + +This digression springs from and returns to the main argument; because +the Yankee excellence is so little understood and sometimes so +grudgingly acknowledged by British and foreign landsmen, and because +Bluenose and Yankee circumstances and practice were so much alike. +Britishers were different in nearly all their natural circumstances, +while, to increase the difference, their practice became greatly +modified by a deal of good but sometimes rather lubberly legislation. +And yet all three--Britisher, Bluenose, and Yankee--are so inextricably +connected with each other that it is quite impossible to understand any +one of them without some reference to the other two. + +Bluenose discipline was good, very good indeed. When the whole ship's +company was Bluenose discipline was partly instinctive and mostly went +well, as it generally did when Yankees and Bluenoses sailed together. +The whole population of the little home {98} port--men, women, and +children--knew every vessel's crew and all about them. The men were +farmers, fishermen, lumbermen, shipbuilders, and 'deepwatermen,' often +all in one. Among other peoples, only Scandinavians ever had such an +all-round lot as this. Even in the present century, with its +increasing multiformity of occupation, books full of nauticalities can +be read and understood in these countries by everybody, though such +books cannot be read elsewhere except by the seafaring few. Business +meant ships or shipping; so did politics, peace and war, adventure and +ambition. + +But there is a different tale to tell when the tonnage outran the +Bluenose ability to man it, and Dutchmen, Dagos, miscellaneous +wharf-rats, and 'low-down' Britishers had to be taken on instead. If +the crew was mixed and the officers Bluenose there was sure to be +trouble of graduated kinds, all the way up from simple knock-downs to +the fiercest gun-play of a real hell ship. The food was inferior to +that aboard the Yankees. But in discipline there was nothing to +choose. An all-Bluenose or all-Yankee sometimes came as near the +perfection of seamanship and discipline as anything human possibly can. +But aboard a mixed Bluenose the rule of bend or break {99} was enforced +without the slightest reference to what was regarded as landlubber's +law. The Britisher's Board of Trade regulations were regarded with +contempt; and not without reason; for, excellent as they were, they +struck the Bluenose seamen as being an interference made solely in the +supposed interests of the men against the officers. + +The mistake was that the old injustices were repeated in a new way. +Formerly the law either sided with the officers and owners or left them +alone; now it either sided with the men or left the officers and owners +in the lurch. The true balance was not restored. Here is a thoroughly +typical instance of the difference between a Britisher and a Bluenose +under the new dispensation. The second mate of a Britisher asked for +his discharge at Bombay because he could not manage the men, who had +shirked disgracefully the whole way out. The skipper got a good +Bluenose for his new second mate. The first day the Bluenose came +aboard one of the worst shirkers slung a bucket carelessly, cut the +deck, and then proceeded to curse the ship and all who sailed in her, +as he had been accustomed to do under the Britisher. The Bluenose mate +simply said, 'See here, just shut your head or I'll {100} shut it for +you,' on which the skulker answered by threatening to 'cut his chicken +liver out.' In a flash the Bluenose had him naped, slung, and flying +across the rail. A second man rushed in, only to be landed neatly on +the chin and knocked limp against the scuppers. The rest of the watch, +roused by this unwonted assertion of authority, came on, but stopped +short, snarling, when the Bluenose swung an iron bar from the windlass +in a way that showed he knew how to handle it effectively. The skipper +and mate now appeared, and, seeing a clear case of actual fight, at +once ranged themselves beside the capable Bluenose. The watch, a mixed +lot, then slunk off; and, from that day out, the whole tone of the ship +was changed, very much for the better. + +It is pleasanter, however, to take our last look at a Bluenose vessel, +under sail, with Bluenose skipper, mates, and crew, and a Bluenose +cargo, all complete. But a word must first be said about other parts +and other craft, lest the Maritime-Province Bluenose might be thought +the only kind of any consequence. There were, and still are, swarms of +small craft in Canada and Newfoundland which belong mostly or entirely +to the fisheries, and which, therefore, will be noticed in another +{101} chapter. The schooners along the different coasts, up the lower +St Lawrence, and round the Lakes; the modern French-Canadian sailing +bateaux; the transatlantic English brigs that still come out to +Labrador; the many Britishers and Yankees that used to come to Bluenose +harbours and to Quebec; the foreigners that come there still; and the +host of various miscellaneous little vessels everywhere--all these are +by no means forgotten. But only one main thread of the whole historic +yarn can be followed here. + +Before starting we might perhaps remember what a sailing vessel cannot +do, as well as what she can, when the proper men are there and +circumstances suit her. She is helpless in a calm. She needs a tow in +crowded modern harbours or canals. She can only work against the wind +in a laborious zigzag, and a very bad gale generally puts her +considerably off her course. But, on the other hand, she could beat +all her best records under perfect modern conditions of canvas, +scientific metal hull, and crew; and the historic records she actually +has made are quite as surprising as they are little known. Few people +realize that 'ocean records' are a very old affair, even in Canada, +where they begin with Champlain's voyage of {102} eighteen days from +Honfleur to Tadoussac and end with King George V's sixty-seven hours +from land to land, when he speeded home in H.M.S. _Indomitable_ from +Champlain's tercentenary at Quebec in 1908, handling his shovel in the +stokehole by the way. + +Here are some purely sailing records worth remembering. A Newfoundland +schooner, the _Grace Carter_, has sailed across to Portugal, sold her +fish there, gone to Cadiz for all the salt that she could carry, and +then reported back in Newfoundland within the month. A Canadian +schooner yacht, the _Lasca_, has crossed easterly, the harder way, in +twelve days from the St Lawrence. In 1860 the Yankee _Dreadnought_ +made the Atlantic record by going from Sandy Hook to Liverpool in nine +days and seventeen hours, most of the time on the rim of a hurricane. +Six years later the most wonderful sea race in history was run when +five famous clippers started, almost together, from the Pagoda +Anchorage at Fu-chau for the East India Docks in London. This race was +an all-British one, as the civil war, the progress of steam everywhere +except in the China trade, and the stimulus of competition, had now +given Britishers the lead in the East, while putting them on an even +footing with Yankees in the {103} West. The course was sixteen +thousand miles; the prize was the world's championship in +clipper-racing. Three ships dropped considerably astern. But the +_Ariel_ and _Taeping_ raced up the Channel side by side, took in their +pilots at the same time, and arrived within eight minutes of each +other. The _Ariel_ arrived first; but the _Taeping_ won, as she had +left twenty minutes later. The total time was ninety-nine days. A +very different, but still more striking, record is the longest daily +run ever made entirely under sail. This was, in one sense at least, an +Anglo-American record; for the ship, appropriately called the +_Lightning_, was built by that master craftsman, Donald M'Kay of +Boston, and sailed by a British crew. She made no less than 436 sea +miles, or 502 statute miles, within the twenty-four hours. + +There are no individual Bluenose rivals of these mighty champions. But +the Bluenoses more than held their own, all round, in any company and +on any sea. So it is well worth our while to end this story of a +thousand years--from the Vikings till to-day--by going aboard a +Bluenose vessel with a Bluenose crew when both were at their prime. + +The _Victoria_ is manned by the husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers +of the place where {104} she was built. Her owners are the leaders of +the little neighbourhood, and her cargo is home-grown. She carries no +special carpenter and sailmaker, like a Britisher, because a Bluenose +has an all-round crew, every man of which is smart enough, either with +the tools or with the fid and palm and needle, for ordinary work, while +some are sure to be equal to any special job. She of course carries +two suits of canvas, her new best and older second best. Each sail has +required more skill than tailors need to make a perfect fit in clothes, +because there is a constant strain on sails, exceeding, if possible, +the strains on every other part. But before sail is made her anchor is +hove short, that is, the ship is drawn along by her cable till her bows +are over it. 'Heave and she comes!' 'Heave and she must!' 'Heave and +bust her!' are grunted from the men straining at the longbars of the +capstan, which winds the tightening cable in. 'Click, click, clickety, +click' go the pawls, which drop every few inches into cavities that, +keeping them from slipping back, prevent the capstan from turning the +wrong way when the men pause to take breath. 'Break out the mud-hook!' +and a tremendous combined effort ensues. Presently a sudden welcome +slack {105} shows that the flukes have broken clear. The anchor is +then hove up, catted, and fished. + +'All hands make sail!' sings out the mate. The wind is nicely on the +starboard quarter, that is, abaft the beam and forward of the stern, +which gives the best chance to every sail. A wind dead aft, blanketing +more than half the canvas, is called a lubber's wind. A soldier's wind +is one which comes square on the beam, and so makes equally plain +sailing out and back again. What sail a full-rigged ship can carry! +The Yankee _Great Republic_ could spread nearly one whole acre of +canvas to the breeze. Another Yankee, the _R. C. Rickmers_, the +largest sailing vessel in the world to-day, exceeds this. But her +tonnage is much greater, more than eleven thousand gross, and her rig +is entirely different. A full-rigged clipper ship might have +twenty-two square sails, though it was rare to see so many. In +addition she would have studding-sails to wing her square sails farther +out. Then, there were the triangular jibs forward and the triangular +staysails between the masts, with the quadrangular spanker like an +aerial rudder on the lower mizzenmast. All the nine staysails would +have the loose lower corner made fast to a handy place on deck by a +sheet {106} (or rope) and the fore and aft points connected by the +stays to the masts, the fore point low and the aft high. This is not +the nautical way of saying it. But 'points' and 'corners' and other +homely land terms sometimes save many explanations which, in their +turn, lead on to other explanations. + +The heads of square sails are made fast to yards, which are at right +angles to the masts on which they pivot. Sails and yards are raised, +lowered, swung at the proper angle to catch the wind, and held in place +by halliards, lifts, braces, and sheets, which can be worked from the +deck. Sheets are ropes running from the lower corners of sails. All +upper sails have their sheets running through sheave-holes in the +yardarms next below, then through quarter-blocks underneath these yards +and beside the masts, and then down to the deck. Braces are the ropes +which swing the yards to the proper angle. Halliards are those which +hoist or lower both the yards and sails. The square sails themselves +are controlled by drawlines called clew-garnets running up from the +lower corners, leechlines running in diagonally from the middle of the +outside edges, buntlines running up from the foot, and spilling lines, +to spill the wind in heavy {107} weather. When the area of a sail has +to be reduced, it is reefed by gathering up the head, if a square sail, +or the foot, if triangular, and tying the gathered-up part securely by +reef points, that is, by crossing and knotting the short lines on +either side of this part. The square sails on the mainmast are called, +when eight are carried, the mainsail, lower and upper maintopsails, +lower and upper maintopgallants, main-royal, main-skysail, and the +moonsail. The standing rigging is the whole assemblage of ropes by +which the masts are supported. + +These few words are very far from being a technically full, or even +quite precise, description. But, taken with what was previously said +about the hull, they will give a better general idea than if the reader +was asked to make a realizable whole out of a mazy bewilderment +embracing every single one of all the multitudinous parts. + +'All hands make sail!' Up go some to loose the sails aloft, while +others stay on deck to haul the ropes that hoist the sails to the +utmost limit of the canvas. The jibs and spanker generally go up at +once, because they are useful as an aid to steering. The staysails +generally wait. The jibs and staysails are triangular, the spanker a +quadrangular {108} fore-and-after. The square sails made fast to +wide-spreading yards are the ones that take most hauling. But setting +the sails by no means ends the work at them. Trimming is quite as +important. Every time there is the slightest shift in the course or +wind there ought to be a corresponding shift of trim so as to catch +every breath the sail can hold. To effect this with the triangular +sails a sheet must be slacked away or hauled more in; while, in the +case of the square sails on the yards, a brace must be attended to. + +Our Bluenose mate now thinks he can get more work from his canvas. His +voice rings out: 'Weather crossjack brace!' which means hauling the +lowest and aftermost square sail more to windward. 'Weather crossjack +brace!' sings out the timekeeper, whose duty it is to rouse the watch +as well as strike the bells that mark the hours and halves. The watch +tramp off and lay on to the weather brace, the A.B.'s (or able-bodied +seamen) leading and the O.S.'s (ordinary seamen) at the tail. Some one +slacks off the lee braces and sings out 'Haul away!' Then the watch +proceed to haul, with weird, wild cries in minor keys that rise and +fall and rise again, like the long-drawn soughing of the wind itself. +{109} _Eh--heigh--o--az_! _Eh--heigh--ee_! _Eh--hugh_! In comes the +brace till the trim suits the mate, when he calls out 'Turn the +crossjack brace!' which means making it fast on a belaying pin. The +other braces follow. By the time the topgallant braces are reached +only two hands are needed, as the higher yards are naturally much +lighter than the lower ones. + +Sheets and braces are very dangerous things to handle in a gale of +wind. Every movement of the rope must be closely watched with one +vigilant eye, while the other must be looking out for washing seas. +The slightest inattention to the belaying of a mainsheet while men are +hanging on may mean that it breaks loose just as the men expect it to +be fast, when away it goes, with awful suddenness and force, dragging +them clean overboard before their instinctive grip can be let go. The +slightest inattention to the seas may mean an equally fatal result. +Not once, nor twice, but several times, a whole watch has been washed +away from the fore-braces by some gigantic wave, and every single man +in it been drowned. + +Squalls need smart handling. Black squalls are nothing, even when the +ship lays over till the lee rail's under a sluicing rush of broken +water. But a really wicked white squall {110} requires luffing, that +is, bringing her head so close to the wind that it will strike her at +the acutest angle possible without losing its pressure in the right +direction altogether. The officer of the watch keeps one eye to +windward, makes up his mind what sail he'll shorten, and then yells an +order that pierces the wind like a shot, 'Stand by your royal +halliards!' As the squall swoops down and the ship heels over to it he +yells again, 'Let go your royal halliards, clew 'em up and make 'em +fast!' Down come the yards, with hoarse roaring from the thrashing +canvas. But then, if no second squall is coming, the mate will cut the +clewing short with a stentorian 'Masthead the yards again!' on which +the watch lay on to the halliards and haul--_Ahay_! _Aheigh_! +_Aho--oh_! Up she goes! + +The labour is lightened, as hand labour always has been lightened, by +singing to the rhythm of the work. The seaman's working songs are +chanties, a kind of homespun poetry which, once heard to its rolling +music and the sound of wind and wave, will always bring back the very +savour of the sea wherever it is heard again. There are thousands of +chanties in scores of languages, which, like the men who sing them, +have met and mingled all round the {111} world. They are the folklore +of a class apart, which differs, as landsmen differ, in ways and speech +and racial ambition, but which is also drawn together, as landsmen +never have been, by that strange blend of strife and communing with man +and nature which is only known at sea. They will not bear quotation in +cold print, where they are as pitiably out of place as an albatross on +deck. No mere reader can feel the stir of that grand old chanty + + Hurrah! my boys, we're homeward bound! + +unless he has heard it when all hands make sail on leaving port, and +the deck begins pulsating with the first throb of the swell that sets +in landward across the bar. And what can this chorus really mean to +any one who has never heard it roared by strong male voices to the +running accompaniment of seething water overside? + + What ho, Piper! watch her how she goes! + Give her sheet and let her rip. + We're the boys to pull her through. + You ought to see her rolling home; + For she's the gal to go + In the passage home in ninety days + From Cal-i-for-ni-o! + +But though you can no more wrest a chanty from its surroundings and +then pass it off as a {112} seaman's folk-song than you can take the +blue from the water or the crimson from the sunset, yet, as some +chanties have become so well known ashore, as others so richly deserve +to be known there, and as all are now being threatened with extinction, +perhaps a few may be mentioned in passing. _Away for Rio_! with its +wild, queer wail in the middle of its full-toned chorus, has always +been a great favourite afloat: + + For we're bound for Rio Grande, + And away Rio! ay Rio! + Sing fare-ye-well, my bonny young girl, + We're bound for Rio Grande. + + +The _Wide Missouri_ is a magnificent song for baritones and basses on +the water: + + Oh, Shenando'h, I love your daughter, + 'Way-ho, the rolling river! + Oh, Shenando'h, I long to hear you, + 'Way-ho, we're bound away, + Down the broad Missouri. + + +A famous capstan chanty is well known on land, whence, indeed, it +originally came: + + And it's hame, dearie, hame; oh! it's hame I want to be. + My topsails are hoisted and I must out to sea; + But the oak and the ash and the bonnie birchen tree, + They're all a-growin' green in the North Countree. + +--which is quite as appropriate to the _Nova {113} Scotia_ as to the +one beyond the North Atlantic. A favourite sail-setting chanty is + + _Solo_. Haul on the bowlin', the fore and maintop bowlin'-- + _Chorus_. Haul on the bowlin', the bowlin' haul! + + +A good pumping-out chanty after a storm is + + _Solo_. Old Storm has heard the angel call. + _Chorus_. To my ay! Old Storm along! + + +_Reuben Ranzo_ is a grand one for a good long haul. The chorus comes +after every line, striking like a squall, with a regular roar on the +first word, Ranzo. + + _Solo_. Hurrah for Reuben Ranzo! + _Chorus_. Ranzo, boys, Ranzo! + +Ranzo's progress from a lubberly tailor to a good smart sailor is then +related with infinite variations, but always with the same gusto. +_Ranzo_ is only really popular afloat. But _Blow the man down_ is a +universal favourite. + + _Solo_. Blow the man down, blow the man down, + _Chorus_. 'Way-ho! Blow the man down. + _Solo_. Blow the man down from Liverpool town; + _Chorus_. Give us some wind to blow the man down. + + +When every sail is set and every stitch is drawing, there is no finer +sight the sea can show. The towering masts; the canvas gleaming white, +with its lines of curving {114} beauty drawn by the touch of the wind; +the whole ship bounding forward as if just slipped from her leash--all +this makes a scene to stir the beholder then and for ever after. The +breeze pipes up. She's doing ten knots now; eleven, twelve; and later +on, fifteen. This puts the lee rail under; for she lays over on her +side so far that her deck is at a slope of forty-five. Her forefoot +cuts through the water like the slash of a scimitar; while her bows +throw out two seething waves, the windward one of which breaks into +volleying spray a-top and rattles down like hailstones on the fore-deck. + +But next day the wind has hauled ahead, and she has to make her way by +tacking. She loses as little as possible on her zigzag course by +sailing close to the wind, that is, by pointing as nearly into it as +she can while still 'keeping a full on' every working sail. Presently +the skipper, having gone as far to one side of his straight course as +he thinks proper, gives the caution; whereupon the braces are taken off +the pins and coiled down on deck, all clear for running, while the +spanker-boom is hauled in amidships so that the spanker may feel the +wind and press the stern a-lee, which helps the bow to windward. Then +the 'old man' (called {115} so whatever his age may be) sings out at +the top of his voice, 'Ready, oh!' The helm is eased down on his +signal, so as not to lose way suddenly. When it is quite down he +shouts again, 'Helm's a-lee!' on which the fore and head sheets +(holding the sails attached to the foremast and bowsprit) are let go +and overhauled. The vessel swings round, the spanker pressing her +stern in one direction and the sails at the bows offering very little +resistance now their sheets are let go. The skipper's eye is on the +mainsail, which is the point of pivoting. Directly the wind is out of +it and it begins to shiver he yells, 'Raise tacks and sheets!' when, +except that the foretack is held a bit to prevent the foresail from +bellying aback, all the remaining ropes that held the ship on her old +tack are loosed. A roar of wind-waves rushes through the sails, and a +tremor runs through the whole ship from stem to stern. The skipper +waits for the first decided breath on her new tack and then shouts, +'Mainsail haul!' when the yards come swinging round so quickly that the +men can hardly take in the slack of the braces fast enough. The scene +of orderly confusion is now at its height. Every one hauling sings out +at the very top of his pipes. The sails are struggling to find their +{116} new set home; while the headsheets forward thrash about like mad +and thump their blocks against the deck with force enough to dash your +brains out. + +Mates and boatswain work furiously, for the skipper's eye is searching +everywhere, and the skipper's angry words cut the delinquent like the +lash of a well-aimed whip. The boatswain forward has the worst of it, +for the restive sheets and headsails won't come to trim without a fight +when it's breezing up and seas are running. But presently all the +yards get rightly trimmed, tacks boarded, and bowlines hauled out taut. +She's on a bowline taut enough to please the old man now; that is, the +ropes leading forward from the middle of the forward edge of every +square sail are so straight that she is sailing as near the wind as she +can go and keep a full on. 'Go below, the watch!' and the men off duty +tramp down, the cook and boatswain with their 'oilies' streaming from +their scuffle with the flying spray and slapping dollops at the bows. + +When a quartering trade wind is picked up sailing is at its easiest; +for a well-balanced suit of canvas will keep her bowling along night +and day with just the lightest of touches at the wheel. Then is the +time to bend her old sails {117} on; for, unlike a man, a ship puts on +her old suit for fair weather and her new suit for foul. Then, too, is +the time for dog-watch yarning, when pipes are lit without any fear of +their having to be crammed half-smoked into the nearest pocket because +all hands are called. Landsmen generally think that most watches +aboard a wind-jammer are passed in yarns and smoking. But this is far +from being the case. The mates and skipper keep everybody busy with +the hundred-and-one things required to keep a vessel shipshape: +painting, graining, brightening, overhauling the weak spots in the +rigging, working the 'bear' to clean the deck with fine wet sand, +helping whomever is acting as 'Chips' the carpenter, or the equally +busy 'Sails'; or 'doing Peggy' for 'Slush' the cook, who much prefers +wet grub to dry, slumgullion coffee to any kind of tea, ready-made hard +bread to ship-baked soft, and any kind of stodge to the toothsome +delights of dandyfunk and crackerhash. And all this is extra to the +regular routine, with its lamp-lockers, binnacles, timekeeping, +incessant look-out, and trick at the wheel. Besides, every man has to +look after his own kit, which he has to buy with his own money, and his +quarters, for which he alone is responsible. {118} So there is never +much time to spare, with watch and watch about, all through the voyage; +especially when all the ills that badly fed flesh is heir to on board a +deepwaterman incapacitate some hands, while falls from aloft and +various accidents knock out others. + +The skipper, boatswain, cook, steward, Chips, and Sails keep no +watches, and hence are called 'the idlers,' a most misleading term, for +they work a good deal harder than their counterparts ashore; though the +mates and seamen often work harder still. There are seven watches in a +day, reckoned from noon to noon: five of four hours each and two of two +hours each. These two, the dog watches, are from four to six and six +to eight each afternoon. The crew are divided into port and starboard +watches, each under a mate. In Bluenose vessels the port watch was +always called by the old name of larboard watch till only the other +day. The starboard and larboard got their names because the starboard +was the side on which the steering oar was hung before the rudder was +invented, and the larboard was the side where the lading or cargo came +in. + +Bluenoses have no use for nippers, as Britishers call apprentices. But +if they had, {119} and the reader was a green one, he would just about +begin to know the ropes and find his sea legs by the time that our +_Victoria_ had run her southing down to within another day's sail of +the foul-weather zone in the roaring forties round the Horn, which +seamen call 'Old Stiff.' Sails are shifted again, and the best new +suit is bent; for the coming gales have a clear sweep from the +Antarctic to the stormiest coast of all America, and the enormous, +grey-backed Cape Horners are the biggest seas in the world. + +The best helmsmen are on duty now. Not even every Bluenose can steer, +any more than every Englishman can box or every Frenchman fence. There +are a dozen different ways of mishandling a vessel under sail. Let +your attention wander, and she'll run up into the wind and perhaps get +in irons, so that she won't cast either way. Let her fall off when +you're running free, and she'll broach to and get taken aback. Or +simply let her yaw about a bit instead of holding true, and you'll lose +a knot or two an hour. But do none of these careless things, observe +all the rules as well, and even then you will never make a helmsman +unless it's born in you. Steering is blown into you by the wind and +soaked into you by the water. And you must also have {120} that inborn +faculty of touch which tells you instinctively how to meet a vessel's +vagaries--and no two vessels are alike--as well as how to make her fall +in with all the humours of a wayward ocean. + +The hungry great Antarctic wind comes swooping down. The _Victoria_ +lays over to it, her forefoot slashing, her lee side hissing, the +windward rigging strained and screaming, and every stitch of canvas +drawing full. Still the skipper carries on. He and his vessel have a +name to keep up; and he has carried on till all was blue ere this, and +left more than one steam kettle panting. Every timber, plank, mast, +yard, and tackle wakes to new life and thrills in response to the +sails. She answers her helm quickly, eagerly. She rides the galloping +waters now as you ride her. And as she rises to each fresh wave you +also rise, with the same exultant spring, and take the leap in your +stride. + +The wind pipes up: a regular gale is evidently brewing; and most of the +canvas must come off her now or else she'll soon be stripped of it. +'Stand by your royal halliards!' yells the second mate. 'Let go your +royal halliards!' The royals are down for good. The skysails have +been taken in before. Another {121} tremendous blast lays her far +over, and the sea is a lather of foam to windward. The skipper comes +on deck, takes a quick look round, and shouts at the full pitch of his +lungs: 'All hands shorten sail!' Up come the other watch in their +oilskins, which they have carefully lashed round their wrists and above +their knees to keep the water out. Taking in sail is no easy matter +now. Every one tails on, puts his back into it, and joins the chorus +of the hard-breathed chanty. The human voices sound like fitful +screams of seabirds, heard in wild snatches between the volleying +gusts; while overhead the sails are booming like artillery, as the +spilling lines strain to get the grip. 'Now then, starboard watch, up +with your sail and give the larboard watch a dressing down!' _Yo--ho_! +_Yo--hay_! _Yo--ho--oh_! Up she goes! A hiss, a crash, a deafening +thud, and a gigantic wave curls overhead and batters down the toiling +men, who hang on for their lives and struggle for a foothold. 'Up with +you!' yells the mate, directly the tangled coil of yellow-clad humanity +emerges like a half-drowned rat, 'Up with you, boys, and give her +hell!' _Yo--ho_! _To--hay_! _Yo--ho--harrhh_! 'Turn that!' 'All +fast, sir!' 'Aloft and roll her up! Now then, starbowlines, show +{122} your spunk!' Away they go, the mate dashing ahead; while the +furious seas shoot up vindictive tongues at them and nearly wash two +men clean off the rigging on a level with the lower topsails. Out on +the swaying yard, standing on the foot-rope that is strung underneath, +they grasp at the hard, wet, struggling canvas till they can pass the +gaskets round the parts still bellying between the buntlines. 'One +hand for the ship and one for yourself' is the rule aloft. But +exceptions are more plentiful than rules on a day like this. Both +hands must be used, though the sail and foot-ropes rack your body and +try their best to shake you off. If they succeed, a sickening thud on +deck, or a smothered scream and a half-heard _plopp_! overside would be +the end of you. + +All hands work like fury, for a full Antarctic hurricane is on them. +This great South Polar storm has swept a thousand leagues, almost +unchecked, before venting its utmost rage against the iron coasts all +round the Horn. The South Shetlands have only served to rouse its +temper. Its seas have grown bigger with every mile from the Pole, and +wilder with every mile towards the Horn. Now they are so enormous that +even the truck of the tall Yankee clipper staggering along to {123} +leeward cannot be seen except when both ships are topping the crest. +Wherever you look there seems to be an endless earthquake of +mountainous waves, with spuming volcanoes of their own, and vast, +abysmal craters yawning from the depths. The _Victoria_ begins to +labour. The wind and water seem to be gaining on her every minute. +She groans in every part of her sorely racked hull; while up aloft the +hurricane roars, rings, and screeches through the rigging. + +But suddenly there is a new and far more awful sound, which seems to +still all others, as a stupendous mother wave rears its huge, engulfing +bulk astern. On it comes, faster and higher, its cavernous hollow +roaring and its overtopping crest snarling viciously as it turns +forward, high above the poop. 'Hold on for your lives!' shout the +mates and skipper. They are not a moment too soon. The sails are +blanketed, and the ship seems as if she was actually being drawn, stern +first, into the very jaws of the sea. A shuddering pause . . . and +then, with a stunning crash, the whole devouring mass bursts full on +deck. The stricken _Victoria_ reels under the terrific shock, and then +lies dead another anxious minute, utterly helpless, her {124} deck +awash with a smother of foaming water, and her crew apparently drowned. +But presently her stern emerges through the dark, green-grey +after-shoulder of the wave. She responds to the lift of the mighty +barrel with a gallant effort to shake herself free. She rises, +dripping from stem to stern. Her sails refill and draw her on again. +And when the next wave comes she is just able to take it--but no more. + +The skipper has already decided to heave to and wait for the storm to +blow itself out. But there is still too much canvas on her. Even the +main lower topsail has to come in. The courses, or lowest square +sails, have all come in before. The little canvas required for lying +to must neither be too high nor yet too low. If it is too high, it +gives the wind a very dangerous degree of leverage. If it is too low, +it violently strains the whole vessel by being completely blanketed +when in the trough of the sea and then suddenly struck full when on the +crest. The main lower topsail is at just the proper height. But only +the fore and mizzen ones are wanted to balance the pressure aloft. So +in it has to come. And a dangerous bit of work it gives; for it has to +be hauled up from right amidships, where the deck is wetter than a +{125} half-tide rock. The yellow-oilskinned crew tail on and heave. +_Yo--ho_! _Yo--hay_! 'Hitch it! Quick, for your lives, hang on, +all!' A mountainous wall of black water suddenly leaps up and crashes +through the windward rigging. The watch goes down to a man, some +hanging on to the rope as if suspended in the middle of a waterfall, +for the deck is nearly perpendicular, while others wash off altogether +and fetch up with a dazing, underwater thud against the lee side. Inch +by inch the men haul in, waist-deep most of the time and often +completely under. _Yo--ho_! _Yo--hay_! _harrhh_, and they all hold +breath till they can get their heads out again. _Yo--ho_! _Yo--hay_! +'In with her!' _Heigh--o--oh_! 'Turn that!' 'All fast!' + +''Way aloft and roll her up quick!' The tossing crests are blown into +spindrift against the weather yardarm, while a pelting hailstorm stings +the wet, cold hands and faces. The men tear at the sail with their +numb fingers till their nails are bleeding. They hit it, pull it, +clutch at it for support. Certain death would follow a fall from +aloft; for the whole deck is hidden under a surging, seething mass of +water. You would swear the water's boiling if it wasn't icy cold. The +skipper's at the wheel, watching his {126} chance. There is no such +thing as a good chance now. But he sees one of some kind, just as the +men get the sail on the yard and are trying to make it fast. Down goes +the helm, and her head comes slowly up to the wind. 'She's doing +it---- No! Hang on, all! Great snakes, here comes a sea!' Struck +full, straight on her beam, by wind and sea together, the _Victoria_ +lays over as if she would never stop. Over she heels to it--over, +over, over! A second is a long suspense at such a time as this. The +sea breaks in thunder along her whole length, and pours in a sweeping +cataract across her deck, smashing the boats and dragging all loose +gear to leeward. Over she heels--over, over, over! The yards are +nearly up and down. The men cling desperately, as if to an inverted +mast. And well they may, especially on the leeward arm that dips them +far under a surge of water which seems likely to snap the whole thing +off. But the _Victoria's_ cargo and ballast never shift an inch. Her +stability is excellent. And as the heaving shoulder eases down she +holds her keel in, just before another lurch would send her turning +turtle. A pause . . . a quiver . . . and she begins to right. 'Now +then,' roars the indomitable mate, the moment his dripping {127} +yardarm comes from under, 'turn to, there--d' y' think we 're going to +hang on here the whole damn' day?' Whereupon the men turn to again +with twice the confidence and hearty goodwill that any other form of +reassurance could possibly have given them. + +As she comes back towards an even keel the wind catches the sails. The +skipper is still at the wheel, to which he and the two men whose trick +it is are clinging. 'Hard-a-lee!' and round she goes this time, till +she snuggles into a good lie-to, which keeps her alternately coming up +and falling off a little, by the counteraction of the sails and helm. +Here she rides out the storm, dipping her lee rail under, climbing the +wild, gigantic seas, and working off her course on the cyclone-driven +waters; but giving watch and watch about a chance to rest before she +squares away again. + +Next morning the skipper hardly puts his head out before he yells the +welcome order to set the main lower topsail--from the lee yardarm of +which a dozen men had nearly gone to Davy Jones's locker only +yesterday. He takes a look round; then orders up reefed foresail and +the three upper topsails, also reefed. Up goes the watch aloft and +lays out on the yard. 'Ready?' comes the shouted {128} query from the +bunt. 'Ay, ay, sir!' 'Haul out to windward!' _Eh--hai, o--ho, +o--ho--oh_! 'Far enough, sir?' 'Haul out to leeward!' _Eh--hai, +o--ho, o--ho--oh_! 'That'll do! Tie her up and don't miss any +points!' 'Right-oh! Lay down from aloft and set the sail!' _Yo--ho, +yo--hai, yo--ho--oh_! Then the chanty rises from the swaying men, +rises and falls, in wavering bursts of sound, as if the gale was +whirling it about: + + Blow the man down, blow the man down, + 'Way-ho! Blow the man down. + Blow the man down from Liverpool town; + Give us some wind to blow the man down. + +And so the gallant ship goes outward-bound; and homeward-bound the +same. At last she's back in Halifax, after a series of adventures that +would set an ordinary landsman up for life. But the only thing the +Nova Scotian papers say of her is this: 'Arrived from sea with general +cargo--ship _Victoria_, John Smith, master, ninety days from +Valparaiso. All well.' + +No mention of that terrible Antarctic hurricane? No 'heroes'? No +heroics? + +It's all in the day's work there. + + + + +{129} + +CHAPTER VIII + +STEAMERS + +Steamers and all other machine-driven craft are of very much greater +importance to Canada now than canoes and sailing craft together. But +their story can be told in a chapter no longer than the one devoted to +canoes alone; and this for several reasons. The tale of the canoe +begins somewhere in the immemorial past and is still being told to-day. +The story of the sailing ship is not so old as this. But it is as old +as the history of Canada. It is inseparably connected with Canada's +fortunes in peace and war. It is Canada's best sea story of the recent +past. And, to a far greater extent than the tale of the canoe, it is +also a story of the present and the immediate future. Moreover, +sailing craft helped to make turning points of Canadian history as only +a single steamer ever has. Sailing craft made Canada known +distinctively among every great seafaring people as steamers never +have. {130} And while the building, ownership, and actual navigation +of sailing craft once made Canada fourth among the shipping countries +of the world, the change to steam and steel, coinciding with the +destruction of the handiest timber and the development of inland forms +of business, put no less than eight successful rivals ahead of her. + + +Every one knows that James Watt turned the power of steam to practical +use in the eighteenth century. But it was not till the first year of +the nineteenth that a really workable steamer appeared, though the +British, French, and Americans had been experimenting for years, just +as ingenious men had been experimenting with stationary engines long +before Watt. This pioneer steamer was the _Charlotte Dundas_, which +ran on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland in 1801. Six years later +Fulton's _Clermont_, engined by the British firm of Boulton and Watt, +ran on the Hudson from New York to Albany. Two years later again the +_Accommodation_, the first steamer in Canada, was launched at Montreal, +and engined there as well. She was built for John Molson by John +Bruce, a shipbuilder, {131} and John Jackson, an engineer. She was +eighty-five feet over all and sixteen feet in the beam. Her engine was +six horse-power, and her trial speed five knots an hour. She was +launched, broadside on, behind the old Molson brewery. She was fitted +up for twenty passengers, but only ten went on her maiden trip. The +fare was eight dollars down to Quebec and ten dollars back. The +following is interesting as a newspaper account of the first trip made +by the first Canadian steamer. It is taken, word for word, from an +original copy of the _Quebec Gazette_ of November 9, 1809. + + +The Steam Boat, which was built at Montreal last winter, arrived here +on Saturday last, being her first trip. She was 66 hours on the +passage, of which she was at anchor 30. So that 36 hours is the time +which, in her present state, she takes to come down from Montreal to +Quebec [over 160 statute miles]. On Sunday last she went up against +wind and tide from Brehault's wharf to Lymburner's; but her progress +was very slow. It is obvious that her machinery, at present, has not +sufficient force for this River. But there can be no doubt of the +possibility of {132} perfectioning it so as to answer every purpose for +which she was intended; and it would be a public loss should the +proprietors be discouraged from persevering in their undertaking. + + +They did not fail to persevere. When Molson found that ox-teams were +required to tow her up St Mary's Current, below Montreal, he ordered a +better engine of thirty horse-power from Boulton and Watt in England, +and put it into the _Swiftsure_ in 1811. This steamer was twice the +size of the _Accommodation_, being 120 by 24 feet; and the _Quebec +Gazette_ waxed eloquent about her: + + +The Steam Boat arrived here from Montreal on Sunday. She started from +Montreal at 5 o'clock on Saturday morning, and anchored at Three +Rivers, which she left on Sunday morning at 5 o'clock, and arrived at +the King's Wharf, Quebec, at half-past two; being only 24 hours and a +half under way between the two cities, with a strong head wind all the +way. She is most superbly fitted up, and offers accommodation for +passengers in every respect equal to the best hotel in Canada. In +short, for celerity and security, she well {133} deserves the name of +_Swiftsure_. America cannot boast of a more useful and expensive +undertaking by one individual, than this of Mr Molson's. His +Excellency, the Governor-in-chief, set out for Montreal on Tuesday +afternoon, in the Steam Boat. + + +The following letter from Molson, for the information of Sir George +Prevost, governor-general during the War of 1812, refers to one of the +first tenders ever made, in any part of the world, to supply steamer +transport for either naval or military purposes. It was received at +Quebec by Commissary-General Robinson on February 6, 1813: + + +I received a letter from the Military Secretary, under date of the 15th +Decr. last, informing me of His Excellency's approval of a Tender I had +made of the Steam Boat for the use of Government; wherein I am likewise +informed that you would receive instructions to cause an arrangement to +be made for her Service during the ensuing Season. For the Transport +of Troops and conveyance of light Stores, it will be necessary to fit +her up in a manner so as to be best adapted for the purpose, which will +be in my opinion something after the mode {134} of a Transport. For a +passage Boat she would have to be fitted up quite in a different +manner. If you wish her to be arranged in any particular manner under +the direction of any Person, I am agreeable. I should be glad to be +informed if His Excellency wishes or expects that I shall sail in her +myself, whether Government or I furnish the Officers and men to +Navigate and Pilot her, the Engineer excepted, the fuel and all other +necessarys that may be required for her use. I imagine the arrangement +must be for the Season, not by the Trip, as Government may wish to +detain her for particular purposes. Ensurance I do not believe can be +effected for less than 30 p. cent for the Season, therefore I must take +the risque upon myself. + + +Within five years of this tender Molson's St Lawrence Steamboat Company +had six more steamers running. In 1823 a towboat company was formed, +and the _Hercules_ towed the _Margaret_ from Quebec to Montreal. The +well-known word 'tug' was soon brought into use from England, where it +originated from the fact that the first towboat in the world was called +_The Tug_. In 1836, before {135} the first steam railway train ran +from La Prairie to St Johns, the Torrance Line, in opposition to the +Molson Line, was running the _Canada_, which was then the largest and +fastest steamer in the whole New World. Meanwhile steam navigation had +been practised on the Great Lakes for twenty years; for in 1817 the +little _Ontario_ and the big _Frontenac_ made their first trips from +Kingston to York (now Toronto). The _Frontenac_ was built at Finkles +Point, Ernestown, eighteen miles from Kingston, by Henry Teabout, an +American who had been employed in the shipyards of Sackett's Harbour at +the time of the abortive British attack in 1813. She was about seven +hundred tons, schooner rigged, engined by Boulton and Watt, and built +at a total cost of $135,000. A local paper said that 'her proportions +strike the eye very agreeably, and good judges have pronounced this to +be the best piece of naval architecture of the kind yet produced in +America.' + +Canals and steamers naturally served each other's turn. There was a +great deal of canal building in the twenties. The Lachine Canal, +opening up direct communication west of Montreal, was dug out by 1825, +the Welland, across the Niagara peninsula, by 1829, and the {136} +Rideau, near Ottawa, by 1832. A few very small canals had preceded +these; others were to follow them; and they were themselves in their +infancy of size and usefulness. But the beginning had been made. + +The early Canadian steamers and canals did credit to a poor and thinly +peopled country. But none of them ranked as a pioneering achievement +in the world at large. This kind of achievement was reserved for the +_Royal William_, a vessel of such distinction in the history of +shipping that her career must be followed out in detail. + +[Illustration: TRANSPORT _BECKWITH_ AND BATEAUX, LAKE ONTARIO, 1816. +From the John Rose Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library.] + +She was the first of all sea-going steamers, the first that ever +crossed an ocean entirely under steam, and the first that ever fired a +shot in action. But her claims and the spurious counter-claims against +her must both be made quite clear. She was not the first steamer that +ever put out to sea, for the Yankee _Phoenix_ made the little coasting +trip from Hoboken to Philadelphia in 1809. She was not the first +steamer in Canadian salt water, for the _St John_ crossed the Bay of +Fundy in 1826. And she was not the first vessel with a steam engine +that crossed an ocean, for the Yankee _Savannah_ crossed from Savannah +to Liverpool in 1819. The {137} _Phoenix_ and _St John_ call for no +explanation. The _Savannah_ does, especially in view of the claims so +freely made and allowed for her as being the first regular steamer to +cross an ocean. To begin with, she was not a regular sea-going steamer +with auxiliary sails like the _Royal William_, but a so-called +clipper-built, full-rigged ship of three hundred tons with a small +auxiliary engine and paddle-wheels made to be let down her sides when +the wind failed. She did not even steam against head winds, but +tacked. She took a month to make Liverpool, and she used steam for +only eighty hours altogether. She could not, indeed, have done much +more, because she carried only seventy-five tons of coal and +twenty-five cords of wood, and she made port with plenty of fuel left. +Her original log (the official record every vessel keeps) disproves the +whole case mistakenly made out for her by some far too zealous +advocates. + +The claims of the _Royal William_ are proved by ample contemporary +evidence, as well as by the subsequent statements of her master, John +M'Dougall, her builder, James Goudie, and John Henry, the Quebec +founder who made some castings for her engines the year after they had +been put into her at Montreal. {138} M'Dougall was a seaman of +indomitable perseverance, as his famous voyage to England shows. +Goudie, though only twenty-one, was a most capable naval architect, +born in Canada and taught his profession in Scotland. His father was a +naval architect before him and had built several British vessels on the +Great Lakes for service against the Americans during the War of 1812. +Both Goudie and Henry lived to retell their tale in 1891, when the +Canadian government put up a tablet to commemorate what pioneering work +the _Royal William_ had done, both for the inter-colonial and +inter-imperial connection. + +The first stimulus to move the promoters of the _Royal William_ was the +subsidy of $12,000 offered by the government of Lower Canada in 1830 to +the owners of any steamer over five hundred tons that would ply between +Quebec and Halifax. Half this amount had been offered in 1825, but the +inducement was not then sufficient. The Quebec and Halifax Navigation +Company was formed by the leading merchants of Quebec joined with a few +in Halifax. The latter included the three Cunard brothers, whose +family name has been a household word in transatlantic shipping circles +from that day to this. On September 2, {139} 1830, Goudie laid the +keel of the _Royal William_ in the yard belonging to George Black, a +shipbuilder, and his partner, John Saxton Campbell, formerly an officer +in the 99th Foot, and at this time a merchant and shipowner in Quebec. +The shipyard was situated at Cape Cove beside the St Lawrence, a mile +above the citadel, and directly in line with the spot on which Wolfe +breathed his last after the Battle of the Plains. + +The launch took place on Friday afternoon, April 29, 1831. Even if all +the people present had then foreknown the _Royal William's_ career they +could not have done more to mark the occasion as one of truly national +significance. The leaders among them certainly looked forward to some +great results at home. Quebec was the capital of Lower Canada; and +every Canadian statesman hoped that the new steamer would become a bond +of union between the three different parts of the country--the old +French province by the St Lawrence, the old British provinces down by +the sea, and the new British province up by the Lakes. + +The mayor of Quebec proclaimed a public holiday, which brought out such +a concourse of shipwrights and other shipping experts as hardly any +other city in the world could show. {140} Lord Aylmer was there as +governor-general to represent King William IV, after whom the vessel +was to be named the _Royal William_ by Lady Aylmer. This was most +appropriate, as the sailor king had been the first member of any royal +house to set foot on Canadian soil, which he did at Quebec in 1787, as +an officer in H.M.S. _Pegasus_. The guard and band from the 32nd Foot +were drawn up near the slip. The gunners of the Royal Artillery were +waiting to fire the salute from the new citadel, which, with the walls, +was nearing completion, after the Imperial government had spent +thirty-five million dollars in carrying out the plans approved by +Wellington. Lady Aylmer took the bottle of wine, which was wreathed in +a garland of flowers, and, throwing it against the bows, pronounced the +historic formula: 'God bless the _Royal William_ and all who sail in +her.' Then, amid the crash of arms and music, the roaring of +artillery, and the enthusiastic cheers of all the people, the stately +vessel took the water, to begin a career the like of which no other +Canadian vessel ever equalled before that time or since. + +Her engines, which developed more than two hundred horse-power, were +made by Bennett and Henderson in Montreal and sent to meet {141} her a +few miles below the city, as the vessel towing her up could not stem St +Mary's Current. Her hull was that of a regular sea-going steamer, +thoroughly fit to go foreign, and not the hull of an ordinary sailing +ship, like the _Savannah_, with paddles hung over the sides in a calm. +Goudie's master, Simmons of Greenock, had built four steamers to cross +the Irish Sea; and Goudie probably followed his master's practice when +he gave the _Royal William_ two deep 'scoops' to receive the +paddle-boxes nearer the bows than the stern. The tonnage by builder's +measurement was 1370, though by net capacity of burden only 363. The +length over all was 176 feet, on the keel 146. Including the +paddle-boxes the breadth was 44 feet; and, as each box was 8 feet +broad, there were 28 feet clear between them. The depth of hold was 17 +feet 9 inches, the draught 14 feet. The rig was that of a three-masted +topsail schooner. There were fifty passenger berths and a good saloon. + +[Illustration: THE _ROYAL WILLIAM_ From the original painting in +possession of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec] + +The three trips between Quebec and Halifax in 1831 were most +successful. But 1832 was the year of the great cholera, especially in +Quebec, and the _Royal William_ was so harassed by quarantine that she +had to be laid up there. The losses of that disastrous season {142} +decided her owners to sell out next spring for less than a third of her +original cost. She was then degraded for a time into a local tug or +sometimes an excursion boat. But presently she was sent down to +Boston, where the band at Fort Independence played her in to the tune +of 'God Save the King,' because she was the first of all steamers to +enter a seaport of the United States under the Union Jack. + +Ill luck pursued her new owners, who, on her return to Quebec, decided +to send her to England for sale. She left Quebec on August 5, 1833, +coaled at Pictou, which lies on the Gulf side of Nova Scotia, and took +her departure from there on the 18th, for her epoch-making voyage, with +the following most prosaic clearance: '_Royal William_, 363 tons. 36 +men. John M'Dougall, master. Bound to London. British. Cargo: 254 +chaldrons of coals [nearly 300 tons], a box of stuffed birds, and six +spars, produce of this province. One box and one trunk, household +furniture and a harp, all British, and seven passengers.' The fare was +fixed at L20, 'not including wines.' + +The voyage soon became eventful. Nearly three hundred tons of coal was +a heavy concentrated cargo for the tremendous storm she encountered on +the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. {143} She strained; her starboard +engine was disabled; she began to leak; and the engineer came up to +tell M'Dougall she was sinking. But M'Dougall held his course, started +the pumps, and kept her under way for a week with only the port engine +going. The whole passage from Pictou, counting the time she was +detained at Cowes repairing boilers, took twenty-five days. M'Dougall, +a sturdy Scotsman, native of Oban, must have been sorely tempted to +'put the kettle off the boil' and run her under sail. But either the +port or starboard engine, or both, worked her the whole way over, and +thus for ever established her claim to priority in transatlantic +navigation under steam alone. + +In London she was sold for L10,000, just twice what she had fetched at +sheriff's sale in Quebec some months before. She was at once +chartered, crew and all, by the Portuguese government, who declined to +buy her for conversion into a man-of-war. In 1834, however, she did +become a man-of-war, this time under the Spanish flag, though flying +the broad Pennant of Commodore Henry, who was then commanding the +British Auxiliary Steam Squadron against the Carlists in the north of +Spain. Two years later, on May 5, 1836, under {144} her Spanish name +of _Isabella Segunda_, she made another record. When the British +Legion, under Sir de Lacy Evans, was attacking the Carlists in the bay +of St Sebastian, she stood in towards the Carlist flank and thereupon +fired the first shot that any steam man-of-war had ever fired in action. + +Strangely enough, she cannot be said to have come to any definite end +as an individual ship. She continued in the Spanish service till 1840, +when she was sent to Bordeaux for repairs. The Spaniards, who are +notorious slovens at keeping things shipshape, had allowed her to run +down to bare rot after her Britisher-Canadian crew had left her. So +the French bought her for a hulk and left her where she was. But the +Spaniards took her engines out and put them into a new _Isabella +Segunda_, which was wrecked in a storm on the Algerian coast in 1860. + +Her career of record-making is well worth a general summary: the _Royal +William_ was the first steamer built to foster inter-colonial trade in +Canada; the first Canadian steamer specially designed for work at sea; +the first sea-going steamer to enter a port in the United States under +the British flag; the first steam transport in Portugal; the first +steam man-of-war in {145} Spain; the first naval steamer that ever +fired a shot in action; and the first vessel in the world that ever +crossed an ocean under steam alone. + +The next step in the history of Canadian steamers is not concerned with +a ship but with a man. Sir Hugh Allan, who, though the greatest, was +not the first of the pioneers. The Cunard brothers preceded the Allan +brothers in establishing a transatlantic line. Samuel Cunard had been +one of the shareholders in the _Royal William_. He had wonderful +powers of organization. He knew the shipping trade as very few have +ever known it; and his name has long since become historical in this +connection. The first 'Cunarder' to arrive in Canada was the +_Britannia_, 1154 tons, built on the Clyde, and engined there by +Napier. From that time on till Confederation, that is, from 1840 to +1867, Cunarders ran from Liverpool to Halifax. But Halifax was always +treated as a port of call. The American ports were the real +destination. And after 1867 the Cunarders became practically an +Anglo-American, not an Anglo-Canadian, line. During their connection +with Canada, partially renewed in the present century, the Cunards +never did {146} anything really original. They were not among the +first to make the change from wood to iron or from paddle-wheels to +screws. But they did business honestly and well and always took care +of their passengers' safety. + +The Cunards were Canadians. Sir Hugh Allan was a Scotsman. But he and +the line he founded are unchallengeably first in their services to +Canada. Hugh Allan was born in 1810, the son of a Scottish master +mariner who about that time was mate of a transport carrying supplies +to the British Army in the Peninsular War. He arrived in Canada when +he was only fifteen, entered the employ of a Montreal shipping firm +when he came of age, and at forty-eight obtained complete control of it +with his brother Andrew. From that day to this the Allan family have +been the acknowledged leaders of Canadian transatlantic shipping. + +Hugh Allan was a man of boundless energy, iron will, and consummate +business ability. The political troubles of the Pacific Scandal in +1873 prevented him from anticipating the present Canadian Pacific +Railway in making a single united service of trains and steamers to +connect England with China and both with Canada. But what he did +succeed in carrying {147} through, against long odds, was quite enough +for one distinguished business lifetime. He began by running a line of +sailing craft between Montreal and the mother country in conjunction +with his father's firm in Glasgow. Then, in 1853, he and his brother +headed a company which ordered two iron screw steamers to be built in +Scotland for the St Lawrence. The first of these, the _Canadian_, came +out to Quebec on her maiden voyage in 1854; but both she and her sister +ship were soon diverted to the Crimea, where high rates were being paid +for transports during the war. + +In 1858 the Allans contracted with the government for a weekly mail +service and bought out all their partners, as they alone considered +that the time had come for such a venture. The subsidy was doubled the +next year to prevent the collapse of the service after a widespread +financial panic. But heavy forfeits were imposed for lateness in +delivering mails, an adverse factor in the greatest fight against +misfortune ever known to Canadian shipping history. Within eight years +the Allans lost as many vessels. In every case there was disastrous +loss of property; in some, a total loss of everything--vessel, cargo, +crew, and passengers. + +{148} + +No other firm has ever had to face such a storm of persistent +adversity. But the indomitable Allans emerged triumphant; and by the +time of Confederation, in 1867, the worst was over. Thenceforth they +were first in all respects till very recently. In the introduction of +shipbuilding improvements they are without a rival still. Their +_Bavarian_ was the first Atlantic liner entirely built of steel; their +_Parisian_ the first to be fitted with bilge keels; their _Virginian_ +and _Victorian_ the first to use the turbine. + +There are only two other salient features of Canadian steamer history +that can be mentioned beside the _Royal William_ and the Allans: the +Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company and the Canadian Pacific +Railway's merchant fleet. True, neither of these comes into quite the +same class. The _Royal William_ occupies an absolutely unique position +in the world at large. The Allans are more intimately connected with +the history of Canadian shipping than any other family or firm. Both +the _Royal William_ and the Allans are landmarks. But the Richelieu +and Ontario Navigation Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company +have also shown abundant energy; turned to effective national account. + +The Richelieu Steamboat Company was {149} formed in 1845, and took its +other title thirty years later, when it made its first great 'merger.' +It began in a very humble way, by running two little market boats +between Sorel and Montreal. From the first it had to fight for its +commercial life. The train was beginning to be a formidable +competitor. But the fight to a finish was the fight of boat against +boat. Fares were cut and cut again. At last the passengers were +offered bed, board, and transportation for the price of a single meal. +Every day there was a desperate race on the water. The rival steamers +shook and panted in their self-destroying zeal to be the first to get +the gangway down. Clouds of fire-streaked smoke poured from their +funnels. More than once a cargo that would burn well was thrown into +the furnaces to keep the steam up. The public became quite as keen as +any of the crews or companies, and worked excitement up to fever pitch +by crowding the wharves to gamble madly on this daily river Derby. The +stress was too much for the weaker companies. One by one they either +fell out or 'merged in.' After the merger with the Ontario Company in +1875 things went on, with many ups and downs, more in the usual way of +competition. Finally, in 1913, a {150} general 'pooling merger' was +effected by which practically all Canadian lines came under one +control, from the lower Great Lakes, down the St Lawrence, through the +Gulf, and south away to the West Indies. The title of this new merger +is the Canada Steamship Lines Limited. The Canadian Pacific Railway +Company has half a dozen different fleets at work: one on the Atlantic, +another as a trans-Pacific line, a third on the Pacific coast, a fourth +on the lakes of British Columbia, a fifth on the upper Great Lakes, and +a sixth as ferries for its trains. Thus, by taking the upper Great +Lakes and the West, it divides the trans-Canadian waters with the +Canada Steamship Lines, which latter take the lower Great Lakes and the +East. A company whose annual receipts and expenditure are balanced at +not far short of two hundred millions of dollars might well seem to be +all-important in every way, especially when its shipping tonnage +exceeds that of the Allans by over thirty thousand. But this Chronicle +is a history of at least four hundred years; while the famous 'C.P.R.' +has not as yet been either forty years a railway line or twenty years a +shipping firm. There is only one great C.P.R. disaster to record. But +that is of appalling magnitude. Over a thousand lives were lost {151} +when the Norwegian collier _Storstad_ sank the _Empress of Ireland_ off +Rimouski in 1914. + +The five principal features of Canadian steamship history have now been +pointed out: John Molson's pioneer boats, the _Royal William_, the +Allan line, the 'R. and O.' (now the Canada Steamship Lines), and the +'C.P.R.' No other individual feature has any noteworthy Canadian +peculiarities. Nor does the general evolution of steam navigation in +or around Canada differ notably, in other respects, from the same +evolution elsewhere. Steamers have adapted themselves to circumstances +in Canada very much as they have in other countries, pushing their +persistent way step by step into all the navigable waters, fresh or +salt. The Canadian waters, especially the fresh waters, certainly have +some marked characteristics of their own, but the steamers have +acquired no special character in consequence. + +Both Canadian and visiting steamers have always had their duplicates on +many other oceans, lakes, and rivers. There is the ubiquitous tug; +stubby, noisy, self-assertive, small; but, in its several varieties, +the handiest {152} all-round little craft afloat. It is worth noting +that in the special class of sea tugs the Dutch, and not the British, +are easily first: a curious exception to the general rule of British +supremacy at sea. Then, with many variations and several intermediate +types, there are the two main distinctive kinds of inland vessels: the +long, low, grimy, cargo-carrying whale-back, tankship, barge, or other +useful form of ugliness, simply meant to nose her way through quite +safe waters with the utmost bulk her huge stuffed maw will hold; and, +at the opposite end of the scale, the high, white, gaily decorated +'palace' steamer, with tier upon tier of decks, and a strong suggestion +of the theatre all through. Sea-going craft show the same variations +within a given type and the same intermediate types between the two +ends of the scale. But the general distinction is quite as well +marked, though the necessity for seaworthy hulls brings about a closer +resemblance along the water-line. There is the cargo boat, long, +comparatively low, and rather dingy; with derricks and vast holds, +which remind one of the tentacles and stomach of an octopus. The +opposite extreme is the great passenger liner, much larger and more +shapely in the hull; but best distinguished, at any {153} distance, by +her towering, white, superstructural decks, with their clean-run +symmetry fore and aft. + +The 'Britisher' is the predominant type in Canadian waters. This is +natural enough, considering that the British Isles build nearly all +'Britishers,' most 'Canadians,' and many foreigners, and that the +tonnage actually under construction there in 1913 exceeded the total +tonnage owned by any other country except Germany and the United +States, while it greatly exceeded the total tonnage under construction +in all other countries of the world put together, including Germany and +the United States. The British practice is naturally the prevailing +one both in shipbuilding and marine engineering. But there is a +general conformity to certain leading ideas everywhere. The engine is +passing out of the stage in which the fuel-made steam worked machinery, +which, in its turn, worked propellers; and passing into the stage in +which the latent forces of the fuel itself are brought to bear more +directly on propellers, that is to say, into the stage of internal +combustion engines and the turbine-driven screw. The hull has changed +more and more in its proportions between length and breadth since the +supplanting of wood by steel. {154} Instead of a length equal at most +to five beams there are lengths of more than ten beams now. This means +a radical change in framing. The old wooden vessel, as we have seen, +had a frame looking like the skeleton of a man's body, with the keel +for a backbone and multitudinous ribs at right angles to it. But the +new steel vessel, especially if built on the excellent Isherwood +principle, looks entirely different. The transverse ribs are there, of +course, but in a modified form. They do not catch the eye, which now, +instead of being drawn from side to side, is led along from end to end +by what looks like, and really is, a complete ribbing of internal +keels. The whole system has, in fact, been changed from the transverse +to the longitudinal. + +The subject is well worth pursuing for its own sake. But the modern +developments of naval architecture and waterborne trade which Canada +shares with the rest of the world do not concern us any further here. + + + + +{155} + +CHAPTER IX + +FISHERIES + +The fisheries of Canada are the most important in the world. True as +this statement is, it needs some explanation. In the first place, +Newfoundland is included, in accordance with its inclusion under all +other headings in this book. Then, all the wholly or partly +unexploited waters are taken into consideration, including Hudson Bay +and the Arctic ocean. And, thirdly, the catch made by foreigners in +all waters neighbouring the Canadian coasts is not left out. Thus the +Canadian fisheries are held to mean all the fisheries, fresh and salt, +in or nearest to the whole of British North America. This is a +perfectly fair basis to start from. It is, indeed, the fairest basis +that can be found, as it affords a fixed territorial standard of +comparison with other countries; and standards of comparison are +particularly hard to fix in regard to fishing. French and Americans +fish round Newfoundland, in waters {156} closely neighbouring British +territory and far removed from their own; and the fishing fleets of the +British Isles work grounds as far asunder as the White Sea is from +Africa. Yet all their catches figure in official reports as being +French, American, or British. And so they legally are, if the men who +make them observe the three-mile open-water distance-limit fixed by +international agreement as the proper territorial boundary of +government control. Beyond three miles from shore all 'nationals' are +on an equal footing. + +Now, taking the word Canadian in the sense just defined, it is safe to +say that Canadian waters contain a greater quantity of the principal +food fishes than those of any other country. The truth of this +statement depends on three facts. The first is that practically all +fish landed in Canada are caught in Canadian waters. This is a marked +contrast to what happens in the other great fishing countries, like the +United States, the British islands, Germany, Norway, and France, all of +which send some of their fleets very far afield. The second fact is +the statistics of totals caught. Canada at present catches fifty +million dollars' worth of fish from her own waters in a single year. +The 'Britisher' and 'Yankee' totals {157} each exceed this, though not +by much. But the Yankee total includes a good deal, and the Britisher +total a very great deal, caught far outside their own waters. No other +country is even worthy of comparison with these. The third fact is +that the Canadian total, already advancing more rapidly than any other +total, must continue to advance more rapidly still, because Canada has +the greatest area of unexploited fish-bearing waters in the world. + +If the amount caught per head of the total population is made the +standard of comparison, then the Canadian catch is more than five times +greater than the Britishers', and more than ten times greater than the +Yankees'. And if, still keeping to this standard, the comparison is +made between totals caught in strictly territorial waters, Canada +surpasses both Britishers and Yankees, put together, ten times over. + +There are nearly 120,000 fishermen in Canada and Newfoundland. The +proportion in Newfoundland is, of course, by far the higher of the two. +About 60,000 people are engaged in handling fish ashore, and many +thousands more are concerned in trading with fish products. One way +and another, the livelihood of at least one Canadian in every fifteen, +and one Newfoundlander in every two, is entirely dependent {158} on +fishing. Statistics are apt to become bewildering unless carefully +marshalled in tabular form. But one or two items might be added. +There is a fishing craft of some kind, however small most of them are, +to every single family in Newfoundland, a proportion immeasurably +higher than in any other country in the world. But even more +astonishing is the statistical fact that the fishermen of all nations +in Newfoundland waters catch each year nearly 1000 cod-fish for every +single individual person there is in the whole population of the +island. After this, numbers seem rather to weaken than strengthen the +argument. But it is worth mentioning that there are nearly 80,000 +local fishing boats of all sorts actually counted by the governments of +Canada and Newfoundland, from little rowboats up to full-powered +steamers of considerable tonnage; that nearly a quarter of the whole +number in 1913 already had gasoline or other motors; that the total +length of all the Canadian and Newfoundland coastlines is nearly equal +to that of the equator; that, excluding all parts of the Great Lakes +within the American sphere of influence, the fresh-water fishing area +of Canada exceeds the total area of the British Isles by more than +100,000 square miles; and, finally, that the {159} mere increase of +value in the fisheries of the single province of British Columbia, +within a single year, has exceeded the value of the total catch +marketed in several of the smaller states of Europe and America. + +The two principal salt-water craft that have a history behind them and +a sphere of active usefulness to-day are the schooner and its tender, +the little dory. A schooner is a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel with at +least two masts and four sails--mainsail, foresail, jib, and the +staysail generally called a wind-bag. The schooner rig makes the +handiest all-round vessel known. It can be managed by fewer hands in +proportion to its tonnage than any other, and its sails do the greatest +amount of work under the most varied conditions. Other rigs may beat +it on special points; but the general sum of all the sailing virtues is +decidedly its own. It takes you more nearly into a head wind than most +others, and scuds before a lubber's wind dead aft with a maximum of +canvas spread out 'wing-and-wing'--one big sail to port and the other +out to starboard. + +The dory is a two-man rowboat which possesses as many of the different, +and sometimes contradictory, good points of the canoe, skiff, punt, and +lifeboat as it is possible to {160} combine in a single craft. It can +be rowed, sculled, sailed, or driven by a motor. It is the first +aquatic plaything for the boys, and often the last salvation for the +men. The way it will ride out a storm that makes a liner labour and +sinks any ill-found vessel like a stone is little short of marvellous. +It has a flattish bottom, sheering up at both ends, which are high in +the gunwale. The flat stern, which looks like a narrow wedge with the +point cut off, is a good deal more waterborne than the bow and rises +more readily to the seas without presenting too much resisting surface +to either wind or wave. Each schooner has several dories, which fish +all round it, thus suggesting what is often called the hen-and-chickens +style. At dark, or when the catch has filled the dory, the men come +back on board, 'nesting' half a dozen dories, one inside the other. +But sometimes a sudden storm, especially if it follows fog, will set +the chickens straying; and then the men must ride it out moored to some +sort of drogue or floating anchor. The usual drogue is a trawl tub, +quite perfect if filled with oil-soaked cotton waste to make a 'slick' +which keeps the crests from breaking. The tub is hove into the water, +over the stern, to which it is made fast by a bit of line long {161} +enough to give the proper scope. And there, with the live ballast of +two expert men, whose home has always been the water, the dory will +thread its perilous way unharmed through spume and spindrift, across +the engulfing valleys and over the riven hill-tops of the sea. + +These schooners and their attendant dories have a long and stirring +history of their own. But they are not the only craft, nor yet the +oldest; and though their history would easily fill a volume twice the +size of this, it would only tell us a very little about Canadian +fisheries as a whole, from first to last. Even if we went back by +hasty steps, of quite a century each, we should never get into the wild +days of the early 'fishing admirals' before our space gave out. All we +can do here is simply to mention the steps themselves, and then pass +on. First, the red men, few in number, and fishing from canoes. Then +the early whites, dispossessing the red men and steadily increasing. +They came from all seafaring peoples, and had no other form of justice +than what could be enforced by 'fishing admirals,' who won their rank +by the order of their arrival on the Banks--admiral first, vice-admiral +second, rear-admiral third. Then government by men-of-war began, and +Newfoundland itself became, {162} officially, a man-of-war, under its +own captain from the Royal Navy. Finally, civil self-government +followed in the usual way. + +All through there was a constantly growing and apparently inextricable +entanglement of international complications, which were only settled by +The Hague agreement in the present century. And only within almost as +recent times has what may be called the natural history of Canadian +fisheries begun to follow the inevitable trend of evolution which +gradually changes the civilized fisherman from a hunter into a farmer. +As man increases in number, and his means of hunting down game increase +still faster, a time inevitably comes when he disturbs the balance of +nature to such an extent that he must either exterminate his prey or +begin to 'farm' it, that is, begin to breed and protect as well as kill +it. Fisheries are no exception to this rule; and what with close +seasons, prohibitions, hatcheries, and other means of keeping up the +supply of fish, the fishing population is beginning, though only to a +very small extent as yet, to make the change. Some day we shall talk +of our pedigree cod, but the men of this generation will not live to +see it. + +The change is beneficial for the mere mouths {163} there are to fill. +But it means less and less demand for those glorious and most inspiring +qualities of courage, strength, and bodily skill which are required by +all who pit themselves against Nature in her wildest and most dangerous +moods. The fisherman and sealer have only the elements to fight; +though this too often means a fight for life. A hundred men were +frozen to death on the ice, and two hundred more were drowned in the +Gulf, during the great spring seal hunt blizzard of 1914. Whalemen +still occasionally fight for their lives against their prey as well. +And all three kinds of deep-sea fishery have bred so many simple-minded +heroes that only cowards attract particular attention. + +No modern reader needs reminding that whales are not fish but mammals, +belonging to the same order of the animal kingdom as monkeys, dogs, and +men. They include the most gigantic of all creatures, living or +extinct. The enormous 'right' whales of the story-books have been +driven far north in greatly diminished numbers. The equally famous +sperm whales have always been very rare, as they prefer southern +waters. But the 'finners,' which are still fairly common, include the +'sulphurs,' among which there have been {164} specimens far exceeding +any authentic sperms or 'rights.' Even the humpbacks and common +finbacks, both well known in Canadian waters, occasionally surpass the +average size of sperms and 'rights.' But the sulphur is probably the +only kind of whale which sometimes grows to a hundred feet and more. + +Whaling is done in three different ways: from canoes, from boats sent +off by sailing ships, and from steamers direct. The Indians whaled +from canoes before the white man came, and a few Indians, Eskimos, and +French Canadians are whaling from canoes to-day. Eskimos sometimes +attack a large whale in a single canoe, but oftener with a regular +flotilla of kayaks, and worry it to death; as the Indians once did with +bark canoes in the Gulf and lower St Lawrence. Modern canoe whaling is +done from a North-Shore wooden canoe of considerable size and weight +with a crew of two men. It is now chiefly carried on by a few French +Canadians living along the north shore of the lower St Lawrence. It is +not called whaling but porpoise-hunting, from the mistaken idea that +the little white whale is a porpoise, instead of the smallest kind of +whale, running up to over twenty feet in length. It is dangerous work +at best, and a good many men {165} are drowned. As a rule they are +very skilful, and they nearly always jab carefully while sitting down. +Sometimes, however, the rare occasion serves the rare harpooner, when +the whale and canoe appear as if about to meet each other straight +head-on. Then, in a flash, the man in the bow is up on his feet, with +the harpoon so poised that the rocking water, the mettlesome canoe, and +his watchful comrade in the stern, all form part of the concentrated +energy with which he brings his every faculty to a single point of +instantaneous action. There, for one fateful moment, he stands erect, +his whole tense body like the full-drawn bow before it speeds the arrow +home. He throws: and then, for some desperate minutes, it is often a +fight to a finish between the whale's life and his own. + +The old wooden whaling vessel under mast and sail is almost extinct. +But it had a long and splendid career. The Basques, who were then the +models for the world, began in the Gulf before Jacques Cartier came; +and worked the St Lawrence with wonderful success as high as the basin +of Quebec. The French never whaled in Canada; but the 'Bluenose' Nova +Scotians did, and held their own against all comers. 'A dead whale or +a stove boat' {166} was the motto for every man who joined the chase. +Discipline was stern; and rightly so. A green hand was allowed one +show of funk; but that was all. However, there was very little funking +so long as Britishers, Bluenoses, and Yankees could pick their crews +from among the most adventurous of their own populations. + +Hardly had the long-drawn clarion of the look-out's _B--l--o--w!_ +sounded aloft than the boats were lowered from the davits and began +pulling away towards the likeliest spot for a rise. Two barbed +harpoons, always known as 'irons,' were carried on the same line, +always called the 'warp.' It both could be used, so much the better, +especially as they were some distance apart on the warp, the bight of +which formed a considerable drag in the water. Other drags, usually +called 'drugs,' were bits of wood made fast thwart-wise on the warp, so +as to increase the pull on a sounding whale. The coiling and +management of the warp was of the utmost importance. Many a man has +gone to Davy Jones with a strangling loop of rope around him. +Everything, of course, had to be made shipshape in advance, as there +was no time for finishing touches once the cry of _B--l--o--w!_ was +{167} raised. And if there was haste at all times, what was there not +when fleets of whalers under different flags were together in the same +waters? + +The approach, often made by changing the oars for silent paddles; the +strike; the flying whale; the snaking, streaking, zipping line; the +furious tow, with the boat almost leaping from crest to crest; the long +haul in on the gradually slackening warp; the lancing and the dying +flurry, were all exciting enough by themselves. And when a whale +showed fight, charged home, and smashed a boat to splinters, it took a +smart crew to escape and get rescued in time. A Greenland whale once +took fifteen harpoons, drew out six miles of line, and carried down a +boat with all hands drowned before it was killed. Old sperms that had +once escaped without being badly hurt were always ready to fight again. +One fighting whale took down the bow oarsman in its mouth, drowned the +next two, and sent the rest flying with a single snap of its jaws. +Another fought nine hours, took five harpoons and seven bombs, smashed +up three boats, and sank dead--a total loss. A third, after smashing a +boat, charged the ship and stove her side so badly that she sank within +five minutes. + +{168} + +Yet accidents like these only spurred the whalemen on to greater +efforts, not of mere bravado, but of daring skill. Perhaps the most +wonderful regular feat of all was 'spading,' which meant slewing the +boat close in, as the whale was about to sound, and cutting the tendons +of its tremendous death-dealing tail by a slicing blow from the +two-handed razor-edged 'spade.' Perhaps the most wonderful of all +exceptional escapes was that of a boat which was towed by one whale +right over the back of another. And perhaps the most exciting finish +to any international race was the one in which the Yankee, who came up +second, got 'first iron' by 'pitchpoling' clear over the intervening +British boat, whose crew were nearly drowned by this 'slick' Yankee's +flying warp. + +No wonder old whalemen despise the easier and safer methods of steam +whaling practised by the Norwegians in Canadian and other waters at the +present day. And yet steam whaling is not without some thrilling +risks. The steamers are speedy, handy, small, about one hundred tons +or so, with the latest pattern of the explosive harpoon gun originally +invented by Sven Foyn in 1880. The range is very short, rarely over +fifty yards. The harpoon may be compared to the stick of an {169} +umbrella, with four ribs that open when the bomb in the handle explodes +inside the whale, which it thus anchors to the steamer. The whole +steamer then plays the whale as an angler plays a fish, letting out +line--sometimes two miles of it--towing with stopped engines at first, +and then winding in while giving quarter, half, and three-quarter speed +astern, as the steamer gains on the whale. Even a steamer, however, +has been charged, stove, and sunk. And a fighting humpback in the Gulf +of St Lawrence is no easy game to tackle with a hand-lance in a pram. +Norwegians are thrifty folk, and bomb harpooning is expensive. So when +the whale and steamer meet, at the end of the chase, a tiny pram is +launched with two men rowing and a third standing up in the stern to +wield the fifteen-foot lance. As the humpback's flippers are also +fifteen feet long, and as they thrash about with blows that have sunk +several prams and killed more than one crew, it still requires the +fittest nerves and muscles to give the final stroke. + +But whaling, in this and every other form, is bound to come to an +untimely end very soon unless the whales are protected by international +game laws rigidly enforced. At present the only protection is the +exhaustion of a whaling {170} ground below a paying yield; when whaling +stops till the whales breed back. But soon they won't breed back at +all. Modern steam whaling spares no kind of whale in any kind of sea. +It has one good point. It is more humane, as a rule. But the odds +against the whale are simply annihilating. And the extermination of +whales, those magnificent leviathans of the mighty deep, would be a +loss from every point of view. Their own commercial value counts for a +good deal. Their value to the fisherman by driving bait inshore counts +for a good deal more. And their admirable place in nature counts for +most of all. Like elephants, lions, and deer, like birds of paradise +and eagles, the whales are among those noblest forms of life, without +whose glorious strength and beauty this world would be a poorer, tamer, +meaner place for proper men to live in. + + + + +{171} + +CHAPTER X + +ADMINISTRATION + +Administration is used here for want of a better general term to cover +every form of management that is done ashore, as well as every form of +what might be called, by analogy with fleets and armies, non-combatant +work afloat. It falls into two natural divisions: the first includes +all private management, the second all that concerns the government. +Here, even more than in the other chapters, we are face to face with +such complex and enormous interests that we can only take the merest +glance at what those interests principally are. + +The privately managed interests have both their business and their +philanthropic sides. Let us take the philanthropic first. Seamen's +Institutes have grown from very small beginnings, and are now to be +found in every port where English-speaking seamen congregate. They +began when, as the saying was, the sailor {172} earnt his money like a +horse and spent it like an ass. They flourish when the sailor is much +better able to look after himself. But their help is needed still; and +what they have done in the past has not been the least among the +influences which have made the common lot of the seaman so very much +better than it was. Another excellent influence is that of the Royal +National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. This mission sends its +missioners afloat in its own steamers to tend the sick and bring some +of the amenities of shore life within the reach of those afloat. +Religion is among its influences, but only in an unsectarian way. Its +work in Canadian waters is directed by two able and self-sacrificing +men: Dr Grenfell, whose base is at St Anthony's in North-East +Newfoundland, and whose beat goes straight down north along the +Newfoundland Labrador, which faces the Atlantic; and Dr Hare, whose +base is Harrington, in the centre of the Canadian Labrador, which runs +in from the Strait of Belle Isle to Natashquan, more than two hundred +miles along the north shore of the Gulf, among a perfect labyrinth of +islands. + +Next, the business side. As only a single instance can be given, and +as ordinary business management in shipping circles more or less {173} +resembles what is practised in other commercial affairs, the special +factor of marine insurance will alone be taken, as being the most +typically maritime and by far the most interesting historically. +Ordinary insurance on land is a mere thing of yesterday compared with +marine insurance, which, according to some, began in the ancient world, +and which was certainly known in the Middle Ages. It is credibly +reported to have been in vogue among the Lombards in the twelfth +century, and on much the same principles as are followed by Canadians +in the twentieth. It was certainly in vogue among the English before +Jacques Cartier discovered the St Lawrence. And in 1613, the year +Champlain discovered the site of Ottawa, a policy was taken out, in the +ordinary course of business, on that famous old London merchantman, the +_Tiger_, to which Shakespeare twice alludes, once in _Macbeth_ and +again in _Twelfth Night_. + +Modern practice is based on the Imperial Marine Insurance Act of 1906, +which is a development of the Act of 1795, which, in its turn, was a +codification of the rules adopted at Lloyd's in 1779. Nothing shows +more unmistakably how supreme the British are in every affair of the +sea than these striking {174} facts: that 'A1 at Lloyd's' is an +expression accepted all the world over as a guarantee of prime +efficiency, that nearly every shipping country in the world has its own +imitation of Lloyd's, nearly always including the name of Lloyd, and +that the original Lloyd's at the Royal Exchange in London is still +unassailably first. Most people know that Lloyd's originated from the +marine underwriters who used to meet for both business and +entertainment at Lloyd's coffee-house in the seventeenth century. But +comparatively few seem to know that Lloyd's, like most of its +imitators, is not a gigantic insurance company, but an association of +carefully selected members, who agree to carry on their completely +independent business affairs in daily touch with each other. Lloyd's' +method differs from that of ordinary insurance in being conducted by +'underwriters,' each one of whom can write his name under any given +risk for any reasonable part of the whole. Thus, instead of insuring a +million with a company or a single man, the owner lays his case before +Lloyd's, whereupon any members who choose to do so can sign for +whatever proportion they intend to assume. In this way individual +losses are spread among a considerable number of underwriters. Long +{175} experience has proved that the individual and associated methods +of doing business have nowhere been more happily combined than they are +at Lloyd's to-day, and that this special form of combination suits both +parties in a shipping risk better than any other known. + +Canadian shipping has often resented Lloyd's high rates against the St +Lawrence route, and threatened to establish a Lloyd's of its own. Yet, +on the whole, the original Lloyd's is the fairest, the soundest, and +incomparably the most expert association of its kind the world has ever +seen. + +Business administration in marine affairs is complex enough. Lloyd's +alone is not the subject of one text-book, nor of several, but of a +regular and constantly increasing library. What, then, can usefully be +said in a very few words about the still more complex affairs of +government administration? The bare enumeration of the duties +performed by a single branch of the department of Marine and Fisheries +in Canada will give some faint idea of what the whole department does. +There are Naval, Fisheries, and Marine branches, each with sub-branches +of its own. Among the duties of the Marine branch are the following: +the construction of lighthouses and fog-alarms, {176} the maintenance +of lights and buoys, the building and maintenance of Dominion steamers, +the consideration of all aids to navigation, the maintenance of the St +Lawrence ship channel, the weather reports and forecasts, +investigations into wrecks, steamboat inspection, cattle-ship +inspection, marine hospitals, submarine signals, the carrying out of +the Merchant Shipping Act and other laws, humane service, subsidies to +wrecking plant, winter navigation, removal of obstructions, +examinations for masters' and mates' certificates, control of pilots, +government of ports and harbours, navigation of Hudson Bay and northern +waters generally, port wardens, wreck receivers, and harbour +commissioners. + +Besides all this there are, in the work of the department, items like +the Dominion registry of more than eight thousand vessels, the +administration of the enormous fisheries, and the hydrographic survey. +Then, quite distinct from all these Canadian government activities, is +the British consular service, maintained by the Imperial government +alone, but available for every British subject. And round everything, +afloat and ashore, supporting, protecting, guaranteeing all, stands the +oldest, most glorious, and still the best of all the navies in {177} +the world--the Royal Navy of the motherland. + +This is only a glance at the conditions of the present; while each +Imperial and Canadian service, department, branch, and sub-division has +a long, romantic, and most important history of its own. The +lighthouse service alone could supply hero-tales enough to fill a book. +The weather service is full of absorbing interest. And, what with +wireless telegraphy, submarine bells, direction indicators, +microthermometers as detectors of ice, and many other new appliances, +the whole practice of navigation is becoming an equally interesting +subject for a book filled with the 'fairy tales of science.' Even +hydrography--that is, the surveying and mapping (or 'charting') of the +water--has an appealing interest, to say nothing of its long and varied +history. Jacques Cartier, though he made no charts, may be truly +called the first Canadian hydrographer; for his sailing directions are +admirably clear and correct. In the next century we find Champlain +noting the peculiarities of the Laurentian waters to good effect; while +in the next again, the eighteenth, we come upon the famous Captain +Cook, one of the greatest hydrographers of all time. Cook was {178} at +Quebec with Wolfe, and afterwards spent several years in making a +wonderfully accurate survey of the St Lawrence and Gulf. His pupil, +Vancouver, after whom both a city and an island have been named, did +his work on the Pacific coast equally well. The principal hydrographer +of the nineteenth century was Admiral Bayfield, who extended the survey +over the Great Lakes, besides re-surveying all the older navigational +waters with such perfect skill that wherever nature has not made any +change his work stands to-day, reliable as ever. And it should be +noted that all the successful official surveys, up to the present +century, were made by naval officers--another little known and less +remembered service done for Canada by the British guardians of the sea. + + + + +{179} + +CHAPTER XI + +NAVIES + +This is not the place to discuss the naval side of craft and waterways in +Canada. That requires a book of its own. But no study of Canada's +maritime interests, however short, can close without a passing reference +to her naval history. + +When the Kirkes, with their tiny flotilla, took Quebec from Champlain's +tiny garrison in 1629 the great guiding principles of sea-power were as +much at work as when Phips led his American colonists to defeat against +Frontenac in 1690, or as when Saunders and Wolfe led the admirably united +forces of their enormous fleet and little army to victory in 1759. In +the same way the decisive influence of sea-power was triumphantly exerted +by Iberville, the French naval hero of Canada, when, with his single +ship, the _Pelican_, he defeated his three British opponents in a gallant +fight; and so, for the time being, won the {180} absolute command of +Hudson Bay in 1697. Again, it was naval rather than political and +military forces that made American independence an accomplished fact. +The opposition to the war in England counted for a good deal; and the +French and American armies for still more. But the really decisive +anti-British force consisted of practically all the foreign navies in the +world, some--like the French, Spanish, Dutch, and the Americans' +own--taking an active part in the war, while the others were kept ready +in reserve by the hostile armed neutrality of Russia, Sweden, Denmark, +Prussia, and the smaller sea-coast states of Germany. Once again, in the +War of 1812, it was the two annihilating American naval victories on +Lakes Erie and Champlain that turned the scale far enough back to offset +the preponderant British military victories along the Canadian frontier +and prevent the advance of that frontier beyond Detroit and into the +state of Maine. + +There were very few people in 1910 who remembered that the Canadian navy +then begun was the third local force of its kind in Canada, though the +first to be wholly paid and managed locally. From the launch of La +Salle's _Griffon_ in 1679 down to the Cession in 1763 there was {181} +always some sort of French naval force built, manned, and managed in New +France, though ultimately paid and directed from royal headquarters in +Paris through the minister of Marine and Colonies. It is significant +that 'marine' and 'colonies' were made a single government department +throughout the French regime. The change of rule did not entail the +abolition of local forces; and from 1755, when a British flotilla of six +little vessels was launched on Lake Ontario, down to and beyond the peace +with the United States sixty years later, there was what soon became a +'Provincial Marine,' which did good service against the Americans in +1776, when it was largely manned from the Royal Navy, and less good +service in 1812, when it was a great deal more local in every way. Two +vestiges of those days linger on to the present time, the first in the +Canadian Militia Act, which provides for a naval as well as a military +militia, permanent forces included, and the second in one of the +governor-general's official titles--'Vice-Admiral' of Canada. + +The Canadian privateers are even less known than the Provincial Marine. +Yet they did a good deal of preying on the enemy at different times, and +they amounted altogether to a total {182} which will probably surprise +most students of Canadian history. At Halifax alone eighteen Nova +Scotian privateers took out letters of marque against the French between +1756 and 1760, twelve more against the French between 1800 and 1805, and +no less than forty-four against the Americans during the War of 1812. + +The century of peace which followed this war gradually came to be taken +so much as a matter of course that Canadians forgot the lessons of the +past and ignored the portents of the future. The very supremacy of a +navy which protected them for nothing made them forget that without its +guardian ships they could not have reached their Canadian nationality at +all. Occasionally a threatened crisis would bring home to them some more +intimate appreciation of British sea-power. But, for the rest, they took +the Navy like the rising and the setting of the sun. + +The twentieth century opened on a rapidly changing naval world. British +supremacy was no longer to go unchallenged, at least so far as +preparation went. The German Emperor followed up his pronouncement, 'Our +future is on the sea,' by vigorous action. For the first time in history +a German navy became a powerful force, fit to lead, rather than to {183} +follow, its Austrian and Italian allies. Also for the first time in +history the New World developed a sea-power of first-class importance in +the navy of the United States. And, again for the first time in history, +the immemorial East produced a navy which annihilated the fleet of a +European world-power when Japan beat Russia at Tsu-shima in the +centennial year of Nelson at Trafalgar. + +These portentous changes finally roused the oversea dominions of the +British Empire to some sense of the value of that navy which had been +protecting them so efficiently and so long at the mother country's sole +expense. But the dawn of naval truth broke slowly and, following the +sun, went round from east to west. First it reached New Zealand, then +Australia, then South Africa, and then, a long way last, Canada; though +Canada was the oldest, the largest, the most highly favoured in +population and resources, the richest, and the most expensively protected +of them all. + +There was a searching of hearts and a gradual comprehension of first +principles. Colonies which had been living the sheltered life for +generations began to see that their immunity from attack was not due to +any warlike virtue of their own, much less to any of their {184} +'victories of peace,' but simply to the fact that the British Navy +represented the survival of the fittest in a previous struggle for +existence. More than two centuries of repeated struggle, from the Armada +in 1588 to Trafalgar in 1805, had given the British Empire a century of +armed peace all round the Seven Seas, and its colonies a century's start +ahead of every rival. But in 1905 the possible rivals were beginning to +draw up once more, thanks to the age-long naval peace; and the launch of +her first modern Dreadnought showed that the mother country felt the need +of putting forth her strength again to meet a world of new competitors. + +The critical question now was whether or not the oversea dominions would +do their proper share. They had grown, under free naval protection, into +strong commercial nations, with combined populations equal to nearly a +third of that in the mother country, and combined revenues exceeding a +third of hers. They had a free choice. Canada, for instance, might have +declared herself independent, though she could not have made herself more +free, and would certainly not have been able to maintain a position of +complete independence in any serious crisis. Or she could have destroyed +her individual Canadian {185} characteristics by joining the United +States; though in this case she would have been obliged to pay her share +towards keeping up a navy which was far smaller than the British and much +more costly in proportion. As another alternative she could have said +that her postal and customs preferences in favour of the mother country, +taken in conjunction with what she paid for her militia, were enough. +This would have put her far behind New Zealand and Australia, both of +whom were doing much more, in proportion to their wealth and population. + +There was a very natural curiosity to see what Canada would do, because +she was much the senior of the other dominions, while in size, wealth, +and population she practically equalled all three of them together. But +whatever the expectations were, they were doomed to disappointment, for, +while she was last in starting, she did not reach any decisive result at +all. Australia, New Zealand--and even South Africa, so lately the scene +of a devastating war--each gave money, while Canada gave none. New +Zealand, with only one-seventh of Canada's population, gave a +Dreadnought, while Canada gave none. Australia had a battle-worthy +squadron of her own--but Canada had nothing but a mere flotilla. + +{186} + +The explanation of this strange discrepancy is to be found, partly, in +geographical position. The geographical position of Canada differs +widely from that of any other dominion. She lives beside the United +States, a country with a population ten times greater than her own, a +country, moreover, which holds the Monroe Doctrine as an article of faith +in foreign policy. This famous doctrine simply means that the United +States is determined to be the predominant power in the whole New World +and to prevent any outside power from gaining a foothold there. +Consequently the United States must defend, if necessary, any weaker +nation in America whenever it is attacked by any stronger nation from +outside. Of course the United States would exert its power only on its +own terms, to which any weaker friend would be obliged to submit. But so +long as there was no immediate danger that the public could actually +feel, the Monroe Doctrine provided a very handy argument for all those +who preferred to do nothing. Another peculiarity of Canada's position is +that she is far enough away from the great powers of Europe and from the +black and yellow races of Africa and Asia to prevent her from realizing +so quickly as the mother country the danger from the {187} first, or so +quickly as her sister dominions the danger from the second. + +For five successive years, from 1909 to 1913, the naval policy of Canada +was the subject of debate in parliament, press, and public meetings. In +1909 the building programme for the German navy brought on a debate in +the Imperial parliament which found an echo throughout the Empire. The +Canadian parliament then passed a loyal resolution with the consent of +both parties. In 1910 these parties began to differ. The Liberals, who +were then in power, started a distinctively Canadian navy on a very small +scale. In 1911 naval policy was, for the first time, one of the vexed +questions in a general election. In 1912 the new Conservative government +passed through the House of Commons an act authorizing an appropriation +of thirty-five million dollars for three first-class Dreadnought +battleships. This happened to be the exact sum paid by the Imperial +government for the fortification of Quebec in 1832, and considerably less +than one-thirtieth part of what the Imperial government had paid for the +naval and military protection of Canada during the British regime. The +Senate reversed the decision of the Commons in 1913, with the result that +Canada's total naval contribution {188} up to date consisted of five +years' discussion and a little three-year-old navy which had far less +than half the fighting power of New Zealand's single Dreadnought. + +The two great parliamentary parties agreed on the general proposition +that Canada ought to do something for her own defence at sea, and that, +within the British Empire, she enjoyed naval advantages which were +unobtainable elsewhere. But they differed radically on the vexed +question of ways and means. The Conservatives said there was a naval +emergency and proposed to give three Dreadnoughts to the Imperial +government on certain conditions. The principal condition was that +Canada could take them back at any time if she wished to use them for a +navy of her own. The Liberals objected that there was no naval +emergency, and that it was wrong to let any force of any kind pass out of +the control of the Canadian government. Nothing, of course, could be +done without the consent of parliament; and the consent of parliament +means the consent of both Houses, the Senate and the Commons of Canada. +There was a Conservative majority in the Commons and a Liberal majority +in the Senate. The voting went by parties, and a complete deadlock +ensued. + + + + +{189} + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + +ALL AFLOAT seems to be the only book of its kind. Not only this, but +no other book seems to have been written on the special subject of any +one of its eleven chapters. There are many books in which canoes +figure largely, but none which gives the history of the canoe in +Canada. Books on sailing craft, on steamers, on fisheries, on every +aspect of maritime administration, and, most of all, on navies, are +very abundant. But, so far, none of them seems to have been devoted +exclusively to the Canadian part of these various themes, with the +single exception of a purely naval work, _The Logs of the Conquest of +Canada_, by the present author, who has consequently been obliged to +write a good deal from his own experience with paddle, sail, and steam. +Of course there are many excellent articles, some of considerable +length, in the Transactions of several learned societies, like the +Royal Society of Canada, the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, +the Nova Scotia Historical Society, the Ontario Historical Society, and +so on. There are also a certain number of pamphlets and official +bluebooks--like those of the department of {190} Marine and Fisheries; +and there is an immense mass of original evidence stored away in the +Dominion Archives and elsewhere. But books for the public do not seem +to exist; and the suggestion might be hazarded that this whole subject +offers one of the best unworked or little-worked fields remaining open +to the pioneer in Canadian historical research. + +Under these circumstances all that can be done here is to name a few of +the many books which either cover some part of the subject incidentally +or deal with what is most closely allied to it. + +CANOES are mentioned in every book of travel along the inland +waterways, kayaks in every book about the Eskimos. La Hontan's +_Travels_, though imaginative, give interesting details, as do the much +more sober _Travels_ of Peter Kalm, the Swedish naturalist. Kohl's +_Kitchi-Gami_ is a good book. But the list might be extended +indefinitely. + +SAILING CRAFT and STEAMERS require some sort of nautical dictionary, +though even a dictionary sometimes adds to the puzzles of the landsman. +Admiral Smyth's _Sailor's Word Book_, and Dana's _Seaman's Friend_ (as +it is called in the United States), or _Seaman's Manual_ (as it is +called in England), are excellent. Peake's _Rudimentary Treatise on +Shipbuilding_ covers the period so well described in Clark's _Clipper +Ship Era_ and Dana's _Two Years before the Mast_. Sir George Holmes's +{191} _Ancient and Modern Ships_ and Paasch's magnificent polyglot +marine dictionary, _From Keel to Truck_, deal with steam as well as +sail. Lubbock's _Round the Horn before the Mast_ gives a good account +of a modern steel wind-jammer. Patton's article on shipping and canals +in _Canada and Its Provinces_ is a very good non-nautical account of +its subject, and is quite as long and thorough as the ordinary book. +Fry's _History of North Atlantic Steam Navigation_ includes a great +deal on Canada. _The Times Shipping Number_ gives an up-to-date +account of British and foreign shipping in 1912. Barnaby's _Naval +Development in the Nineteenth Century_ is well worth reading. So is +Bullen's _Men of the Merchant Service_; and so, it might be added, are +a hundred other books. + +FISHERIES are the subject of a vast literature. An excellent general +account, but more European than Canadian, is Herubel's _Sea Fisheries_. +Grenfell's _Labrador_ and Browne's _Where the Fishers Go_ give a good +idea of the Atlantic coast; so, indeed, does Kipling's _Captains +Courageous_. The butchering of seals in the Gulf and round +Newfoundland does not seem to have found any special historian, though +much has been written on the fur seal question in Alaska. Whaling is +recorded in many books. Bullen's _Cruise of the Cachalot_ is good +reading; but annals that incidentally apply more closely to Bluenose +whalers are set forth in Spears's _Story of the New England Whalers_. + +{192} + +Books on the many subjects grouped together under the general title of +ADMINISTRATION cannot even be mentioned. Such headings as Marine +Insurance, Seamen's Institutes, Lighthouses, Navigation, etc., must be +looked up in reference catalogues. + +When we come to NAVIES the number of books is so great that they too +must be looked up separately. Corbett's _England in the Seven Years' +War_ and all the works of Admiral Mahan should certainly be consulted. +Snider's collection of well-spun yarns, _In the Wake of the +Eighteen-Twelvers_, seems to be the only book that has ever been +devoted to the old Canadian Provincial Marine. + + + + +{193} + +INDEX + + +'Accommodation,' first steamer built in Canada, 130-2. + +Allan, Andrew, with his brother Hugh founds the Allan Line, 145, 146. + +Allan, Sir Hugh, founds the first Canadian transatlantic line of +steamers, 145, 146-8. + +America, looked upon as an obstruction to navigation, 46. See United +States. + +American Independence, antagonism of foreign navies to Britain a +decisive factor in accomplishing, 180. + +Arctic exploration, 14, 41. + +'Ariel,' in famous clipper race, 103. + +Australia and the British Navy, 183, 185. + +Aylmer, Lord, at the launching of the 'Royal William,' 140 + + +Bacon, Lord, on the Canadian fisheries, 15. + +Baffin, William, his record 'Farthest North,' 55. + +Barge, the, 27. + +Basque fishermen, in the St Lawrence, 165. + +Bateau, the, 27-8. + +'Bavarian,' first Atlantic liner entirely built of steel, 148. + +Bayfield, Admiral, makes surveys in Canadian waters, 178. + +Beaulieu, Francois, a voyageur with Mackenzie, 17. + +Bennett and Henderson, a firm of engineers, 140. + +Black Ball Line, conditions under the, 94. + +Black, George, a shipbuilder at Quebec, 139. + +Black Taylor, befitting end of, 94-5. + +Bluenose craft, 63, 71; get a bad name, 77; building of, 82; crews of, +92-3; discipline on, 97-100; under sail, 100, 101, 103-4, 113-28. + +Boat, the, 26-7, 28-30. + +Boston, reception of the 'Royal William' at, 142. + +Bougainville, Comte de, French navigator, 13. + +Boulton and Watt, firm of engineers, 130, 132, 135. + +'Britannia,' the first Cunarder to arrive in Canada, 145. + +British Columbia, fisheries of, 159. + +British mercantile marine, 7-8, 12. See Great Britain. + +British peoples, sea terms in speech of, 8-9. + +British crews, a comparison with Yankees, 95, 97. + +Bruce, John, builds first Canadian steamer, 130-1. + +'Brunelle,' her speed, 79. + +Bryce, James, British ambassador at Washington, 6. + + +Cabot, John, his voyage to America, 45, 46; his ship, 48-9. + +California, rush of vessels to, 74. + +Campbell, John Saxton, shipowner in Quebec, 139. + +Canada, waters of, 1-4, 7; troubles over water frontiers of, 4-6; her +importance in international questions, 5-6; a comparison with Russia, +7; her position in the British Empire, 7-8; her dependence on the +mercantile marine, 11; ignorance in concerning naval history, 13-14; +her fisheries, 14, 155-9, 161-4; evolution of sailing craft in, 15; her +trade relations with West Indies and France, 60, 62; her prosperity +under Navigation Laws, 68, 69; some disturbing factors in her shipping +trade, 73-4; becomes a great shipping centre, 75-6, 129-30; decline of +shipbuilding in, 76, 80-1; her position at Lloyd's, 77-9, 175; some +notable craft, 79-80; five principal features of Canadian steamship +history, 151; her naval policy, 180-1, 182, 183-8. + +'Canada,' the largest and fastest steamer of her time, 135. + +Canada Steamship Lines Limited, 150. + +'Canadian,' the first Allan Line steamer, 147. + +Canadian Militia Act, the, 181. + +Canadian Pacific Railway, its fleets of steamers, 148, 150-151. + +Canadians, some sea terms in speech of, 8-9. + +Canoe: Indian, 15, 16; birch-bark, 17, 18, 20-4; Canadian, 25; keeled, +25-6; gives place to the boat, 28-30; a voyage in, 33-6. + +Cape Horn, a voyage round, 119-28. + +Cartier, Jacques, in the Gulf, 16, 46; compared with modern +hydrographers, 47, 177; his ship, 48-9. + +Champlain, Samuel de, 30; first to advocate the Panama Canal, 54; his +record voyage, 55, 101-2, 177. + +Chanties, the seaman's working songs, 110-13, 128. + +'Charlotte Dundas,' pioneer steamer, 130. + +'Clermont,' an early steamer, 130. + +Clippers, a race with, from China to London, 102-3. + +Colbert, Jean Baptiste, the great French minister, 57, 59, 60. + +Conquest, importance of the Navy in the, 13. + +Cook, Captain, British navigator, 14; makes a survey of the St Lawrence +and Gulf, 177-8. + +Coureurs de bois, the, 32. + +Cunard brothers, merchants in Halifax, 138, 145, 146. + +Cunard, Samuel, founds the Cunard Line, 145-6. + + +Derby, Elias, the first American millionaire, 70. + +Devonshire ships, annual round of, 67. + +'Don de Dieu,' Champlain's ship, 55. + +Dory, the, 27; the schooner's tender, 159-61. + +Drake, Sir Francis, sails round the world, 52. + +'Dreadnought,' her record run, 102. + +Dug-out, the, 18, 19-20. + +Durham boat, the, 27-8. + + +East India Docks in London, famous clipper race to, 102-3. + +Egyptians, as shipbuilders, 49, 50, 86. + +'Empress of Ireland,' loss of, with over a thousand lives, off +Rimouski, 151. + +English-speaking people, sea terms in speech of, 8-9. + +Eskimos, and whaling, 164. + + +Fletcher of Rye, his nautical invention, 46-7, 50. + +Fort Langley, Simpson reaches, 40. + +Fort St James, Simpson's royal progress at, 39-40. + +French Canadians, sea terms in speech of, 10; and whaling, 58-9, 164. + +'Frontenac,' the, on the Great Lakes, 135. + +Fur trade under the French and the British, 31-3; voyages in connection +with, 33, 37-40. + + +'Galiote,' the, built by the Sovereign Council, 59. + +George V, his voyage across the Atlantic, 102. + +Germany, her navy, 182-3, 187. + +Goudie, James, builder of the 'Royal William,' 137-8, 139, 141. + +'Grace Carter,' her record trip, 102. + +'Grande Hermine,' Cartier's ship, 49, 50. + +Grand Portage, the, 31. + +Great Britain, preponderance of her ships, 7-8, 51; her command of the +sea, 15, 53, 56-7, 73, 76, 102, 177; weakness of her Board of Trade +regulations, 99; her tonnage under construction in 1913, 153; her +consular service for Canada, 176; colonial contributions to the Royal +Navy, 183-8. + +Great Lakes, why called, 1; the first vessel on, 60; trade on, 71-3. + +'Great Republic,' her canvas, 105. + +Grenfell, Dr, in Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, 172. + + +Halifax, lumbering and shipbuilding at, 70; privateers of, 182. + +'Hamilton Campbell Kidston,' a famous ship, 80. + +Hare, Dr, in Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, 172. + +Hell ships, 94-5, 98. + +Hennepin, Father, his description of 'Le Griffon,' 61. + +Henry, John, a Quebec founder, 137-8. + +Henry, Commodore, and the 'Royal William,' 143. + +'Hercules,' a tug, 134. + +Hudson Bay, conflicts between French and British in, 62-3; place for +fur, 64. + +Hudson's Bay Company, its maritime trade, 63. + +Hundred Years' War, the second, 56. + +Hurricane, a ship in a, 120-7. + + +Iberville, the French naval hero of Canada, 63, 179. + +Indians, and whaling, 164. + + +Jackson, John, engines the first Canadian steamer, 131. + +Japan, her naval victory at Tsu-shima, 183. + +Jefferys' map of the French dominions in America, 28-9. + +'Jemsetgee Cursetgee,' built at Moncton, 80. + + +Kayaks of the Eskimos, the, 15, 24-5 + +Kingston, shipping at, 72. + +'Konstanz,' longevity of the, 79. + + +Labrador, British supremacy at, 63, 67. + +Lachine Canal, 135. + +'Lady Washington,' curious history of the, 73. + +Lake Erie, shipping on, 72-73. + +Larboard, origin of word, 118. + +La Salle, builds the 'Le Griffon,' 60. + +'Lasca,' her record trip, 102. + +'Le Griffon,' her short career, 60-1, 180. + +Leif Ericson, a Norse explorer, 41, 45. + +'Lightning,' her record run, 103. + +Lloyd's, and Canadian shipping, 77-8; composition and method of, 174-5. + +Log, the simplest type of craft, 17-18. + +Louisbourg, a universal port of call, 62. + + +Macdonald, Archibald, his account of Simpson's canoe voyage, 39, 40. + +M'Dougall, John, master of the 'Royal William,' 137-8, 142-3. + +M'Gillivray, with Simpson at Fort St James, 40. + +M'Kay, Donald, a shipbuilder of Boston, 103. + +Mackenzie, Alexander, his achievement with a canoe, 16-17. + +Mackenzie, a shipbuilder at Pictou, 79-80. + +Mackinaw boat, the, 37. + +Marine and Fisheries Department in Canada, 175-7. + +Marine insurance, 173-5. + +'Mary,' her cargo to and from Quebec, 64-5. + +Mercantile marine, importance of, 12. + +Molson, John, owner of the first Canadian steamer, 130-1, 132-3; his +first tender to supply steamer transport for military purposes, 133-4. + +Monroe Doctrine, the, 186. + +Montreal, position of, 2; furs collected at, 71. + + +Nantucket Island, British whaling at, 58. + +Nascaupees, and the fur trade, 33. + +Naval architecture, improvement of, 66. + +Naval history, ignorance concerning, 13-14. + +Navigation laws, the, 68-9; repealed, 74. + +New Brunswick, shipbuilding in, 75-6. + +Newfoundland, 2; in relation to Canada, 5; and knowledge of the sea, +12; boats of various countries at, 51; British supremacy at, 63, 64; +fisheries of, 155, 157-8. + +New France, nautical history of, 54 note; nautical advantages of, 58. + +New Zealand, and the British Navy, 183, 185. + +Norsemen. See Norwegians. + +Norway House, field headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, 38, 39. + +Norwegians, seamanship of, 12, 44-5; and whaling, 168-9. + +Nova Scotia, shipbuilding in, 75; whalers of, 165. See Bluenose craft. + + +'Ontario,' founders in Lake Ontario, 71, 135. + +Oomiak, the Eskimo cargo boat, 25. + + +Paddling, the art of, 34. + +Paddock, Ichabod, a whaling master at Cape Cod, 58. + +'Parisian,' the first steamer to be fitted with bilge keels, 148. + +'Pelican,' d'Iberville's ship, 63. + +Perel, Captain John, his ship wrecked in attempt to establish trade +with New France, 64. + +Pett, Phineas, ship designer, 56. + +'Phoenix,' her record, 136. + +Pont-Grave, builds two vessels in Canada, 59. + +Pork-eaters, 31-2. + +Portuguese, ships of, 53. + +Provincial marine, the, 181. + +Punt, the, 27. + + +Quebec, shipbuilding at, 71, 75; and the launching of the 'Royal +William,' 139-40. + +Quebec and Halifax Navigation Company, builds the 'Royal William,' 138. + +Queenston, trade at, 72. + + +Raft, the, 18-19. + +Raleigh, Sir Walter, on striking topmasts, 53. + +Rapids, running of, 35-6. + +'R. C. Rickmers,' the largest sailing ship in the world, 105. + +Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company, 148-50. + +Rideau Canal, 136. + +Ross, firm of shipbuilders at Quebec, 79. + +Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, its good work, 172. + +Royal Navy. See under Great Britain. + +'Royal William,' first steamer to cross the Atlantic entirely under +steam, 136-43; first steamer to fire a shot in action, 143-4; her +records, 144-5. + + +Sailing craft, three types of, 17-37, 129-30. See under names of craft. + +Sails: the simple square of the Vikings, 43-4; invention of the +fore-and-aft-trimmed sails, 46-7, 50, 65-7; sails of a ship, 105-7; +setting and trimming, 107-9, 127; in a squall, 109-10; in an Antarctic +hurricane, 120-5. + +St Charles river, shipbuilding yards at, 61. + +'St Jean,' wrecked on Anticosti, 64. + +'St John,' first steamer in Canadian salt water, 136. + +St Lawrence river system, 1-3; and France, 63. + +St Lawrence Steamboat Company, 134-5. + +Saint-Onge, Roberval's pilot, 51. + +Salter Brothers, shipbuilders at Moncton, 80. + +'Santa Maria,' Columbus's ship, 49-50. + +'Savannah,' her claims disproved, 136-7, 141. + +Schooner, handiness of the, 159, 161. + +Seamen's Institutes, benefit of, 171-2. + +Seppings, Sir Robert, chief constructor of the Navy, 85, 86. + +Shipbuilding: in Canada, 14, 59-60, 61; comparison between English and +French, 57; construction and launching of a ship, 82-91, 153-4. + +Shipping, in the eighteenth century, 69-70; in the nineteenth, 74-5. + +Ships, short terms designating the nationality of, 93. + +Simpson, Sir George, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, 29, 36; his +tour of inspection, 37-40. + +'Sophia,' her record trip, 72. + +South Africa and the British Navy, 183, 185. + +Sovereign of the Seas,' surpasses all records, 56. + +Sovereign Council of New France, builds the 'Galiote,' 59. + +Spain, her Armada, 52; superiority of her ships, 53. + +Squall, how to manage a ship in a, 109-10. + +Starboard, origin of word, 118. + +Steam craft, types of, 151-2. + +Steam-engine, development of, 153. + +Steering a ship, 119-20. + +'Swiftsure,' an early steamer in Canada, 132-3. + + +'Taeping,' wins famous clipper race, 103. + +Talon, Jean, encourages shipbuilding in Canada, 59-60. + +Teabout, Henry, an American shipbuilder in Canada, 135. + +Torrance Line, the, 135. + +'Tug, The,' first towboat in the world, 134. + +Tug, the handiest all-round craft, 151-2. + + +United Empire Loyalists, settle in Maritime Provinces, 70-71. + +United States, her tonnage threatens British supremacy, 53, 74; navy +of, 183. + + +Vancouver, George, navigates the Pacific coast, 178. + +Vetch, Samuel, son of an Edinburgh minister, his misfortune, 65. + +'Victoria,' a cruise on the, 103-104, 113-28. + +'Victorian,' a turbine steamer, 148. + +'Victory,' the, Nelson's ship, 79. + +Vikings, voyages of the, 41-42; their ships, 42-5, 48, 66, 67. + +'Virginian,' a turbine steamer, 148. + +Voyageurs, the, 28, 31-2; in conjunction with the Indians, 32-3; Sir +George Simpson on, 38, 39. + + +War of 1812, effect of on Canadian shipping trade, 71-72, 73; effect of +American naval victories in the, 180; and Halifax privateers, 182. + +Watt, James, improver of the steam-engine, 130. + +Welland Canal, 135. + +Welsh ships, annual round of, 67. + +Whaling, development and dangers of, 163-70. + +Winds, different, 105. + + +Yankee clippers, superiority of, 95-6; crews of, 96-7. + +Yankees, and whaling, 168. + +York boat, the, 36. + +York Factory, Sir George Simpson's tour from, 38-9. + + + + +{201} + +THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA + + +Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton of the University of Toronto + +A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for popular reading, +designed to set forth, in historic continuity, the principal events and +movements in Canada, from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders. + + +PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS + + 1. The Dawn of Canadian History + A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada + BY STEPHEN LEACOCK + + 2. The Mariner of St Malo + A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier + BY STEPHEN LEACOCK + + +PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE + + 3. The Founder of New France + A Chronicle of Champlain + BY CHARLES W. COLBY + + 4. The Jesuit Missions + A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness + BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS + + 5. The Seigneurs of Old Canada + A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism + BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO + + 6. The Great Intendant + A Chronicle of Jean Talon + BY THOMAS CHAPAIS + + 7. The Fighting Governor + A Chronicle of Frontenac + BY CHARLES W. COLBY + + +PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION + + 8. The Great Fortress + A Chronicle of Louisbourg + BY WILLIAM WOOD + + 9. The Acadian Exiles + A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline + BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY + +10. The Passing of New France + A Chronicle of Montcalm + BY WILLIAM WOOD + +11. The Winning of Canada + A Chronicle of Wolfe + BY WILLIAM WOOD + + +PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA + +12. The Father of British Canada + A Chronicle of Carleton + BY WILLIAM WOOD + +13. The United Empire Loyalists + A Chronicle of the Great Migration + BY W. STEWART WALLACE + +14. The War with the United States + A Chronicle of 1812 + BY WILLIAM WOOD + + +PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA + +15. The War Chief of the Ottawas + A Chronicle of the Pontiac War + BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS + +16. The War Chief of the Six Nations + A Chronicle of Joseph Brant + BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD + +17. Tecumseh + A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People + BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND + + +PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST + +18. The 'Adventurers of England' on Hudson Bay + A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North + BY AGNES C. LAUT + +19. Pathfinders of the Great Plains + A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons + BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE + +20. Adventurers of the Far North + A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas + BY STEPHEN LEACOCK + +21. The Red River Colony + A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba + BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD + +22. Pioneers of the Pacific Coast + A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters + BY AGNES C. LAUT + +23. The Cariboo Trail + A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia + BY AGNES C. LAUT + + +PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM + +24. The Family Compact + A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada + BY W. STEWART WALLACE + +25. The Patriotes of '37 + A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada + BY ALFRED D. DECELLES + +26. The Tribune of Nova Scotia + A Chronicle of Joseph Howe + BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT + +27. The Winning of Popular Government + A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 + BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN + + +PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY + +28. The Fathers of Confederation + A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion + BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN + +29. The Day of Sir John Macdonald + A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion + BY SIR JOSEPH POPE + +30. The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier + A Chronicle of Our Own Times + BY OSCAR D. SKELTON + + +PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS + +31. All Afloat + A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways + BY WILLIAM WOOD + +32. The Railway Builders + A Chronicle of Overland Highways + BY OSCAR D. SKELTON + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALL AFLOAT*** + + +******* This file should be named 24808.txt or 24808.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/8/0/24808 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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