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

THE END