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.
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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.'
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