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° 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]
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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-Gravé 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 _Pélican_, 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]
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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 £200 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.
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