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3 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 4 THE VOYAGEURS ON A MISTY MORNING From a painting by Verner. 5 ALL AFLOAT A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways BY WILLIAM WOOD TORONTO GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY 1920 Copyright in all Countries subscribing to the Berne Convention Press of The Hunter-Rose Co., Limited, Toronto TO THE PETRYS EACH AND ALL IN TOKEN OF A FAMILY FRIENDSHIP FOUR GENERATIONS STRONG 6 Table of Contents I. A Land of Waterways II. Canoes III. Sailing Craft: The Pioneers IV. Sailing Craft: Under the Fleurs-De-Lis V. Sailing Craft: Under the Union Jack VI. Sailing Craft: The Building of the Ship VII. Sailing Craft: 'Fit to go Foreign' VIII. Steamers IX. Fisheries X. Administration XI. Navies BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE INDEX 7 ILLUSTRATIONS THE VOYAGEURS ON A MISTY MORNING From a painting by Verner. THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKES By Lorado Taft, in the Chicago Art Institute. SHIPS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY From Winsor's America. CHAMPLAIN'S SHIP, THE DON DE DIEU From the model at the Quebec Tercentenary. A FRENCH FRIGATE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY From Winsor's America. SHIP BATAVIA, 2000 TONS Built byF.-X.MarquisatQuebec,1877.LostonInaccessible Island,1879, From a picture belonging to Messrs Ross and Co., Quebec. TRANSPORT BECKWITH AND BATEAUX, LAKE ONTARIO, 1816 From the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library. THE ROYAL WILLIAM From the original painting in possession of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. 8 9 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 changingfortunesofallitsdifferentwaters,coastandinland,saltandfresh. 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 fartherinfromtheAtlanticthananyothertidefromthisoranyotherocean. Andits'GreatLakes'areappropriatelyknownbytheirproudnamebecause they contain more fresh water than all the world beside. Size for size, this oneriversystemissopre-eminentlyfirstinthesumofthesethreeattributes thatthereisnocompetingsecondtobefoundelsewhere.Itformsaclassof its own. And well it may, even for its minor attributes, when the island of Newfoundland atitsmouthexceeds thearea ofIreland, whentherestofits 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 toConfederation--a periodofmorethanthreehundredyears.Itisonlyhalf 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. Nordoestheirsignificancestophere.NaturelaidouttheStLawrencebasin so that it not only 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 10 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 begunearlyinthenineteenthcenturyandgraduallybuiltfartherandfarther west,atatotalcostof$125,000,000,till,bytheendofthecentury,withthe openingoftheCanadian'Soo,'thelastartificiallinkwasfinishedanddirect navigation was established between the western end of Lake 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 BritishColumbiabythePacific.Then,thereareharbours,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 before the Dominion was ever thought of. Discovery, exploration, pioneering, trade, and fisheries, all originated questions which, involving mercantile sea-power, 11 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 TheHague,nearlytwocenturieslater,thediplomaticwarwentsteadilyon. 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 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.' Canada, like other countries, may be looked at from many points of view, butthereisnonethatdoesnotsomehowincludeheroceans,lakes,orrivers. 12