Delphi complete works of.., p.782
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 782
This kind of navigation went on until far into the British régime, indeed for the half century between the Cession and the War of 1812. The few ships that came were of only about 150 tons. We have it recorded that in 1813 only 9 ships from the ocean reached Montreal, a tonnage in all of only 1,589 tons.
Hence till steam came, Quebec was the sea-port and emporium of British Canada just as it had been of New France. But the time had now arrived when a number of people, seeing the amazing power of steam as developed for pumps and such devices, were experimenting on making it drive a boat. Among such experimenters John Molson, a patriot immigrant, father of British Montreal, was tinkering with a “steam boat” (still thought of as two words like the later Stephen Leacock, “Montreal Seaport and City,” 1942 “gasoline buggy”) on the river bank beside his brewery. The day came (1809) when his oddly and humbly named boat, the Accommodation, was launched, or pushed sideways, into the St. Lawrence. She paddled herself easily and lazily down to Quebec with the current, taking 36 actual hours as apart from time spent at anchor, and paddled herself, feebly but doggedly, all the way back again. “Her progress,” said a contemporary report, “was very slow.” The Quebec newspaper gave a patronizing approval. It said, in terms, that the Accommodation was no good: but hoped that Molson would go on. He did go on, and his going on was destined one day to turn the port of Quebec into mere history as compared with the metropolis of Montreal. Interrupted and impeded for a time by the war of 1812, steam navigation on the St. Lawrence went rapidly on. Molson built more powerful boats. Others joined in. After the Peace of 1815, a regular service of passenger and freight was run between Quebec and Montreal. Humbler but marvellously effective, the world over, was the steam tug. It was a later arrival. The earlier steamers had all they could do to haul themselves. Yet presently appeared this new monster of the sea, a boat all engine, fire and belly — the strength of a giant in the body of a dwarf — never making a voyage in its life but the harbinger of a thousand outgoing farewells and a thousand incoming welcomes. The world over, the harbour tug put an end to the labour of capstan and windlass, of warping and hauling to sunken anchors. Such was the Hercules that appeared in Montreal harbour in 1823.
Nowhere in the world did the steam tug mean more than it did on the St. Lawrence route and for Canadian Inland navigation. The terrors of St. Mary’s current became meaningless; the access to every inland harbour, no matter how crooked, how perplexed with shoals, easy and certain. No burden was too heavy for the tug. Presently, though this was a good many years later, it even hitched on to the huge timber rafts that now began to be built for the export trade to Great Britain — hitched itself alone or with one or two companions to a quarter of a mile of floating timber, and puffed away its hardest — apparently motionless. Yet give it four good days and it would have the raft all the way from Lake Ontario to Quebec — a journey that used to take the raft, floating on its own, as many weeks.
Steam on the St. Lawrence grew apace. The “ferries” from Montreal to Quebec became large steamers with hundreds of passengers. Each innovation forced others. The improved ocean highway to Montreal forced canal making above. A little more than a generation gone the Loyalists had made their painful way to Upper Canada, hauled in bateaux and trudging it on foot and camping on the shore. Some of them, by sea from the States, were a year out from their old home to their new one. But now river steamboats picked up each open stretch of lake and river and between them stage coaches, thumping over corduroy roads and hauling through swamps, hooked up the connection. The acme of speed and comfort, no doubt it seemed, but, like each new acme of speed, never fast enough. So they revived the old French plan of a Lachine Canal to pass the big rapids, a plan which Dollier de Casson, the Head of the Seminary at Montreal, had attempted to initiate a hundred and twenty years before. He failed for lack of means. But these were the days of immigrant “navvies” and labour power in the mass. The Lachine Canal, started in 1821, was completed four years later. It was at first only five feet deep — carrying barges and small boats. But it underwent a continuous deepening never to be finished till it reaches the limit of some 35 feet imposed by nature in the rock bed of the river below Montreal.
Greatest change of all, of course, was the coming of the transatlantic steamship for which the St. Lawrence route may advance a certain claim of historic priority. The Savannah, a vessel with auxiliary steam, crossed the Atlantic in 1819. But she was not the first ship to cross the Atlantic by steam; for she used very little of it and went mostly by sail. She was a clipper-built full-rigged ship — the beautiful type of sailing vessel that came only with the era of steam, but for the time being, given half a chance, faster than steam itself. No ocean steamer for two generations ever touched the record of over 400 nautical miles in twenty-four hours made by various clipper ships.
The Savannah hardly needed the steam. But the Royal William, built at Quebec and engined at Montreal, crossed the ocean (Pictou to London) on an all-steam voyage. This ship was really built to inaugurate a steamer service as between Canada and the Maritime Provinces (Quebec to Halifax). A heavy subsidy was to be paid for successful service. There was a great official to-do at her launching, with the garrison band of the 32nd Regiment playing martial music (April 27, 1831) while Lady Aylmer christened the ship after Britain’s sailor King. She made her first trip in six and a half days. But the route didn’t “pay”; nor the Halifax-Boston route; so the Royal William, sent to England for sale, attained the higher distinction of crossing the Atlantic entirely under steam W. Wood, “All Afloat” Pictou to Cowes in 18½ days (1833). In the course of time the good ship changed her name, nationality, sex and disposition ending up as a Spanish war vessel, The Isabel the Second. But her work was done. After that the introduction of steamer ships for the ocean went at a great pace in the St. Lawrence. Sea borne trade was increasing as never before in these years of peace and industrial progress. They couldn’t build ships fast enough, wooden steamers and wooden sailing ships, with the saws and hammers busy in all the shipyards of British North America — the forest as the raw material, the seven seas of the world their customers. These were the great days of Quebec — this vanishing era of the wooden ship — and these were the grand days of the Maritime provinces, whose farmers were too busy to farm.
With the building of wooden sailing ships in Canada, largely for export to Britain, went the buying of iron ships in Britain for use under sail and steam on the St. Lawrence route.
The eye of history can see the moving panorama of the craft on the St. Lawrence to the sea in a sort of “calvacade” — another phrase of the day, like “bottleneck” — all the way down three centuries. Here are the wooden bateaux of the Old Régime coming down from Montreal to transfer their people and their cargo, mostly furs, at Quebec. With good luck and the wind astern the shallow boat with one great sail skims like a bird, flying and driven at once. With bad luck the weary oars tug it along against wind and rain across Lake St. Peter. The boat it hopes to “catch” at Quebec — easily catchable for it won’t sail till it’s ready — is almost as square and clumsy as a Christopher Columbus carvel.
Here next is the British régime, the early days — with Molson brewing beer and dreaming dreams but as yet no steamers. Brigs are lying below St. Mary’s current, unloading “general cargo” — meaning, a little bit of everything that settlers need, and taking on grain, furs and, strangely enough, “ashes.” It seems a mournful cargo. But it was not the ashes of defunct patriots — only hardwood ashes for potash. The brig will (it is announced on a placard and printed in the newspaper) sail about July the Something — that is, most likely. She has “commodious accommodation for eight passengers.”
Now let us shift to the days of the “Province of Canada” — the United Province of 1841, that never would unite, and later took in the Maritimes and the North West to make a tolerable union, the jam taken with the powder. The year is 1842, the world, or all of it that matters, is at peace, everything booming, immigration coming up the St. Lawrence in a flood, the cholera unable to keep pace with it. Young Mr. Charles Charles Dickens, “American Notes,” 1842 Dickens is in town at Rosco’s hotel, Montreal, and he’s writing his Notes about the river and the shipping. He hasn’t come by the St. Lawrence; he came to New York in a new sail-and-steamer regular Cunard packet. But he has seen a lot of Canadian transport, too, as he has just come down from Toronto, by steamer and stage, Lake Ontario and the river, and, think of it — Mr. Dickens can’t get over it — has seen a great raft half a mile long (Mr. Dickens says so) with a village on it! And then at Montreal — here is a real sea-port with stone docks built and building, ships in the river, shiploads of immigrants. It is a bright happy picture that Dickens saw, a mirror in which his own youthful exuberance “reflected itself” — a pleasant countryside, a quaint loyal people (Dickens was done with “freedom” for ever) and a new sea-port, all stir and sunshine.
It is indeed just at this period that the real St. Lawrence sea voyages begin, in the grand old ships that carried steam and sail both, and plenty of each, the ships which represents the St. Lawrence navigation to and from Montreal from the time of the Crimean War till the close of the nineteenth century. The first transatlantic steamer to come up to Montreal was the Geneva of 700 tons, arriving in 1853. Two other boats, one of twelve hundred tons, arrived that same season initiating the mail service. The Crimean War, drawing all shipping to the Baltic, came only as an interruption. The war was followed by a forward rush in the Montreal trade with larger tonnage, iron ships and higher power. With this went a progress in deepening the ship channel of the river from its original eleven feet to fit it for ships of deeper draft, better surveys and better marks.
Here begins the famous Allan Line, a part of the history of Canada. It had a fleet of twenty vessels by 1861, did a roaring trade, took of necessity great risks in the still ill-lit, ill-marked river and ice-strewn gulf, suffered many disasters but deservedly won through. Other lines followed, the Dominion Line, and the Beaver, whose ships later became a part of the Henry Fry, “North Atlantic Steam Navigation,” 1896, Chap. IX Canadian Pacific fleet. But the Allan Line set the pattern and overtopped the trade for the rest of the century. Till almost the end of the century also they kept their sail, their vessels being ships of from 2,000 to 5,000 tons, rigged as “ships.” One of the most typical and best remembered is the Sarmatian, a “ship” (three masted and square rigged) built in 1871 and surviving in the Montreal route into the present century. She served as a troop-ship in the Ashanti War (1873-74) and on the St. Lawrence had the honour of carrying out to Canada, as Governor General the Marquis of Lorne and his wife the Princess Louise — and other eminent persons. But sail proved of doubtful value, as steam power increased — a dead weight of mast and rigging to drag against the wind. More and more sail was shortened. It appears almost gone on the reconstructed Parisian of 1897, the last word of luxury in the nineteenth century and quite gone with the beautiful outlines of the Victorian and the Virginian, the first word of luxury of the twentieth.
Meantime the development of the port, the building of docks, had kept pace with the progress of navigation. The Dominion of Canada took over the control, and cost of harbour and river navigation after Confederation. A Board of Montreal Harbour Commissioners (Dominion Officials) vigorously worked on port facilities. All the port area and docks was presently (1894) vested in a Harbour Corporation. The ship channel had already been dredged out to 20 feet at Confederation: by 1882 it was down to 25 full feet, by 1887 to 27½. A vigorous struggle was waged against the ice by the ice breaker ships installed on the river. The spring flood water, an annual danger since Maisonneuve’s first settlement in 1642, when it washed out the graveyard, was held back with heightened banks and flood walls. The tonnage of the port from Confederation till 1900 increased from two hundred thousand to more than a million and a half by the end of the century.
This development of the port of Montreal had behind it the increasing development of the St. Lawrence route itself by the deepening of the canals that carry the traffic to the upper lakes and the development of special types of boats, grain and ore carriers. But the ending of the century was only the beginning of this new union of Canada to the sea. The port of Montreal and the improvement of river navigation carried on into the twentieth and will carry on beyond the war period as one of the greatest factors of the economic life of Canada.
But meantime, in looking back over it, one thinks of it not in terms of efficient statistics but as a moving panorama in which are reflected on the face of the St. Lawrence as seen from the Royal Mountain that looks at it, all the changes of three hundred years, the sea, as it were, moving further and further in its contact with the inland continent.
THE LAKE SCHOONER — ITS PRIDE OF PLACE SANK TO HUMBLE USES
The lake Schooner which was evolved from the less suitable square-rigged vessels of the ocean, once dominated the Great Lakes. It held the lead for both passengers and freight, unexcelled in speed, convenience and capacity. Its sails covered the inland lakes. The railroad and the steamship reduced it to its last days as a “stone hooker.”
CHAPTER EIGHT THE ARCTIC VOYAGES
The Lure of the North West Passage — The Amazing Mr. Dobbs Searches for India in Manitoba — The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Annual Voyages — Descriptive Narratives, Captain John Franklin (1819), R. M. Ballantyne (1841) — Revival of the North West Passage and the Search for the North Pole as a Form of National Adventure, Sport and Science — The Voyages of Ross and Parry — Parry Originates the Dash for the Pole — Ross Lost for Four Years — The Tragedy of Sir John Franklin
AFTER THE DAYS of naval warfare against the French in the Hudson Bay the navigation of the far northern seas plays little part in the evolution of British North America except in connection with the supply route of the Hudson’s Bay Company. All dream of a practical North West Passage was dead, or was only a dream. The knowledge of the geography of the Pacific, though still limited, showed how long and how far outside of the field of practical commerce would be any voyage from London to the ports of China by way of the Polar Seas. The dream indeed lasted when the reality was over. The discovery in 1728 (corroborated 1741) by the Russian explorer, Captain Vitus Bering, of the strait separating Asia and America woke the dream for a short time to life. It was argued that the strait must lead somewhere: the other end of it must be the North West Passage.
The Hudson’s Bay Company half believed this. A discussion of the problem in a contemporary history says, “The opinion has prevailed for upwards of two centuries and a half, among the most knowing and experienced persons, that there B. Willson, “The Great Company,” 1899 is a passage to the North West.” A Mr. Arthur Dobbs, an English gentleman of means and influence, persuaded the Company (1737) to send out two ships, the Churchill and the Musquash to look for the passage. They got no further than latitude 62° 15″ (still inside the Bay), the Churchill being out only ten days and the Musquash about six weeks. They reported nothing but “small islands and an abundance of black whales.”
The Company had enough of such fooling but Dobbs went on. He seems to have had the persuasiveness or the pertinacity that wears down opposition. He went on looking for India — that is where he was heading for — during ten years. He hired a queer, disgruntled shipmaster out of the Company’s service. He got his friends to supply money. He worried the Admiralty into lending him a couple of small ships. Middleton, Dobbs’ captain, carried out a kind of comic opera exploration, all quarrels and mysteries. He said he had found the passage, but that the Company were hiding it. The Admiralty gave another ship. Dobbs’ enthusiastic friends got an Act of Parliament offering a reward of £20,000 for the discovery of a “passage to the Southern Ocean.” An Association raised £10,000 and sent out quite a big ship, Dobb’s Galley, 140 tons, and a consort, the California — a name at that time as vague as their aspirations. They cruised round in the Bay for over a year, kept the ship’s company alert with offers of premiums for everybody — £500 and downwards — when they should get to the Southern Ocean. They wintered (in Manitoba) a little way up the Hayes River, in a log house with brandy for all. It seems a pity they didn’t find India. This “fun” lasted till 1748. All this, one notes, was happening in the years when Great Britain was convulsed with the French war (1744-48) and with the Jacobite Rebellion of the Young Pretender. After that, the North West Passage fell asleep again for half a century till it came back as a sort of national sport, along with the discovery of the North Pole.
But meantime the voyages of the Hudson’s Bay Company went on from year to year to and from the Port of London, round Scotland and through Hudson Strait to the Bay. In the entrance to the Bay the Company lost only two or three ships in 200 years. This is really a wonderful triumph of seamanship and seamen’s instinct, so steadily, so watchfully performed that it was largely taken for granted. It seemed commonplace as compared with wild voyages in the typhoons of the China Seas or among the Malay pirates of the East Indies. But typhoons and pirates, proas and cyclones are largely a matter of luck and adventure. These voyages were the work of watchful seamanship. The waters around the north of Scotland are danger itself — current and shoal and the enshrouding mist. Hudson Strait is one long chasm of danger — even in its open season its northern walls of rock are swept with high tides and torn with currents. It never freezes to one solid mass but it is never free from the drift of ice, from the crush of the closing ice pack. To linger too long is death. Beyond it is the great open Bay, an inland sea, with difficult shifting harbours, in those days much of it unknown, uncharted, and below it the James Bay, shallow and shoal-strewn, with a low, mournful horizon of scrub and muskeg — in those days, shores without life, with help nowhere. Shipwreck and you die.
