and sending across the Atlantic a scow-like coal barge ordered by a firm
in England.

The decline of Canadian sailing craft was swifter than its rise; and with
the sailing craft went the Canadian-built steamers, because wood was the
material used for both, and the use of iron and steel in the yards of the
British Isles soon drove the wooden hulls from the greater highways of
the sea. Once the palmy days of the third quarter of the century were
{81} over the decline went on at an ever-increasing rate. In 1875 Canada
built nearly 500 vessels, and, if small craft are included, the tonnage
must have nearly reached 200,000. In 1900 she built 29 vessels, of 7751
tons--steam, steel, wood, and sail. Shipowning does not show such a
dramatic contrast, but the decline has been very marked. Within
twenty-two years, from 1878 to 1900, the Canadian registered tonnage was
almost exactly halved. The drop was from a grand total, sail and steam
together, of a million and a third, which then made Canada the fourth
shipowning country in the world and put her ahead of many nations with
more than ten times her population.

{82}

CHAPTER VI

SAILING CRAFT: THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP

Shipbuilding was and is a very complex industry. But only the actual
construction can be noticed here, and that only in the briefest general
way. The elaborate methods of European naval yards were not in vogue
anywhere in Canada, not even in Quebec, much less in Nova Scotia. It
was not uncommon for a Bluenose crew to make everything themselves,
especially in the smaller kinds of vessels. They would cut the trees,
draft the plan, build the ship and sail her: being thus lumbermen,
architects, builders, and seamen all in one. The first step in
building is to lay the blocks on which the keel itself is laid. These
blocks are short, thick timbers, arranged in graduated piles, so that
they form an inclined plane of over one in twenty, from which the
completed hull can slide slowly into the water, stern first. Then
comes the laying of the keel, that part which is to the whole vessel
what {83} the backbone is to a man. A false keel is added to the
bottom of this in order to increase its depth and consequent grip.
This prevents the side drift which is called making leeway. The false
keel is only fastened to the keel itself from underneath, because such
a fastening is strong enough to resist water pressure and weak enough
to allow of detachment in