in which all inanimate objects were endowed with life in
everyday speech and neuters were as yet unknown.

Immediately this most stirring ceremony ceases, the stentorian order
comes to 'Down dog-shore!' on which the dog-shore trigger is touched
off, the dog-shores fall, an awakening quiver runs through the
sliding-ways and cradle; and then the whole shapely vessel, still
facing the land from which she gets her being, moves majestically into
the water, where her adventurous life begins.

{92}

CHAPTER VII

SAILING CRAFT: 'FIT TO GO FOREIGN'

We will suppose that the ship is complete in hull, successfully
launched, and properly rigged and masted. The two questions still
remaining are: what is her crew like, and how does she sail?

The typical British North American crew of the nineteenth-century
sailing ship is the Bluenose crew. Newfoundlanders were too busy
fishing in home waters, though some of them did ship to go foreign and
others sailed their catch to market. Quebeckers built ships, but
rarely sailed them; while the Pacific coast had no shipping to speak
of. Thus the Bluenoses had the field pretty well to themselves.
Bluenoses were so called because the fog along the Nova Scotian and New
Brunswick coast was supposed to make men's noses bluer than it did
elsewhere. The name was generally extended by outsiders to all sorts
of British North Americans; and, of course, was also applied {93} to
any vessel, as well as any crew, that hailed from any port in British
North America, because a vessel is commonly called by the name of the
people that sail her. 'There's a Bluenose,' 'that's a Yankee,' 'look
at that Dago,' or 'hail that Dutchman' apply to ships afloat as well as
to men ashore. And here it might be explained that 'Britisher'
includes anything from the British Isles, 'Yankee' anything flying the
Stars and Stripes, 'Frenchie' anything hailing from France, 'Dago'
anything from Italy, Spain, or Portugal, and 'Dutchman' anything manned
by Hollanders, Germans, Norsemen, or Finns, though Norwegians often get
their own name too. A 'chequer-board' crew is one that is half white,
half black, and works in colour watches.

[Illustration: SHIP _BATAVIA_, 2000 TONS. Built by F.-X. Marquis at
Quebec, 1877. Lost on Inaccessible Island, 1879. From a picture
belonging to Messrs Ross and Co., Quebec.]

Hard things have often been said of Bluenose crews. Like other general
sayings, some of them are true an