to a poor and thinly
peopled country. But none of them ranked as a pioneering achievement
in the world at large. This kind of achievement was reserved for the
_Royal William_, a vessel of such distinction in the history of
shipping that her career must be followed out in detail.

[Illustration: TRANSPORT _BECKWITH_ AND BATEAUX, LAKE ONTARIO, 1816.
From the John Rose Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library.]

She was the first of all sea-going steamers, the first that ever
crossed an ocean entirely under steam, and the first that ever fired a
shot in action. But her claims and the spurious counter-claims against
her must both be made quite clear. She was not the first steamer that
ever put out to sea, for the Yankee _Phoenix_ made the little coasting
trip from Hoboken to Philadelphia in 1809. She was not the first
steamer in Canadian salt water, for the _St John_ crossed the Bay of
Fundy in 1826. And she was not the first vessel with a steam engine
that crossed an ocean, for the Yankee _Savannah_ crossed from Savannah
to Liverpool in 1819. The {137} _Phoenix_ and _St John_ call for no
explanation. The _Savannah_ does, especially in view of the claims so
freely made and allowed for her as being the first regular steamer to
cross an ocean. To begin with, she was not a regular sea-going steamer
with auxiliary sails like the _Royal William_, but a so-called
clipper-built, full-rigged ship of three hundred tons with a small
auxiliary engine and paddle-wheels made to be let down her sides when
the wind failed. She did not even steam against head winds, but
tacked. She took a month to make Liverpool, and she used steam for
only eighty hours altogether. She could not, indeed, have done much
more, because she carried only seventy-five tons of coal and
twenty-five cords of wood, and she made port with plenty of fuel left.
Her original log (the official record every vessel keeps) disproves the
whole case mistakenly made out for her by some far too zealous
advocates.

The claims of the _Royal William_ are proved by ample contemporary
evidence, as well as by the subsequent statements of her master, John
M'Dougall, her builder, James Goudie, and John Henry, the Quebec
founder who made some castings for her engines the year after they had
been put into her at Montreal. {138} M'Dougall was a seaman of
indomitable perseverance, as his famous voyage to England shows.
Goudie, though only twenty-one, was a most capable