have been at
least a thousand to one.

{12}

It would be natural to suppose that some knowledge of the sea was widely
diffused among the British peoples in general and Canadians in
particular. But this is far from being the case. Though there is three
times as much sea as land in the world, it is safe to say that there is
three hundred times as much knowledge of the land as there is of the sea.
The ways of the sea are strange to most people in every country,
excepting Norway and Newfoundland. Seamen have always been somewhat of a
class apart, though they are less so now. Ignorance of everything to do
with the water is exceedingly common, even in England and Canada. The
British mercantile marine is one of the biggest commercial enterprises of
all time. It is of very great importance to Canada. It is absolutely
vital to England. Yet it is less understood among the general public
than any other kind of business that is of national concern. Some people
even think that the mercantile marine differs from every other kind of
business in being under the special care of the government. They are
probably misled by the term 'Merchant Service,' which, when spelt with
capital letters, has a very official look and reminds them of the two
great fighting 'services,' the Army and the Navy. In reality {13} the
merchant service is no more a government service than any other kind of
trade is.

[Illustration: THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKES By Lorado Taft, in the Chicago Art
Institute]

Ignorance about the Navy is commoner still. Canadian history is full of
sea-power, but Canadian histories are not. It was only in 1909, a
hundred and fifty years after the Battle of the Plains, that the first
attempt was made to introduce the actual naval evidence into the story of
the Conquest by publishing a selection from the more than thirty thousand
daily entries made in the logs of the men-of-war engaged in the three
campaigns of Louisbourg, Quebec, and Montreal. Yet there were twice as
many sailors under Saunders as there were soldiers under Wolfe, and the
fleet that carried them was the greatest single fleet which, up to that
time, had ever appeared in any waters. How many people, even among
Canadians born and bred, know that there have already been two local
Canadian navies of different kinds and two Canadian branches of Imperial
navies oversea; that in 1697 a naval battle was fought in the waters of
Hudson Bay, opposite Port Nelson; tha