ecial class of sea tugs the Dutch, and not the British,
are easily first: a curious exception to the general rule of British
supremacy at sea. Then, with many variations and several intermediate
types, there are the two main distinctive kinds of inland vessels: the
long, low, grimy, cargo-carrying whale-back, tankship, barge, or other
useful form of ugliness, simply meant to nose her way through quite
safe waters with the utmost bulk her huge stuffed maw will hold; and,
at the opposite end of the scale, the high, white, gaily decorated
'palace' steamer, with tier upon tier of decks, and a strong suggestion
of the theatre all through. Sea-going craft show the same variations
within a given type and the same intermediate types between the two
ends of the scale. But the general distinction is quite as well
marked, though the necessity for seaworthy hulls brings about a closer
resemblance along the water-line. There is the cargo boat, long,
comparatively low, and rather dingy; with derricks and vast holds,
which remind one of the tentacles and stomach of an octopus. The
opposite extreme is the great passenger liner, much larger and more
shapely in the hull; but best distinguished, at any {153} distance, by
her towering, white, superstructural decks, with their clean-run
symmetry fore and aft.

The 'Britisher' is the predominant type in Canadian waters. This is
natural enough, considering that the British Isles build nearly all
'Britishers,' most 'Canadians,' and many foreigners, and that the
tonnage actually under construction there in 1913 exceeded the total
tonnage owned by any other country except Germany and the United
States, while it greatly exceeded the total tonnage under construction
in all other countries of the world put together, including Germany and
the United States. The British practice is naturally the prevailing
one both in shipbuilding and marine engineering. But there is a
general conformity to certain leading ideas everywhere. The engine is
passing out of the stage in which the fuel-made steam worked machinery,
which, in its turn, worked propellers; and passing into the stage in
which the latent forces of the fuel itself are brought to bear more
directly on propellers, that is to say, into the stage of internal
combustion engines and the turbine-driven screw. The hull has changed
more and more in its proportions between length and breadth since the
supplanting of wood by steel. {154} Instead