uring previous
eras, when steam was completely unknown, that sailing craft reached
their highest development. Sails {67} increased to eight on the
mainmast of a full-rigged ship, and they were better cut and set than
ever before. Yachts and merchantmen cannot be fairly compared in the
matter of their sails. But it is worth noting that the old
'white-winged days' never had any sort of canvas worth comparing with a
British yachting 'Lapthorn' or a Yankee yachting 'Sawyer' of our own
time. Hulls, too, have improved far beyond those of the old
three-decker age, beyond even the best of the Vikings'.

Such broad divisions into eras of shipbuilding are, of course, only to
be taken as marking world-wide nautical advances in the largest
possible sense. One epoch often overlaps another and begins or ends at
different times in different countries. A strangely interesting
survival of an earlier age is still to be seen along the Labrador, in
the little Welsh and Devonshire brigs, brigantines, and topsail
schooners which freight fish east away to Europe. These vessels make
an annual round: in March to Spain for salt; by June along the
Labrador; in September to the Mediterranean with their fish; and in
December home again for Christmas. They are excellently handled
wherever they go; and no wonder, as every man aboard of them is a
sailor born and bred.

[1] The nautical history of New France is all parts and no whole;
brilliant ideas and thwarted execution; government stimulus and
government repression; deeds of daring by adventurers afloat and deeds
of various kinds by officials ashore: everything unstable and
changeable; nothing continuous and strong. It cannot, therefore, make
a coherent narrative, only a collection of half-told tales.

[2] See in this Series _The Great Intendant_, chapters iv and ix.

[3] For the narrative of the Hudson's Bay Company the reader is
referred to _The Adventurers of England on Hudson Bay_, in this Series.

{68}

CHAPTER V

SAILING CRAFT: UNDER THE UNION JACK

When Canada finally became a British possession in 1763 she was, of
course, subject to the navigation laws, or the Navigation Act, as this
conglomeration of enactments was usually called. The avowed object of
these laws was to gain and keep the British command of the sea. They
aimed at this by trying to have British trade done in British ships,
British ships manned by British crews, and British crews always available