When we call Canada a new country in the twentieth century we are apt to forget that her seafaring annals may possibly go back to the Vikings of the tenth century, a thousand years ago.  Long before William the Conqueror crossed over from France to England the Vikings had been scouring the seas, north, south, east, and west.  They reached Constantinople; they colonized Iceland; they discovered Greenland; and there are grounds for suspecting that the ‘White Eskimos’ whom the Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 noted down for report are some of their descendants.  However this may be, there is at least a probability that the Vikings discovered North America five centuries before Columbus.  The saga of Eric the Red sings of the deeds of Leif Ericson, who led the discoverers and named the three new countries Helluland, Markland, and Vineland.  Opinions differ as to which of the four Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, or New England are to be included in the Vikings’ three.  In any case, the only inevitable two are Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, with which the subsequent history of Canada also begins.

But even if the Vikings never came to Canada at all, their ships could not be refused a place in any history of sailing craft; for it is the unique distinction of these famous freelances of the sea to have developed the only type of ancient and mediaeval hull which is the admiration of the naval world to-day.  The kind of vessel they used in the tenth century is the craft of most peculiar interest to Canadian history, though it has never been noticed there except by the merest landsman’s reference.  The special type to which this vessel belonged was already the result of long development.  The Vikings had a way of burying a chief in his ship, over which they heaped a funeral mound.  Very fortunately two of these vessels were buried in blue clay, which is an excellent preserver of timber; so we are able to see them to-day in an almost perfect state.  The one found in 1880 at the mouth of the Christiania fjord is apparently a typical specimen, though smaller than many that are described in the sagas.  She is about eighty feet long, sixteen feet in the beam, and seven feet in total depth amidships, from the top of the gunwale to the bottom of the keel.  The keel runs into the stem and stern-post with very gentle curves.  The whole of the naval architecture is admirably done.  The lines are so fine that there is almost the least possible resistance to the water when passing through it.  The only point worth criticizing is the slightness of the connection between the topsides and the body of the boat.  But as this was a warship, carrying little besides live ballast, such a defect would be minimized.  Iron rivets, oak treenails (or pegs), clinker planking (each plank-edge overlapping the next below it), admirably proportioned frame, as well as arrangements for stepping, raising, and lowering the single mast, all show that the builders knew exactly what they were about.

The rudder is hung over on the starboard, or ‘steer-board,’ side and worked by a tiller.  The ropes are made of bark fibre and the planking is partly fastened to the floors with ties made of tough tree roots.  Only one sail, and that a simple square one, was used.  Nothing could be done with this unless the wind was more or less aft.  The sail, in fact, was centuries behind the hull, which, with the firm grip of its keel, would have been quite fit for a beat to windward, if the proper canvas had been carried.  The thirty oars were often used, and to very good purpose, as the easy run of the lines suited either method of propulsion.  The general look of these Viking craft is not unlike that of a big keeled war canoe, for both ends rise with a sharp sheer and run to a point.  A classical scholar would be irresistibly reminded of the Homeric vessels, not as they were in reality, but as they appear in the eager, sea-born suggestions of the Iliad and the Odyssey long, sharp, swift, well-timbered, hollow, with many thwarts, and ends curved high like horns.

Three Viking vessels discovered in a Danish peat-bog probably belong to the fifth century, thus being fifteen hundred years of age.  Yet their counterparts can still be seen along the Norwegian coast.  Such wonderful persistence, even of such an excellently serviceable type, is quite unparalleled; and it proves, if proof were needed, that the Norsemen who are said to have discovered Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were the finest seamen of their own and many a later time.  The way they planned and built their vessels was the glory of their homes.  The way they manned and armed and fought them was the terror of every foreign shore.  War craft and crew together were the very soul and body of strength and speed and daring skill, as, with defiant figurehead and glittering, shield-hung sides, they rode to battle joyously on the wild white horses of the mediaeval sea.

Five centuries more, and the English, another great seafaring people, first arrived in Canada.  Then came increasing swarms of the most adventurous fishermen of Europe.  After these came many competing explorers and colonizers, all of whose fortunes directly depended on the sea.

Cabot’s English crew of eighteen hands is a century nearer to our own time than Leif Ericson the Norseman was to Cabot’s.  Yet Cabot himself preceded Columbus in setting foot on what may fairly be called the mainland of America when he discovered Canada’s eastern coast in 1497.  He cleared from Bristol in May, reached the new regions on June 24, and returned safe home at the end of July.  It was an age of awakening surmise.  The universal question was, which is the way to the golden East?  America was looked upon as a rather annoying obstruction to proper navigation, though it was allowed to have some incidental interest of its own.  Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in the same year that Cabot raised St George’s Cross over what afterwards became British territory.  Twenty-five years later Magellan found the back way through behind Cape Horn, and his ship, though not himself, went round the world.  Then, twelve years later still, the French sailed into the Canadian scene on which they were to play the principal part for the next two centuries and a quarter.

Every text-book tells us that Jacques Cartier was the great French pioneer and explains his general significance in the history of Canada.  But no books explain his peculiar significance from the nautical point of view, though he came on the eve of the most remarkable change for the better that was ever made in the art of handling vessels under sail.  He was both the first and the last mediaeval seaman to appear on Canadian inland waters.  Only four years after his discovery of the St Lawrence, an Englishman, Fletcher of Rye, astonished the seafaring world of 1539 by inventing a rig with which a ship could beat to windward with sails trimmed fore and aft.  This invention introduced the era of modern seamanship.  But Cartier has another, and much more personal, title to nautical fame, for he was the first and one of the best of Canadian hydrographers, and he wrote a book containing some descriptions worthy of comparison with those in the official ‘Pilots’ of to-day.  This book, well called his Brief Recit et Succincte Narration, is quite as easy for an Englishman to read in French as Shakespeare is for a Frenchman to read in English.  It abounds in acute observations of all kinds, but particularly so in its sailing directions.  Compare, for instance, his remarks on Cumberland Harbour with those made in the latest edition of the St Lawrence Pilot after the surveys of four hundred years.  Or take his few, exact, and graphic words about Isle-aux-Coudres and compare them with the entries made by the sailing masters of the British fleet that used this island as a naval base during the great campaign for the winning of Canada in 1759.  In neither case will Cartier suffer by comparison.  He was captain, discoverer, pilot, and surveyor, all in one; and he never failed to make his mark, whichever rôle he undertook.

Like all the explorers, Jacques Cartier had his troubles with his crews.  The average man of any time cannot be expected to have the sustained enthusiasm, much less the manifold interest, which inspires his leader.  Nearly every commander of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries had to face mutiny; and, even apart from what might be called natural causes, men of that time were quite ready to mutiny for what seem now the most absurd of reasons.  Some crews would not sail past the point of Africa for fear of turning black.  Others were distracted when the wind held for days together while they were outward bound, lest it might never blow the other way in North America, and so they would not be able to get back home.  The ships, too, often gave as much trouble as the men.  They were far better supplied with sails and accommodation than the earlier Viking ships had been; but their hulls were markedly inferior.  The Vikings, as we have seen, anticipated by centuries some of the finest models of the modern world.  The hulls of Cabot, Columbus, and Cartier were broader in the beam, much bluffer in the bow, besides being full of top-hamper on the deck.  Nothing is known about Cabot’s vessel except that she must have been very small, probably less than fifty tons, because the crew numbered only eighteen and there was no complaint of being short-handed.  Cartier’s Grande Hermine was more than twice as large, and, if the accepted illustrations and descriptions of her may be relied upon, she probably was not unlike a smaller and simplified Santa Maria, the ship which bore Columbus on his West Indian voyage of 1492.  Such complete and authentic specifications of the Santa Maria still remain that a satisfactory reproduction of her was made for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.  Her tonnage was over two hundred.  Her length of keel was only sixty feet; length of ship proper, ninety-three; and length over all, one hundred and twenty-eight.  This difference between length of keel and length over all was not caused by anything like the modern overhang of the hull itself, which the Vikings had anticipated by hundreds and the Egyptians by thousands of years, but by the box-like forecastle built over the bows and the enormous half and quarter decks jutting out aft.  These top-hampering structures over-burdened both ends and produced a regular see-saw, as the Spanish crew of 1893 found to their cost when pitching horribly through a buffeting head sea.  The Santa Maria, like most ‘Spaniards,’ had a lateen-rigged mizzen. But the Grande Hermine had no mizzen, only the square-rigged mainmast, foremast, and bowsprit.  The bowsprit of those days was a mast set at an angle of forty-five; and it sometimes, as in the Grande Hermine, carried a little upright branch mast of its own.

Many important changes occurred in the nautical world during the two generations between the days of Jacques Cartier and those of Champlain.  The momentous change in trimming sails, already referred to, came first, when Fletcher succeeded in doing what no one had ever done before.  There can be no doubt that the lateen sail, which goes back at least to the early Egyptians, had the germ of a fore-and-after in it.  But the germ was never evolved into a strong type fit for tacking; and no one before Fletcher ever seems to have thought it possible to lay a course at all unless the wind was somewhere abaft the beam.  So England can fairly claim this one epoch-making nautical invention, which might be taken as the most convenient dividing-line between the sailing craft of ancient and of modern times.

The French had little to do with Canada for the rest of the sixteenth century.  Jacques Carrier’s best successor as a hydrographer was Roberval’s pilot, Saint-Onge, whose log of the voyage up the St Lawrence in 1542 is full of information.  He more than half believes in what the Indians tell him about unicorns and other strange beasts in the far interior.  And he thinks it likely that there is unbroken land as far as Tartary.  But, making due allowance for his means of observation, the claim with which he ends his log holds good regarding pilotage:  ‘All things said above are true.’

The English then, as afterwards, were always encroaching on the French wherever a seaway gave them an opening.  In 1578 they were reported to be lording it off Newfoundland, though they had only fifty vessels there, as against thirty Basque, fifty Portuguese, a hundred Spanish, and a hundred and fifty French.  Their numbers and influence increased year by year, till, in 1600, they had two hundred sail manned by eight thousand men.  They were still more preponderant farther north and farther south.  Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and other Englishmen left their mark on what are now Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada.  Hudson also sailed up the river that bears his name, and thus did his share towards founding the English colonies that soon began their ceaseless struggle with New France.  But even before his time, which was just after Champlain had founded Quebec, two great maritime events had encouraged the English to aim at that command of the sea which they finally maintained against all rivals.  In 1579 Sir Francis Drake sailed completely round the world.  He was the first sea captain who had ever done so, for Magellan had died in mid-career fifty-seven years before.  This notable feat was accompanied by his successful capture of many Spanish treasure ships.  Explorer, warrior, enricher of the realm, he at once became a national hero.  Queen Elizabeth, a patriot ruler who always loved a hero for his service to the state, knighted Drake on board his flagship; and a poet sang his praises in these few, fit words, which well deserve quotation wherever the sea-borne English tongue is known: 

  The Stars of Heaven would thee proclaim,
    If men here silent were. 
  The Sun himself could not forget
    His fellow traveller.

Nine years later the English Navy fought the unwieldy Spanish Armada into bewildered flight and chased it to its death round the hostile coast-line of the British Isles.

Meanwhile the quickened interest in ‘sea affairs’ had led to many improvements in building, rigging, and handling vessels.  Surprising as it may seem, most of these improvements were made by foreigners.  Still more surprising is the fact that British nautical improvements of all kinds, naval as well as mercantile, generally came from abroad during the whole time that the British command of the sea was being won or held.  Belated imitation of the more scientific foreigner was by no means new, even in the Elizabethan age.  It had become a national habit by the time the next two centuries were over.  English men, not English vessels, won the wars.  The Portuguese and Spaniards had larger and better vessels than the English at the beginning of the struggle, just as the French had till after Trafalgar, and the Americans throughout the War of 1812.  Even Sir Walter Raleigh was belated in speaking of the ‘new’ practice of striking topmasts, ’a wonderful ease to great ships, both at sea and in the harbour.’