THE HISTORIC SEAPORT OF QUEBEC: FROM IMMEMORIALITY TO THE PRESENT DAY •

•ANADIAN history is full of sea-power; but Canadian histories are not. Modem Canada stretches out between the world's

two greatest oceans. Her northern frontier is the Arctic Sea. Her only land frontier is interpenetrated by many of the greatest inland waterways. Yet, though she has had many rather sermon- izing histories, very few of them have ever preached on the theme suggested by her motto--"From sea to sea."

At almost the beginning of Canada's recorded history we find in Carrier's log of 1535 the significant entry that he had just seen "une rivi•re fort perfonde et courante, qui est la rivi•re et chemin du royaulme et terre de Saguenay"--rivi•re et chemin: what better description could there be of the best means of trans- portation in such a very navigable land?

We do not know who were the first humans 'on Canadian

waterways. But these primitives, like others elsewhere, must have begun with logs, cribs, rafts, and possibly even those dug-outs which at last evolved into such splendid craft as the best of those used by the Pacific coast Indians. We do know that the Eskimo built two excellent kinds of skin-craft: oomiaks for cargo, and the wonderfully adaptable kayaks for hunting their aquatic prey. We also know that the Indians invented birchbark canoes of all the

sizes possible: from the tiniest papoose canoe up to war canoes holding twenty men, or cargo craft carrying two or three tons in quite safe waters. Never were the possibilities of the war canoe better suggested than in Father Le Jeune's perfect description of the seventeenth-century Iroquois raiding parties which swept down to, and even past, the port of Quebec at night: "They ap- proach like foxes, attack like lions; then fly away like birds."

The Basques came over in the sixteenth century, fishing and whaling from the Banks of Newfoundland right up to Quebec, where they probably had a rendering post at the mouth of the St. Charles. Laurencian whaling continued till the present century, when Norwegians had headquarters in the Bay of Seven Islands, from where they whaled east and north round Labrador till their improved Sven Foyn guns threatened the extermination of all their best prey.

•Colonel William Wood, now in his eighty-second year, has here suggested the historic panorama of the seaport of Quebec. Colonel Wood, who is the author of a number of important works on military and naval history, was born in Quebec and writes with a background of knowledge and experience gained not only through re- search, but through intimate observation of the port whose history he describes.

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THE :HISTORIC SEAPORT OF QUEBEC 393

The seafaring fact of the greatest possible importance in the sixteenth century was, however, the invention of tacking. This supremely important invention inaugurated the real sailing age, which now, four centuries later, is almost dead. That excellent explorer and hydrographer, Jacques Cartier, reached Quebec in 1535, at the very end of the ancient and mediaeval age of sail, during which no vessel could make any way at all unless the lubber's wind was well abaft the beam. For it was in 1589 that

Fletcher of Rye, master shipwright to Henry VIII, amazed the shipping of the English Channel by tacking properly to windward with sails trimmed fore and aft.

Then, only a few years after he had founded Quebec in 1608, Champlain made the transatlantic record for the whole of the seventeenth century, by sailing his famous Don de Dieu from Honfleur to Tadoussac in only eighteen days. She was repro- duced, from the corresponding French specifications of her own day, for the Quebec tercentenary of 1908, when another trans- atlantic record was made by the British flagship Indomitable, which steamed from land to land in sixty-seven hours, with that first class sailor Prince George, later King George V, taking his turn in the stokehold the whole way across.

Why do not Canadian histories emphasize such facts of Canadian maritime history, as well as those which followed, during the one great generation (1665-99), when, under Tracy, Talon, Frontenac, and Iberville, New France aimed at the control of the three great gulfs, the four great rivers, and the five Great Lakes? And earlier still, even so far back as 1601, Champlain had suggested another great seafaring encirclement by cutting a Panama Canal!

In 1665, when France was the greatest power in Europe, New France seemed to have a good chance of becoming the greatest power in North America. In that year came out the first regiment of regulars the New World had seen: the famous Carignan- Sali•res, and with them came the King's own Viceroy of all the French Dominions in America, Tracy, and by far the greatest of all intendants, Jean Talon. In 1670 Talon established what may be rightly called the first of Transatlantic Lines: Quebec, West Indies, France, Quebec. In 1672 Quebec had a fine 500-tonner on the stocks; and 350 expert hands employed in the yards. This also was the first of Frontenac's great years (1672-82 and 1689-98). In 1690 he defeated the New England fleet and army under Phipps. Then, in 1696, the great French-Canadian naval hero, Iberville, raided the New England coast, -after which he raided

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Newfoundland. Next year he won command of Hudson Bay and took Fort Nelson. Finally, in 1699, he raided the West Indies, commanded the Gulf of Mexico, and fortified Biloxi, fifty miles from the Mississippi mouth. Meanwhile the French commanded the St. Lawrence, and had established posts along the Ohio and the Mississippi; while Frontenac had asked the king for sufficient force to take the Hudson right down to the sea. The furring French and their friendly Indians had no efficient rivals then along the five Great Lakes. So, if the Grand Monarque and Roy Soleil, Louis XIV, had not found his world-power in decline during the first decade of the eighteenth century, and if he had not had his well-armed attention still sooner distracted from the water-

ways of New France to the landways of Old, he might yet have gained control of the three great gulfs, the four great rivers, and the five Great Lakes.

The last fifty years of New France (1713-63), show a long decline, especially with regard to sea-power. In 1753 Quebec could still launch a 72-gun frigate, the Algonkin. But then came the devastating reign of the worst of all Intendants, Bigot, and the utterly incompetent Governor, Vaudreuil.

T•. C•ANG•NG F•,AG: 1758-59-60

Sea-power played a role of supreme importance in the last years of the Anglo-French struggle. The three campaigns for the final conquest of New France began at Louisbourg in 1758. Here, as elsewhere, the French forces fought with the greatest gallantry. But here, as everywhere else, British sea-power was the determining influence. The gallant small French fleet at Louisbourg had no means of effectively resisting the overpowering fleet so well commanded by Boscawen. So New France lost this last sea-flank protection for its Laurenclan waters. Then came the famous Quebec campaign of 1759, in which the French sea force was smaller still, while Saunders's British fleet was over- whelming. Hawke's victory at Quiberon cut off all hope of any reinforcement of New France next year, and finally came t-he Montreal campaign of 1760, in which the French had practically nothing to oppose Colville's fleet on the St. Lawrence, or Amherst's army along the inland waterways.

With regard to the formerly very much misrepresented, and consequently much misunderstood, so-called "Wolfe and Mont- calm campaign," all impartial readers of the present day should remember that even so truly great an historian as Parkman never saw- some of the essential proved original evidence which is now

T• H•s•omc S•,•o• or •u•.•c 395

at the service of every student who wants to know about the naval, military, and civil forces concerned on both sides: most especially the naval.

It was not till the first year of the present century that the late Sir Arthur Doughty published many previously unused original documents in his six-volume Siege of Quebec and Battle of the Plains2 And it was not till 1909 that the supremely important naval documents concerned with the three decisive campai/rns (of Louisbourg, Quebec, and Montreal) were selected and pub- lished by the Champlain Society, under the title of The Logs of the Conquest of Canada. •

Now it can be made quite clear that Wolfe's first-rate little army was really no more than a landing-party from an over- whelming fleet; and, also, that his personally planned victory was only a second-best--as agreed by all great commanders who have themselves gone over the battlefields' area with all the original expert evidence before them: for instance, Admirals of the Fleet like Jellicoe and Keyes; Field Marshals like Roberts and Foch; and many another expert, afloat and ashore. Here too are the written words of Field Marshal Wolseley, who himself served in Canada for a good many years: "Wolfe was a first-rate com- manding officer of a battalion; but, in the only campaign he ever conducted, he did not display any originality or any great genius for war." Wolfe's best plan would have been to land at least as far west as Cap Rouge, where, conjointly with the fleet, he could have cut off all supplies from above Quebec, as well as all retreat from below.

As Keyes points out, in his Amphibious Warfare, 4 there was a perfect united service on the British side, between the splendid little army under Wolfe and the magnificently overwhelming fleet under the truly great Admiral Saunders. But the unfortunate French side was deplorably different; for it was all differing parts and no united whole. "Two captains sink the ship." And New France had three' the spiteful fool of a Governor, Vaudreuil; the boodling b!ackguard Intendant, Bigot; and the truly great Montcalm,who, in spite of all the odds against him, on both sides,was

•A. Doughty in collaboration with G. W. Parmelee, The Siege of Quebec and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (0 vols., Quebec, 1002).

sWilliam Wood (ed.), The Logs of the Conquest of Canada (Toronto, 1909). 4R. J. B. Keyes, First Baron, Amphibious Warfare and Combined Operations (Lon-

don, 19411).

396 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL l•VlIgW

Quatre lois victorieux Une fois vaincu

Toujours Au grand honneur Des Armes de la France

Montcalm was a master of both strategy and tactics; besides which he had the human touch which endeared him to all who

knew him well, no matter whether they were Frenchmen or French Canadians, or any others of the right good kind. And in 1909, when Foch was head of the gcole Sup•rieure de Guerre, the Section-Historique de l'lgtat-Major published, as a model for all time, Montcalm au Combat de Carillon. Moreover, Montcalm's four victories were won in s_pite of the fact that he was only com- mander of the regulars from France. All French-Canadian forces, everything locally afloat, and all the Indian allies, were under the command of Vaudreuil, who could, and who did, take supreme command over Montcalm, whenever his spiteful and idiotic motives prompted him to do so. Worse still, because perpetual, all supply and transport was under the infamous Bigot. So Montcalm had to make the best of an impossible situation.

Montcalm did extremely well at all his four victories: Oswego, William Henry, Ticonderoga, Montmorency. And the massacre at Fort William Henry was none of his fault; quite the reverse, for he and his officers risked their lives to stop it. Conclusively, at Quebec he divined Wolfe's final plan, by twice ordering a whole French regular battalion to command the very spot on which Wolfe landed. But spiteful Vaudreuil idiotically counter-ordered on each occasion. The Battle of the Plains made it impossible to hold Quebec. The Bigot-patched walls were rotten to the core. Any garrison would soon have been starved. And the British batteries massed on the Heights after the battle could have annihilated all resistance within one devastating hour. So a French surrender was agreed without another shot.

THE SHIP AND TIMBER AGE: NINETEENTH CENTURY

The change of flag made a fundamental change for the better in all Canadian seaports; because it meant that Canada--"From sea to sea"--was to be under the protection of the greatest navy in the world. Moreover, this navy was maintained at the sole expense of the new Mother Country, which also fully paid for all the garrisons and alefences. From the Cession of 1763 to the early present century the Mother Country spent countless millions on the fleets, garrisons, and fortifications that kept Canada free.

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Quebec had an imperial garrison till 1871, when the Citadel and walls, as well as the Levis forts, were turned over to the new Dominion free. The last imperial Atlantic and Pacific naval and military bases were likewise given free a generation later.

Of course Canada became subject to the Navigation Acts which confined all inter-imperial trade to British vessels till the repeal of 1849. But Quebec, like other seaports, flourished very well. In 1774, the year of the famous Quebec Act, 151 vessels took clearance from the port. In 1809 clearances rose to 434, while 443 came in. The War of 1812 killed Canadian shipping on the Lakes; but greatly stimulated shipping at Quebec and in the Maritime Provinces. The transport required by the British forces in Canada sent freights and tonnage up by leaps and bounds; while United States ports were so blockaded that many Americans near the border sought "underground" outlets by way of the Canadian ports. There were some serious drawbacks in later years: cholera, ship fever, and ardent American competition. But in 1825 Quebec built the largest vessel in the world, the Baron of Renfrew, 5,888 tons. And in 1831 she launched the Royal William, which, in 1833, was the first vessel in the world to "keep her kettle on the boil" across any ocean, when (also using sails), she steamed from Pictou to London. Then, in 1830, when helping the British Legion against the Carlists, in the Bay of San Sebastian, under her new Spanish name of Isabella $eg•nda, she became the first vessel in the world to fire a shot in action under steam.

In the third quarter of the nineteenth century Canada was the fourth greatest shipping country in the world. In 1804 Quebec alone launched 113 vessels; while the whole Canadian tonnage launched was about a quarter-million. The Quebec-built wooden sailers made good time too; and a French-Canadian builder's namesaked Brunelle, logging over fourteen knots, left many a paddle-•steamer panting far astern. Anglo-Canadians led build- ing, even at Quebec. But it was a French-Canadian builder, Narcisse Rosa, whose book on the Construction des nayires • Quebec gives the only remaining account of all the launchings at Quebec during the nineteenth century: more than 2,500 vessels, of 1,400,000 tons.

The world-wide change from wood to steel was fatal to Canada, until she could make this change herself later on. In 1875 she could still build nearly 500 vessels, of about 200,000 tons. But in 1900 only 29, of 7,751 tons: wood, sail, steam, and steel.

$95 Tr-m 'CANADIAN HISTORICAL I:{.EVIEW

The Quebec timber age has much the same history: from the time when Quebec was by far the greatest timber port the world has ever seen to the modem changes of the present day. The first regular timber exports were begun by Intendant Talon, in 1667, just two centuries before the great decline began. But the real timber age did not begin till after Napoleon conquered Prussia and, allying himself with Denmark and Russia, closed all the Baltic ports against the British, by his Berlin Decree of 1806. Next year British orders-in-coun•cil declared blockade against all seaports under his control. But it was not till 1809 that the timber balance turned toward the British North American ports, which then sent most of the 90,000 "colonial loads," against 54,000 European. Twenty years later the overwhelmingly British North American "colonials" were well over 400,000, while the "Europeans" were well under 200,000.

Quebec was then the world's ideal timber port, because all the timbered waterways of southern Canada and the north-eastern States led down to Quebec, past Montreal, to which port sailing ships could not make paying time, against the current in the zigzag channel. Even during the first two decades of the nine- teenth century nearly all the following amounts had been rafted down to Quebec from Lake Champlain alone: 4 million feet of square oak, 11 million of pine, with over 9 million pine boards and 34 million pine planks.

The great timber firms had mostly Anglo-Canadian partners. But there generally were some French-Canadian partners too. Nearly all the lumberjacks were French Canadians. The cullers, shiplabourers, and cove-men at large, were nearly all Irish; while the timber ships were nearly all manned by crews from the British Isles.

There were a dozen different business forms through which the diverse timbers mostly went before they reached the Mother Country buyers: cruising, scowing, cutting, squaring, hauling, driving, cribbing, sliding, rafting, coving, culling, shipping. Three men in each good canoe would cruise the autumnal forest rivers, marking all merchantable timber within convenient reach. Then, just before the freeze-up, sixty-foot, shallow-draft scows went up-stream, their cabins jammed with lumberjacks. Winter cutting, squaring, hauling followed. Then into the first spring water went the drives, during which the expert lumberjacks walked the wobbling logs as well as any circus men on tight ropes; and broke the most dangerous jams at slides, shoots, falls, or rapids, by knocking out the key logs and skimming clear before the

Tm•. H•szomc S•.A•o•z o• •u•.•.c 399

furious drive meant death. Whenever natural runs were safe

enough, or slides by-passed bad falls, the logs were cribbed. Finally, in open water, cribs would be lashed together into rafts, which sometimes were themselves lashed fast together. Two big rafts abreast, and half-a-dozen lengthwise, were quite common in the great Quebec channel, where they spread their square-sails, while the raftsmen steered with gigantic oars, and bunked in funny huts. Coving, booming, culling, shipping, followed arrival at Quebec.

There were more than twenty miles of timber coves along the Quebec water-fronts, each with its own safeguarding booms, which were swung in and out as required. Then followed the supremely important culling: that is, the expert inspection, to find out the exact quality and measurements required, especially for square and waney timber. Every piece had to be stamped with the mark of its proper grade. M meant merchantable, U undersized, $ second quality, T third, and R rejected. White pine masts were not to have more than 6 inches hollow or bend for 70 feet, etc. Quebec culling was so good that it became the standard for the world. 5 After culling came shipping for export when timber-swingers, hookers-on, winchers, porters, holders--all worked in perfect unity till the stevedores were ready with every square timber in place, and then the spaces left vacant were filled with well-wedged staves and lathwood used as broken stowage. "Staving" was made from trees unfit for full-sized squaring; and to such good results that Quebec staves for French and Spanish wine casks, as well as British spirits, became the standard grades all over western Europe.

The shipping required was so great that Quebec harbour often looked like a forest of masts. An officer of the Royal Navy on the Hydrographic Survey once counted a hundred vessels waiting for a fair wind to sail them up the Traverse; and, during one single open season, 1,8150 "proper" full-rigged ships, with many hundreds of other vessels, came in to get their timber at Quebec.

With the ever-growing change from wood to metal, and from sail to steam, there was a decline in timber corresponding to the decline we have already seen in the shipyards; and so the historic ship and timber age ended with the nineteenth century.

•See J. E. Defebaugh, History of the Lumber Industry of America (Chicago, 1906), I, 125. "t•uebec culling is perhaps the most widely used of any lumber inspection in the world."

400 Ti:x 'CANADIAN I--IISTORICAL REVIEW

SEAPORT QUEBEC IN THE PRESENT CENTURY

Historic 1867 foreshadowed the coming change from ship and timber economics to those of boots and shoes; for Guillaume Bresse then began the first of footwear factories, and ended by turning out more than 1,000 pairs a-day. But the tercentennial celebration of 1908 looked forward, as well as back, in its thrilling naval spectacles: the Royal review, which passed before the Prince of Wales, later King George, was headed by French, American, and British Naval Brigades, who marched past as friends and future allies over the very ground for which their predecessors fought. Again, the First World War brought past and present naval history together at Quebec. For just as Saunders's fleet and convoy were by far the greatest that had ever assembled in the New World up to 1759, so in 1914 the protective fleet of ships of the Royal Navy together with all the transports and supply ships which were gathered to carry the First Canadian Con- tingent, made a far greater tonnage than had ever crossed any ocean in one convoy up to that time.

In 1915 came the great Canadian record harvest. But Quebec then had few facilities for handling grain, as compared with Montreal and, above all others, the seaport of New York. In 1917 the Quebec bridge was finally opened, to the great advantage of transport by rail. 1917 also saw a very sudden, small, and short revival of a special little timber trade; because the German submarine campaign and Russian revolution had closed the Baltic, as in 1807, and so the British Isles and French allies looked to Quebec for such export kinds of wood as could be used to prop up trenches, and answer some civilian calls.

The World War just ended is still almost history in the making, and very little can be said about it here: except that Quebec has greatly developed her most modern shipbuilding and wood pro- ducts, and has greatly increased in facilities for embarking grain, munitions, and supplies. Her senior shipyard has now completed 116 years of unremitting work and owns one of the best graying docks in the world. This and other shipyards have turned out many first-rate naval and merchant craft, all thoroughly "fit to go foreign." So, together with the great wood-product pulp and paper firm, a genuinely modernized ship and timber age is full of life today.

WILLIAM WOOD

Quebec.