CHAPTER VI 



SAILING CRAFT: THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP 



SHIPBUILDING was and is a very complex 

 industry. But only the actual construction 

 can be noticed here, and that only in the 

 briefest general way. The elaborate methods 

 of European naval yards were not in vogue 

 anywhere in Canada, not even in Quebec, much 

 less in Nova Scotia. It was not uncommon for 

 a Bluenose crew to make everything them- 

 selves, especially in the smaller kinds of vessels. 

 They would cut the trees, draft the plan, build 

 the ship and sail her : being thus lumbermen, 

 architects, builders, and seamen all in one. 

 The first step in building is to lay the blocks on 

 which the keel itself is laid. These blocks are 

 short, thick timbers, arranged in graduated 

 piles, so that they form an inclined plane of 

 over one in twenty, from which the com- 

 pleted hull can slide slowly into the water, 

 stern first. Then comes the laying of the keel, 

 that part which is to the whole vessel what 



