14 ALL AFLOAT 



out of Quebec, Captain Cook, the famous 

 British circumnavigator, was trying to help 

 him in ; that there was steamer transport in the 

 War of 1 812 ; that the first steam man-of-war 

 to fire a shot in action was launched on the 

 St Lawrence four years before the first railway 

 in Canada was working ; that just before 

 Confederation more than half the citizens of the 

 ancient capital were directly dependent on ship- 

 building and nearly all the rest on shipping ; 

 and that the Canadian fisheries of the present 

 day are the most important in the world ? As 

 a matter of fact, there are very few Canadians 

 or other students of Canadian history who fully 

 realize what Canada owes to the sea. How 

 many know that her ' sea affairs ' may have 

 begun a thousand years ago, if the Norsemen 

 came by way of Greenland ; that she has a long 

 and varied naval history, with plenty of local 

 privateering by the way ; that the biggest sail- 

 ing vessel to make a Scottish port in the heyday 

 of the clippers was Canadian-built all through ; 

 that Canada built another famous vessel for a 

 ruling prince in India; that most Arctic ex- 

 ploration has been done in what are properly 

 her waters ; that she was the pioneer in ocean 

 navigation entirely under steam ; and that she is 

 now beginning to revive, with steam and steel, the 



