130 ALL AFLOAT 



And while the building, ownership, and actual 

 navigation of sailing craft once made Canada 

 fourth among the shipping countries of the 

 world, the change to steam and steel, coinciding 

 with the destruction of the handiest timber 

 and the development of inland forms of busi- 

 ness, put no less than eight successful rivals 

 ahead of her. 



Every one knows that James Watt turned 

 the power of steam to practical use in the 

 eighteenth century. But it was not till the 

 first year of the nineteenth that a really work- 

 able steamer appeared, though the British, 

 French, and Americans had been experiment- 

 ing for years, just as ingenious men had been 

 experimenting with stationary engines long 

 before Watt. This pioneer steamer was the 

 Charlotte Dundas, which ran on the Forth 

 and Clyde Canal in Scotland in 1801. Six 

 years later Fulton's Clermont, engined by the 

 British firm of Boulton and Watt, ran on 

 the Hudson from New York to Albany. Two 

 years later again the Accommodation, the first 

 steamer in Canada, was launched at Montreal, 

 and engined there as well. She was built for 

 John Molson by John Bruce, a shipbuilder, 



