180 ALL AFLOAT 



absolute command of Hudson Bay in 1697. 

 Again, it was naval rather than political and 

 military forces that made American independ- 

 ence an accomplished fact. The opposition 

 to the war in England counted for a good deal ; 

 and the French and American armies for still 

 more. But the really decisive anti-British 

 force consisted of practically all the foreign 

 navies in the world, some — like the French, 

 Spanish, Dutch, and the Americans' own — 

 taking an active part in the war, while the 

 others were kept ready in reserve by the 

 hostile armed neutrality of Russia, Sweden, 

 Denmark, Prussia, and the smaller sea-coast 

 states of Germany. Once again, in the War oi 

 1 8 12, it was the two annihilating American 

 naval victories on Lakes Erie and Champlain 

 that turned the scale far enough back to offset 

 the preponderant British military victories 

 along the Canadian frontier and prevent the 

 advance of that frontier beyond Detroit and 

 into the state of Maine. 



There were very few people in 1910 who re- 

 membered that the Canadian navy then begun 

 was the third local force of its kind in Canada, 

 though the first to be wholly paid and managed 

 locally. From the launch of La Salle's Griffon 

 in 1679 down to the Cession in 1763 there was 



