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The decline of Canadian sailing craft was swifter than its rise; and with the sailing craft went the Canadian-built steamers, because wood was the material used for both, and the use of iron and steel in the yards of the British Isles soon drove the wooden hulls from the greater highways of 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 sailing 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 exploration 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 shipbuilding industry with which she did so much in the days of mast and sail and wooden hulls?
A second, and this time a general, drawback was the difficulty of getting Canadian-built vessels rated A1 at Lloyd's. 'Lloyd's, as every one knows, is the central controlling body for most of the marine insurance of the world, and its headquarters are in London.
A new shipyard and a dry-dock were hurriedly built; and there was keen competition for ship-carpenters. In 1753 L'Algonkin, a frigate of seventy-two guns, was successfully launched. The shipwrights experimented freely with Canadian woods, of which the white oak proved the best. But the Canadian-built vessels for transatlantic trade never seem to have equalled in number those that came from France.
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