Canadian Coast Guard
<% else %>A History of the Canadian Coast Guard and Marine Services
by Thomas E. Appleton
The Fisheries
From the time that Cabot's voyage made known the Atlantic fisheries to a hungry world, we have seen how Britain and France, and their people in the New World, supported a thriving trade and fed their own settlements. No sooner had they recovered from the scars of their own wars, than the American revolution caused further complications in the industry, vital to the welfare of the emerging Canada.
Although the war of independence had left much bitterness between England and the United States, and between the Americans and the Loyalists, recognition of the United States by Britain included fishery rights off Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, traditionally enjoyed by the old colonies. The Americans, coasting up from New England in their hardy little schooners, the forerunners of the great fishing fleets to come, had liberty to fish the Grand Banks and the Gulf, but they were not allowed to land on Newfoundland for drying or curing their catch. They could, however, do so elsewhere in British North America except in settled harbours. In other words, the Americans continued to enjoy their old privileges under certain conditions and in certain places.
The war of 1812 interrupted this amicable arrangement and, after it was over, the question as to whether or not the old rights had become invalid, gave rise to a number of incidents in which American schooners were ordered off the Nova Scotia coast or seized and detained. After a period of uneasiness, a convention was signed in 1818 which restored the liberty to United States fishermen to work the Gulf, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia waters, and to be admitted to ports, harbours and bays for purposes of shelter, repair of damages, or for obtaining supplies of food and water. American fishing vessels could now, for the first time, dry and cure their catch in certain unsettled areas of Newfoundland and Labrador and, in general, the position was that the Americans surrendered some of their inshore rights in return for better facilities for drying and curing and for unrestricted right to work the offshore Banks.
To understand the depth of feeling aroused by misunderstandings, mistakes and violations connected with our fisheries treaties with the United States in the last century, we must remember that the Maritimes were then much more dependent on fishing than they are today, and that the backwash of wartime feeling against the United States continued for some years. Communities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the New England States had traded north and south between each other for generations, and currents of family feelings, and perhaps divisions, sometimes ran strongly. In addition, the population of the eastern seaboard of the United States was then increasing rapidly, as war their mercantile shipping. Viewed against such a background, the situation might be compared with present day fishing by fleets of foreign trawlers which, operating in international waters, are yet the focus of some uneasiness. To make matters more difficult, the serious study of conservation matters between nations was then practically unknown, and fishery rights could be negotiated only by the esoteric and slow moving methods of embassies and ministries, in which the various parties had the honour to state their views in page after page of meticulous prose and penmanship.
Pierre Fortin M.D. J.P.
1823-1888
"Le Roi du Golfe"
The world was then entering an age of gunboat diplomacy and, up to the time of the American civil war, Britain maintained a large squadron of warships, numbering some twenty ships or more, in the North American and West Indies station. Based at Halifax, these vessels had provided, among their other duties, protection for the Canadian and Newfoundland fisheries, a service for which they had never been designed and for which they were unsuitable both technically and politically. By mid century, encroachments on the inshore fisheries of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Lower Canada had become so numerous that the colonial governments decided to take effective steps of their own, as a result of which they provided a number of fast sailing schooners, nominally armed, to deal with the problem. These schooners were chartered fishing schooners and, as such, they had a freedom of movement among the fishing fleets comparable to that of a present day unmarked police car dealing with traffic problems, and their crews were thoroughly experienced in the techniques of the industry. With their single nine-pounder cannon, and perhaps a few small arms, they were a good way of enforcing the fishery laws. Despite occasional hard feelings between fishermen, they were able to operate, as their counterparts do today, in an atmosphere of friendly formality.
In the Province of Canada, a remarkable man and a remarkable ship were long to be remembered for service in fisheries protection and law enforcement. The man was Dr. Pierre Fortin, stipendiary magistrate for the lower St. Lawrence and Gulf, who was responsible for the administration of law and order and the protection of sea and river fisheries in those parts. A medical man by profession, he had been at sea in his youth, had later served in the quarantine service, and had acquired a lifelong enthusiasm and understanding of the maritime scene of his province. The first ship to be employed in this service had been the Doris, a wooden seagoing paddle steamer, purchased in England in 1850. Like many of the steamers of her day, she was underpowered and unsatisfactory. Dr. Fortin, never enamoured of the Doris, set out to build a replacement. By a happy accident of fate, there was insufficient money to procure another steamer, and a schooner was ordered from a Quebec shipbuilder, Thomas C. Lee.
CGS La Canadienne
Sailing fast to windward on the starboard tack, the government
schooner is helped by her boom less foresail which overlaps the main. This arrangement
predates by some 70 years the advent of the Genoa jib in yachts. Note the commission
pendant, worn at the main masthead by armed vessels on enforcement duties.
(Public Archives)
Unrecognized as a hawk among the doves, this schooner, La Canadienne, was a successful fisheries cruiser and became, in time, one of the best loved ships in our service. One of the lesser tragedies connected with the accidental burning of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa in 1916 was the destruction of a fine model of this schooner, which had adorned the Parliamentary Library. Today, only a stereotyped and mediocre picture remains, but there is pride in the way she is shown, hard on the wind, working against a slop of a sea under full sail. She was a smart vessel, carried a crew of twenty-four, and for many years was commanded by Captain N. Lavoie. Dr. Fortin, himself a sailor at heart, had many adventures in her and scoured every inch of the Gulf, year after year, in all weathers, defending the rights of Canadian fishermen and upholding the law in countless civil disputes and criminal cases. Dr. Fortin resigned from the service on Confederation, served subsequently in the Legislature of Quebec, and was called to the Dominion Senate in 1887. He died in 1888.
Dr. Fortin outlived his ship. After twenty years patrolling the lower St. Lawrence, La Canadienne was sent to Halifax to work out her approaching old age in laying buoys in the harbour. In 1875, under the command of Captain Browne, a former naval navigating officer, she was sent on one last trip with light station supplies. Unfortunately it was her last and, on August 20 of that year, she drove ashore on the Island of St. Paul's.
Nova Scotia commissioned the schooner Daring for the protection of her fisheries, about the same time as La Canadienne, and many more were subsequently built or chartered for this work. It was a hard service which exacted a cruel toll on fishermen and cruisers alike, working in and out of bays and coves in all seasons, always subject to the hazards of weather and the danger of becoming embayed on a lee shore. The Daring was wrecked in a terrible snowstorm at Herring Cove in December 1867. The last fishery protection schooner to be purchased for use in Nova Scotia was the Kingfisher, the last, in fact, of the government sailing cruisers. A half model of her may be seen in the Maritime Museum at Halifax.
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