Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  Mid-sized navires were armed with a main battery of ten guns in Don-de-Dieu and Saint-Pierre, twelve in Saint-Jean, and sixteen “pieces of cannon in battery” in the navire Marguerite in 1629.11 This armament was more than enough to keep corsairs at bay and drive off small predators. This type of mid-sized navire was the mainstay of maritime commerce in New France. Champlain often sailed alone in one of them across the North Atlantic in peacetime, but in time of war convoys were the rule.

  Another type of mid-sized ship, called a heus in the records of Normandy, was built in shipyards near the mouth of the River Seine. They were rigged in a different fashion from what were called navires communs. They were two-masted vessels with the mainmast forward, a lugsail, and a large lateen. They tended to be on the small side, perhaps 60–80 tons. Some examples of them appear as embellishments on Champlain’s maps. He called them barques, one of many applications of that generic term.12

  The port records of Normandy also refer to a third type of mid-sized ship called the roberge or navire roberge in primary sources of the period, or in later sources rombarge. These vessels were long and narrow, designed to be propelled by sails and oars. They had as many as three masts, and all were rigged with large lateen sails. They also had a single bank of oars, and were similar to sailing galleys such as the barca longa that had developed in the Mediterranean. Specifications for one roberge survive in Norman port records for 1576. She was a vessel of 80 tons. Her keel was 45 feet long, her overall length 92 feet, and she had a draft of 11 feet. Her ratio of length to breadth was probably 5:1.13 The navire roberge did not appear in New France, but Norman port records show that merchants sent them on trading voyages to the Mediterranean and Africa.

  SMALL OCEAN-GOING VESSELS, 20–100 tons, included two types that were important in New France and frequently mentioned in Champlain’s writings. Most common were vessels that he called barques. They are not to be confused with European barques or American “barks” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which were defined by their rig: usually two square-rigged masts, and a third that was fore-and-aft rigged. These later barques were as large as full-rigged ships, and were much used in the nineteenth century for reasons of economy and versatility.

  In the early seventeenth century, French barques were another sort of vessel altogether. Randall Cotgrave’s Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611) offered a translation of a barque as “little ship, great boat.” Champlain wrote frequently of barques in both senses. Sometimes he had in mind a little ship of 30–100 tons. In other passages he was describing a great boat of 6–20 tons that could be carried aboard a ship.

  Ocean-going barques tended to be broad of beam in proportion to their length—they were described as “blunt” and “stubby.” One example, built in 1590, was a barque of 35 tons burden, with a keel length of 35 feet, a breadth of 14 feet, and a hold 6 feet deep. She had a standard three-masted rig, with square courses, topsails, a mizzen sail (perhaps lateen), and bonnets for square sails. They were the first ships to be built in New France and the British colonies.14

  Ocean-going barques as small as 30 tons were often three-masted, with fore and main masts square-rigged with courses and topsails, a lateen on the mizzen, and bonnets for the square sails. One example appears at anchor in Champlain’s chart of Beauport (now Gloucester, Massachusetts). She was three-masted, with a martingale below a high bowsprit, single square-rigged sails on the fore and main, and a lateen on a small mizzen. A very similar English vessel was the barque Kathryn, 35 tons burden, with two decks, a raised forecastle and a raised poop. Other French barques were two-masted and rigged in many ways. Many carried a bourcet, or lugsail, on the foremast (see below for an explanation), or two lugsails on the fore-and mainmasts as their only rig.15

  The port records of Normandy show that barques as small as 20 tons burden were sent on long ocean voyages to North America, and even to the East Indies. On long voyages they sailed in the company of larger vessels. Many were lost at sea or wrecked on foreign shores. It was said that the outer banks of Sable Island on the Grand Bank were littered with the bones of French barques.

  But Champlain never lost a barque. The only exception was an occasion when he was sailing as a passenger in a barque with Pont-Gravé as captain and Champdoré as master. This was a barque of 17 of 18 tons. Pont-Gravé suffered a “mal de coeur,” probably a heart attack. He lay below in his berth, refused to relinquish command, and ordered Champdoré to get underway in wind, rain, and fog. It was a crazy thing to do, but Champdoré obeyed. He ordered the “anchor raised and lugsail spread to the wind,” and tried desperately to get clear of a lee shore. The vessel was caught by the wind and tidal currents, and was driven onto the rocks in a heavy surf. Champlain rushed on deck, took command, and ordered the mainsail to be set, in hope of driving the doomed barque higher on the rocks so that the crew could get ashore. It was a desperate act, but it worked. The vessel was smashed but every soul on board survived, and most of her supplies were saved. Indians came in their canoes, and took the crew and cargo back to port. Champlain’s account of this misadventure reveals much about the barque, her rig, and her sailing properties.16

  A second type of small ocean-going vessel in New France was called a patache by Champlain. English seamen called them pinnaces. Champlain’s pataches and his barques had a similar range of tonnage. He described “pataches of forty tons and six cannon each,” and others as small as seventeen or eighteen tons.17 Pataches were designed for purposes different from barques, and the two vessels had distinct hull-types. Barques were meant to be small freighters or transports, and were built to carry goods and people in an efficient way. Pataches were built for exploration, discovery, and reconnaissance. In 1628, one French maritime treatise defined a patache as “a small warship designed for the surveillance of coasts.”18 “They were built for speed, constructed man-of-war fashion, and strongly armed in proportion to their size. In France and Spain they were also used as dispatch boats, which Champlain called a patache d’avis. Spanish treasure fleets also employed them as tenders to larger vessels. Champlain wrote that every galleon had its patache.

  The patache was a purpose-built vessel for reconnaissance, surveys, and exploration. She was a small man-o-war, lean and heavily sparred ideal for surveys and exploration, designed for sailing into harm’s way, and rapidly out again. An example appears in Champlain’s map of Sainte-Croix Island.

  In 1604, Champlain was given a patache for his exploration of the Maine coast. He described her as a small keel-built ship with a draft of five feet, and a burthen of seventeen or eighteen tons. Her length was probably about thirty-five or forty feet, her beam eight or nine feet. She was fully decked over and designed for voyages in dangerous seas—unlike the open-hulled shallops that Champlain used in more protected waters.

  Champlain’s chart of Sainte-Croix Island includes a drawing of a lean mid-sized vessel that may have been his patache. She was built man-of-war fashion with a sharp prow, long lines that held the promise of speed, and a raised poop with a battery of small swivel-mounted brass falconets. Her mastheads were topped by large crow’s nests.19

  Champlain mentioned a third type of ocean-going vessel, which he called a flibot, a flyboat. He described one example as “nearly a hundred tons, with ten cannon and a crew of about 75 men,” and distinguished her from a “pataches of forty tons and six cannon.” But this was an English vessel, more nearly the size of a navire.”20

  SMALL COASTAL AND RIVER SAILING CRAFT were vital to the life of New France. Here again Champlain used two principal types of vessels: the moyenne (middling) barque and the chaloupe or shallop. They were of similar size, ranging from 2–3 tons to as many as 12–16 tons burden. Many were 6–8 tons. Champlain described one example as a small barque du port of 5–8 tons, and another as a barque moyenne of 10–13 tons. Barques were decked over, with a few dry berthing spaces below in a weathertight hold. Shallops were open-hulled, and offered no protection against wind or weather. />
  Barques were the workhorses of New France. Normally, navires of 100–200 tons anchored at Tadoussac, and transferred their cargo to barques, which carried them up the river. Champlain used these vessels to haul freight cargo on the St. Lawrence River and the coast of Acadia, and to move trade goods upriver to the head of navigation. He also employed barques to carry prefabricated houses to Port-Royal, cattle to the farm at Cap Tourmente, building supplies to Trois-Rivières, and trade goods to Montreal.21

  Champlain’s open chaloupes, or shallops, were small enough to be built in sections or carried across the Atlantic en fagot, in bundles of pieces. They had one or two masts, each with a single sail. Rails were fitted with hard locust thole pins for oars or sweeps, which were used frequently on the river. They were shallow boats without a deep keel, often rigged with leeboards, and were at risk of capsizing in a sudden squall. One such accident on the St. Lawrence River took the life of Champlain’s interpreter Jean Nicollet.

  Shallops were constructed with different hull-types. One common form was the Biscayan shallop, or the Basque shallop. It was a sharp-built, doubled-ended craft and was used as a whaleboat by Basques. A plan of such a chaloupe biscayenne is in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.22 Accounts survive of Biscay shallops on the coast of New France, some of them owned by Indians, who probably acquired them from Basque whalers.

  Other shallops were more bowl-shaped with rounded bows, molded sides and tumblehome. Several examples appear as illustrations in Champlain’s maps and charts. They were rigged in various ways: single-masted or double-masted with square sails, or sometimes gaff-rigged, or carrying a spritsail, or with something like what was called a leg-o-mutton rig on Chesapeake Bay log canoes in the author’s youth.23

  VERY SMALL CRAFT: ESQUIFFES AND CANOTS (SKIFFS AND CANOES) Champlain also worked with very small boats in rivers and harbors. He made frequent use of esquiffes, translated through this book as skiffs. A skiff was commonly defined as a boat carried by a ship. Champlain often carried them aboard his navires and barques. In one scene on the St. Lawrence River near Montreal, he described his skiff as “a very small light boat,” but big enough to hold four mate-lots bending over their oars, a fifth at the tiller, and two officers aboard.24 He used skiffs to survey harbors, which might have required half a dozen hands—to work the boat, swing the lead line, and take cross-bearings that were the key to the accuracy of his charts, and note the location of each sounding on a log and draft-chart. From those descriptions Champlain’s skiff was more like a ship’s jolly boat or a captain’s gig or an admiral’s barge, clinker-built with overlapping strakes, rounded bows and molded sides, rather than a painter’s skiff today, which is often a very small flat-bottomed slab-sided rowboat that would be overcrowded with three people aboard.

  Larger vessels were called bateaux or batteaux. They loomed large in the history of rivers and lakes throughout North America. They tended to be flat open boats, powered by oars, sweeps, and sails, and were used for many purposes, but Champlain rarely mentioned them.

  By Champlain’s time, Basque whalers in New France had invented the beautiful and very light whaleboat, double-ended with incredibly thin strakes, which oarsmen could send skimming across the water. They were not invented by Nantucket Yankees. French and Spanish Basques developed them from Biscayan shallops, called chalupas in Basque. They were framed from naturally curved oak and planked with very thin oak strakes, clinker-built above the waterline and carvel-built below to reduce drag and increase speed. They could carry a crew of seven or eight. These chalupas were in use on the coast of Labrador and the lower St. Lawrence River by 1600. Maritime archaeologists have recovered early examples from Red Bay, Labrador, remarkably intact.25

  Fishermen on the Grand Bank also developed their distinctive fishing boats, which were much bigger than the later dories, designed for a crew of half a dozen men, each with two compartments or working spaces called a rum, one for the man and one for his catch. The boats were big enough to hold 500 or 600 large cod or halibut. They were heavy, sturdy keel-boats with floor-timbers called varengues that were three inches thick, and high sides crowned by a gunwale two inches square. They were built for an era of vast abundance in the codfisheries, and after Champlain’s era were replaced by smaller dories.26

  SMALL CRAFT of American Indians fascinated Champlain. He used them frequently, studied their construction, and described their characteristics in his Voyages. They existed in great variety, and might be divided into three types: canaux or canoes, pirogues or dugouts, and skin boats of various kinds.

  Birchbark canoes were the boat of choice in the St. Lawrence Valley. Champlain delighted in them. He described them as “eight or nine yards long, about a yard or a yard and a half wide in the middle, tapering off towards the two ends. They are very liable to upset if one does not know how to manage them, and are made of birch-bark, strengthened inside by small ribs of white cedar very neatly arranged, and are so light that one man can easily carry one. Each of them can carry the weight of a hogshead (400–700 quarts).”27 On one trip Champlain traveled with a servant, an interpreter, and ten Indians in two canoes.28 The design of birchbark canoes varied from one Indian nation to another. They were built with astonishing speed, and in a variety of sizes. In general they were light, nimble, stable in the hands of a skilled paddler, and very fast.29

  Elmbark canoes were used to the south of the St. Lawrence River by woodland Indians who lacked a large supply of canoe birch. The Iroquois made their boats out of elm, often from the bark of a single tree. They were big and strong, but slow and clumsy. The differences between elmbark and birchbark canoes had an impact on the battle between the Mohawk and Champlain’s Indian allies at Lake Champlain. An example of an Iroquoian elm boat survives today at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, adorned with diagonal red stripes, in a motif that was repeated on paddles and fishing equipment.30

  Pirogues or dugouts were used by Indian nations to the south, from Cape Ann in Massachusetts to Florida. Champlain took a professional interest in these small craft. He observed that Indians south of Cape Ann used pirogues made from solid tree trunks by “burning and scraping with stones, which they use in place of knives.” Champlain tried his hand at steering them and found that, like birchbark canoes, they were also “very liable to upset unless one is very skilled.”31 Pirogues were ancient watercraft, widely used throughout the world. Some were surprisingly light and maneuverable, much more so than modern versions. A very early example was found by archaeologists, perfectly preserved in an old bog within the city of Paris. It is thought to be more than 6,000 years old, and can be seen in the basement of the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. It is incredibly light, and beautifully carved, with long and very lean lines and would have been very fast in the water.

  Kayaks were widely used by Indians north of the St. Lawrence Valley. Early designs in the east were remarkably similar to modern kayaks in appearance, construction, and use.32

  Coracles were observed by Champlain’s interpreters who went west into the interior of North America. They were made of moose hides or buffalo skins sewn together and secured over a frame of saplings. Some had the proportions of a canoe. On the prairies, they were rounded and called bull boats. Bull boats were rarely more than five feet in diameter, mostly too small to carry a person. They were used by swimmers to ferry goods across a pond or river.33

  APPENDIX N

  CHAMPLAIN’S WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

  Champlain and his contemporaries frequently used many different units of measurement. They derived from a customary system of weights and measures, and the customs were complex. Some units referred to objects that were variable in themselves: a grain of barley, or a king’s foot. Marcel Trudel found one measure of length that was “the height of a white horse’s belly.”1 Many units varied from one jurisdiction to another and from one commodity to the next. Champlain tended to record units as they were given to him by others. The result in New France was a gathering of weig
hts and measures from many sources: Indian, English, Spanish, and Dutch, as well as French.

  Indian Units of Distance and Time

  Champlain frequently recorded Indian units of measurement, which referred to relations in the natural world. Champlain followed the Indians when he reckoned long distances over water in days of travel by canoe. Intermediate distances on land were reckoned in days of travel by foot. Long periods of time were counted in numbers of moons; and directions were recorded in reference to the rising or setting sun.

  Measures of Length: French and English

  Most of Champlain’s European measures of length derived from the customs of the kingdom of France, where they were specified by “the royal measure”:

  Graine d’orge, a grain of barley, was equal to one-half of a ligne, or line.

  Ligne (line) was one-twelfth of a pouce.

  Pouce, was literally a big toe in the seventeenth century, similar to an English inch but slightly larger; by the king’s measure, the king’s big toe was standardized at 1.06575 English inches.