AS a people we live with our backs” to the sea that bounds

our country on three sides. The

‘greatest number of us live in the

heartland of the St. Lawrence valley or on the spreading plains, far from the salt air. Not one person in ten on the B.C. coast ever sees the open ocean. Van- couver faces the sea of mountains at her door—not the rather tame Gulf of Georia at her feet.

Only in the Maritime provinces is the sea a potent part of every- one’s life, not only in the small fishin outports but also in the main cities. In Halifax, the War- den of the North, even steno- graphers went to work—until the recent completion of the cross- harbour bridge—in tiny gasoline launches, threading their passage among the merchant ships mov- ing upchannel to Bedford Basin.

St. John’s, the saltiest of Canadian cities, has a civic cele- bration on the arrival of the first sealer from the ice floes of the North (Atlantic and citizens carry home that prized New- foundland delicacy, blood-drip- ping seal flippers. :

It is not surprising then that the Maritime fishing banks have been the nursery of some of the world’s finest seamen. Indeed, tiny Nova Scotia in its prosperous days of “wood, wind and water” before Confederation, had the fourth largest merchant fleet on the seven seas. -

Nor is it startling, considering Canada’s. pre-occupation with developing her half of a rich con- tinent, that most Canadians know nothing of the country’s seafar- ing tradition.

Probably not one Canadian in a thousand has heard of two of their sea-going countrymen, Blue- nose skippers Slocum and Voss, who after having been masters of sailing clippers, made- small boat ‘history in a couple of daring

voyages that are unequalled today. Nova Seotia born Captain

Joshua Slocum sailed the twelve- ton sloop Spray around the world ina three-year venture that made. him the first man to. cir- cumnavigate the globe single- handed.

Another Maritimer Capfain J. C. Voss made an even more peri- lous voyage crossing the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans in what was surely one of the most diminutive ocean-going vessels on

record — a 38-foot Cowichan Indian canoe which he named the Tilikum.

Both wrote exciting books of real adventure about ‘their ex- periences, volumes whose spare, sinewy prose is the product of years of terse entries: in ship’s logbooks—a literary school that might be recommended with pro-

fit to some, of our more florid

stylists.

Their titles are Sailing Alone .

Around the W°rld by Joshua Slocum (Pan Books) and the Venturesome Voyages of Cap- tain Voss .(Mariners’ Library). Both are available from the People’s Co-operative Bookstore, 339 West Pender Street in Van- couver.

5 Ar tas etc at

The careers of Slocum and Voss are ‘curiously parallel and of course Voss was directly in- spired to make his journey by Slocum’s success.

Both men were Maritimers. Slocum was born in the Annapolis valley of Nova Scotia and grew up at Westport, a fishing village on Brier Island along the French shore of the turbulent Bay of Fundy. It is not known exactly where in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick Voss was born, but his name makes it likely that he came from the German-speaking settlement around Lunenburg.

Both men got their early deep- sea experience in Canadian ships, an opportunity denied to young Canadians of this generation.

When they. went to sea, the great days of the sailing fleets of the Atlantic provinces were coming to an. end. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ships were built fashioned in a hundred coves by local craftsmen and manned by a hardy breed of home-grown sailors, legendary in sailing ship days of iron-fisted, hard-driving “Bluenoses”’.

But from 1867 on, the industry fell on evil days—steamships cut heavily into world trade and the Canadian Atlantic provinces, the smallest. of world shipping pow- ers, were the first to feel. the plow.

So both Voss and Slocum éarned their master’s tickets in foreign ships. Slocum_wént to the U.S. and it was under the Stars and Stripes that his famous voyage was made.

By KEITH RALSTON

from the native forests, ~

Where did these sea captains whose working lives had been spent in big ships, the freighters of their time, get the idea of making long trips in small craft? Strangely, the answer, is the same for both men—from the

Native Indians of the Pacific - Coast.

- Slocum as a young man came to the Pacific Coast in a British ship and stayed to become a gill- netter on the Columbia for a sea- son. He especially admired the boat-building ability of the in- trepid whale-hunting Nootka Indians of the West Coast of Vancouver Island.“ His son says their daring and skill with Stone Age boats gave him the germ of the idea that later blossomed into the Spray.

Voss paid even higher tribute to the earliest boatbuilders of the B.C. coast. He used a 38-foot

Cowichan Indian canoe for his ocean trip.

~In making ready for the cruel test of the ocean, each .man showed that characteristic

“handiness” of the Nova Scotia seaman.

Slocum got his sloop from a sea captain friend in whose pas- ture she was mouldering away. He literally rebuilt her, using the gift boat as a kind of pattern. Voss converted the Tilikum’s ted cedar hull into a schooner- rigged. sailing vessel with oak frames, a keel and three masts.

These men were the finest pro- ducts of thousands of years of human experience in sailing ves- sels—they were “scientists of the sea”, each with a lifetime’ of -ob- servation to ‘back his theoretical knowledge.

Voss made the most notable

contributions to small boat hand: ling—he invented the se@ anche? which bears his name and is $t widely used for heaving light craft to in storms.

mastel But Slocum was also @ mast

: e ship handler who trimmed th Spray so closely to the

nd 10

that she sailed without a ha

the tiller for hundred of miles Ip spite of his jokes about ar clock for determining Mis itude, he navigated by jo sights, the most complicate wt navigational procedure that 14 three observers on larger V

fas: x x

essel®

At a half century’s distances is hard to say which was the mid remarkable feat. — Slocum NE sail alone, where Voss always ne a partner, but for the time wa the unfortunte mate was Kut overboard. Yet the TI ui could have been hoisted ent 76 Spray’s deck — she ee eredibly tiny, as anyone W) iA PA seen her at her last me eh Victoria’s Thunderbird Pat testify.

Perhaps it is invidious to ns such comparisons—each ma® his a secure niche in maritime tory.

un No one can take Se feat

“first” away from him—% that seems to suit the on, ment of his adopted coum

As for Voss, sufficient to x that when Thor Heyerda se great theorist about paciien at mjgrations, decided to Prove “ie the Polynesians came fic 8 Eastern rim of the Pach™ 4. North and South Amerité

F e. found one half of the job don! b Heyerdahl may have nae drift from Peru to the som? Pacific islands to prove thal "ot of their inhabitants. caMe oy way. But there never wi we doubt in his mind that 4 op possible for Indians of th ; west Coast to reach Hawa’ cause that had been done e ore

Nearly a half century be Voss had demonstrated, ° + BC better than he knew,’ that “ire Indians could have a original settlers in Hawa | the ancestors of the Maors cif sailed “down the wind” We new homes.

on

f 1 ee | Si. rs The HMCS Nascopie, shown here making her way through ice-strewn northern water®

was the first naval vessel ever to navigate the perilous northwest passage. ; PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 1, 1955 —

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