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 —

pace {