Weel May the Keel Row the Minstrel Boy Was In: Schooner Days DCCXCIX (799)

by C. H. J. Snider

THOUGH he crossed the Styx in Charon's barge so long ago that it makes little difference now, what manner of craft did Thomas Moore voyage down the St. Lawrence in when he coined his "Canadian Boat Song"?

The question was raised in Schooner Days five years ago, perhaps with more heat than light, in discussing Dr. Needler's scholarly identification of the disputed author of the highland boat song in Canada, better known as 'The Lone Shieling." Its original name was "Canadian Boat Song—from the Gaelic." This was written in 1829, 25 years after Moore's.

The question is revived but not answered by an illustration in Roy F. Fleming's recent article in the Kingston Whig-Standard, to which attention has been drawn by our Loyalist friend of Wings-in-the-Wind, Helen Merrill, Mrs. H. M. Egerton. Mr. Fleming refers several times to Moore's "bateau" but the artist pictures him in a birch bark canoe.

PROBLEM: BOAT OR CANOE?

"Bateau—a boat; esp. a flat-bottomed clumsy boat used on the Canadian lakes and rivers."

—Webster's Dictionary.

Assumption that Moore made his passage in a bateau is based, and logically, on

(a) The title, "A Canadian BOAT Song",

(b) The refrain, "ROW, brothers, ROW",

(c) The reference to a sail,

"Why should we yet our sail unfurl?

There's never a breath the blue wave to curl.

...

"Faintly as tolls the evening chime

Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.

Soon as the woods on the shore grow dim

We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn.

Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,

The rapids are near and the daylight's past."

Common sense suggests that a craft which was rowed and had a sail to unfurl, and was called a boat, would be a boat. Bateau is French for boat in general, and, specifically in Canada, for a flat bottomed boat, propelled by oars and sails when the wind favored. So, rashly perhaps, it has been assumed that Moore was writing about a bateau and made his passage in a bateau.

A century and a half ago much traffic on the lakes and the St. Lawrence went in whaleboats, which are craft sharp at both ends, round-bottomed, and usually clinker built. The whaleboat was perfected by the New England whalers, but were derived from the Norse "Viking ships" and developed in the English and Scotch whaling industry. The French may have included them under the general term bateaux, but we have yet to learn that they included canoes. These they called canots, pronounced can-o. The bateau appears to have been the ancestor of the north country "pointer," which is sharp at both ends, flaring in the sides, flat-bottomed, and built of planks. The bateaux were rather heavier and harder to propel than whaleboats or canoes, but carried more goods and passengers, and could be hauled up rapids or on rollers, without damage. Canoes had to be carried carefully because of their tender skins.

DID HE KNOW DIFFERENCE?

But common sense is often far from crooners, rhymsters, and poets. Moore may not have known a boat from a bateau or a canoe from a canary. Anyone who could be satisfied with the line.

"Saw me where Trent his mazy-currents pours"

was capable of calling a canoe a bateau, a paddle song a boat song, paddles oars, and paddling rowing. Both "boat" and "row" are easier in the metre than "bateau" or "paddle," and our guess is that this and not nautical knowledge prompted Moore's use of the words.

These incidental allusions quoted do suggest the bateau rather than the canoe, but they prove nothing. The craft shown in the illustration of the article is certainly wrongly described in the inscription—"The above sketch depicts appearance of the type of bateau in which Thomas Moore made his trip down the St. Lawrence in August of 1804." The pictured craft is not a bateau of any type. It is a canoe.

The source of the sketch is not given. If it is contemporary with Moore's visit in 1804 it could be of the greater interest and would solve the problem. It shows a large birchbark canoe, with six long-haired paddlers plying paddles side by side, a seventh bowpaddler seated or kneeling by himself, and the eighth standing in the stern to steer. Amidships is Moore himself looking pleased as punch in a plug hat. He has a companion wearing a flat cap. There is no indication of mast or sail, although the voyageurs often used blankets or skins or squares of canvas to assist their progress through the water in canoes. A staff in the stern behind the steersman displays a large British flag, apparently the red ensign. The canoe depicted would be 21 feet long, judged by the height of the steersman.

Mr. Fleming's interesting article suggests that Moore made his passage from Niagara to where

"The blue hills of old Toronto shed

Their evening shadows o'er Ontario's bed"

either in the government schooner Speedy, Capt. Thomas Paxton, or in Capt. Charles Sellick's schooner Lady Murray. Both were in commission at this time. The Speedy was lost with all hands a couple of months after Moore's trip. The Lady Murray survived into the War of 1812. Mr. Fleming mentions the tradition that Moore stayed at Sellick's Inn at Presqu'isle. The poet did not descend to such details as the name of the ship or her master, though he recorded with satisfaction that "the captain refused to take what I know is always given." The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, was wide open for free transportation.

Courtesy Canada Steamship Lines' Marine Hist. Coll.

Whaleboats used for Lieutenant-Colonel Bradstreet's expedition which captured Fort Frontenac, 1758. These boats were used extensively in military operations on the Great Lakes and river St. Lawrence, but except in the generic sense of the French word were not bateaux. The bateau proper was flat bottomed and [ ] ended.