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The Decline of Shipbuilding at Quebec in the Nineteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Albert Faucher*
Affiliation:
Université Laval
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Extract

The construction of wooden vessels was an outstanding achievement of nineteenth-century Quebec. It spread along both shores, mainly on the north shore, from Sillery coves to the Isle of Orleans. It was the staple industry of Quebec city, for “half the men were engaged in shipbuilding and nearly all the rest in doing business with them.” At one time, twenty or more yards employed about five thousand workers, a good many of whom lived in what is now regarded as the parish, one and a half miles long and thirty feet wide. In the years of peak production, shipbuilding was closely associated with the lumber-export business. It supported a way of life characteristic of the nautical city which once hoped to become a great seaport in North America.

In the early fifties, indeed, Quebec-built ships commanded high prices in the British market; activity was brisk on the shores, tavern keepers did a good business, and some of them won the reputation of being effective crimps. Someone has said of this phase of prosperity that “the profiteers tried giving least and getting most,” and it was a byword that the “ordinary lumberjack and sailorman earnt like a horse and spent like an ass.” A feature of Quebec city and its vicinity at that time was the mingling of the French- and English-speaking people, as the proportion of the latter reached about 40 per cent of the total population. But this study need not elaborate ethnical folklore. Rather, it seeks to inquire briefly into the decline of the basic industry of Quebec city.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1957

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Montreal, June 7, 1956.

References

1 Wood, William et al., The Storied Province of Quebec (Toronto, 1931), I, 429.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 179. For some details on crimping, see Journal of the Legislative Assembly of Canada, Session 1852–53, XI (8), App. CCCCGoogle Scholar; also Quebec Board of Trade, Annual Report, 1867, 9 Google Scholar, “The Shipping Office and the Crimping System.”

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8 Annuaire du commerce et de l'industrie pour 1873 (Québec, 1873), 56.Google Scholar

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27 Ibid., 16.

28 Canadian exports were more in the form of sawn or split woods. See Wood, Petry, Poitras & Co.'s Annual Circular, Nov. 30, 1866, in Quebec Board of Trade, Annual Report, 1867, 31.Google Scholar

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38 Grounded on Fassett, The Shipbuilding Business, and confirmed by Clapham, , An Economic History, 62.Google Scholar

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41 Ibid., 68. At that time the export of coal supported bulk cargo steamers in the Baltic and Mediterranean trades (p. 71), while wooden sailing vessels remained in use in other areas for the carrying of commodities which did not require to be delivered with speed and regularity. See interesting statements by Glover, John, “Tonnage Statistics of the Decade 1860–1870,” Journal of the Statistical Society, XXXV, Part IIGoogle Scholar, and compare with statement of same author, Journal of the Statistical Society, March, 1863. Shipyards had produced softwood vessels on a basis of decreasing costs and supply had run up in excess of demand in the late fifties ( Graham, , “The Ascendancy of the Sailing Ship,” 80 Google Scholar); production stayed high in the following decade as iron failed to supersede wood. The Board of Admiralty proved rather conservative in regard to innovation ( British Parliamentary Papers, XXI, 185 Google Scholar) as they regarded iron hulls as inferior to wooden ones in point of impact resistance. However, this conservatism, noted by Henry Fry (The History of North Atlantic Steam Navigation, chap, vi) and reinterpreted by Graham with reference to a broad technological context, matched Cunard's interests which have been described as a case of “State-created Ascendancy” prejudicial to the “natural development of British shipping.” See Meeker, Royal, History of Shipping Subsidies (New York, 1905), 1112.Google Scholar On the technical feasibility of the “composite,” see Kirkaldy, Adam W., British Shipping: Its History, Organization and Importance (London, 1914), chap. iii.Google Scholar The “composite” was adapted to demand for trade with China and the East Indies, which involved swift voyages round Cape Horn. See Pollock, David, The Shipbuilding Industry: Its History, Practice, Science and Finance (London, 1905), 42.Google Scholar The demand for a “composite,” however, proved of short duration. See Graham, , “The Ascendancy of the Sailing Ship,” 81.Google Scholar

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50 View of Henry Fry, noteworthy as representative of an enduring problem in the history of Canadian shipping, for the significance of which see in particular Journal of the Legislative Assembly, Session 1852–3, XI (8), App. CCCC.Google Scholar

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82 According to Rosa, statement before the Select Committee, Canada, Journal of the House of Commons, 18671868, 1, App. 11.Google Scholar

83 The press in general was adverse to labour action. For an earlier statement of the labour problem in the Quebec yards, see Duquet, J. N., Le Véritable Petit-Albert (Québec, 1861), 74–5.Google Scholar

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