k of its own. But no study of Canada's
maritime interests, however short, can close without a passing reference
to her naval history.

When the Kirkes, with their tiny flotilla, took Quebec from Champlain's
tiny garrison in 1629 the great guiding principles of sea-power were as
much at work as when Phips led his American colonists to defeat against
Frontenac in 1690, or as when Saunders and Wolfe led the admirably united
forces of their enormous fleet and little army to victory in 1759. In
the same way the decisive influence of sea-power was triumphantly exerted
by Iberville, the French naval hero of Canada, when, with his single
ship, the _Pelican_, he defeated his three British opponents in a gallant
fight; and so, for the time being, won the {180} absolute command of
Hudson Bay in 1697. Again, it was naval rather than political and
military forces that made American independence an accomplished fact.
The opposition to the war in England counted for a good deal; and the
French and American armies for still more. But the really decisive
anti-British force consisted of practically all the foreign navies in the
world, some--like the French, Spanish, Dutch, and the Americans'
own--taking an active part in the war, while the others were kept ready
in reserve by the hostile armed neutrality of Russia, Sweden, Denmark,
Prussia, and the smaller sea-coast states of Germany. Once again, in the
War of 1812, it was the two annihilating American naval victories on
Lakes Erie and Champlain that turned the scale far enough back to offset
the preponderant British military victories along the Canadian frontier
and prevent the advance of that frontier beyond Detroit and into the
state of Maine.

There were very few people in 1910 who remembered that the Canadian navy
then begun was the third local force of its kind in Canada, though the
first to be wholly paid and managed locally. From the launch of La
Salle's _Griffon_ in 1679 down to the Cession in 1763 there was {181}
always some sort of French naval force built, manned, and managed in New
France, though ultimately paid and directed from royal headquarters in
Paris through the minister of Marine and Colonies. It is significant
that 'marine' and 'colonies' were made a single government department
throughout the French regime. The change of rule did not entail the
abolition of local forces; and from 1755, when a British flotilla of six
little vessels was launched on Lake Onta