USQUE AD MARE
A History of the Canadian Coast Guard and Marine Services
by Thomas E. Appleton

Nautical Education

When Jean Talon remarked that Canadians were improving their knowledge by taking to schools of navigation, he was looking far ahead. In his enthusiasm for the young colony of New France one wonders whether he realized just how long it would be before the struggle for existence in a harsh land would permit significant attention to be spared for nautical education. Fittingly enough it was in Quebec City, in 1851, that an approach was made to Trinity House, by Joseph Hamel, Esq., to establish a government school of navigation.

The Board of Trinity House supported Mr. Hamel's proposal, suggesting that the school be modelled on the Royal Hospital School at Greenwich. The Royal Hospital School, now housed at Holbrook in Suffolk, was then in Wrens magnificent buildings which adorn the banks of the Thames to this day and now form part of the Royal Naval College. Founded to educate the sons of naval veterans and "seafaring persons", the Royal Hospital School gives a good education in pleasant surroundings. The decision to place the Quebec school ashore, rather than in a training ship afloat, may have been dictated by climatic reasons but was, in any case, an advanced idea when it was widely held that boys under training should be as uncomfortable as possible. In nautical education this was facilitated by the availability of old wooden hulks, formerly sailing warships, which were used for a wide range of schools. The best of these, the cadet training ships, were the equals of the English public schools; the worst, which were correctional establishments, were little better than the receiving ships used by the Royal Navy for indoctrination of recruits in the days of the pressgang.

The Rev. George Fisher, chaplain to the Royal Hospital School, was approached for assistance but was unable to find anyone on the Greenwich staff who was willing to emigrate to Canada. He therefore undertook to look into the scheme more deeply and make recommendations. As a first step, Fisher had a talk with the Astronomer Royal and it was agreed that a salary of 400 pounds a year should be enough to attract a "gentleman of sound mathematical knowledge" to take up the appointment on a four-year contract. It was arranged with Trinity House that the principal would be allowed an assistant and a messenger to act as housekeeper. With the dollar rate of exchange at four shillings and four pence, and with free lodgings and an assisted passage, the corresponding salary of $1,850 was an attractive pro-position in the values of the day.

Meantime, Trinity House had given more thought to the school and, if their decision to keep it ashore was advanced for the time, their ideas on language might have been formed today. It was decided that textbooks should come equally from England and France, and that tuition was to be given in both language; the chaplain at Greenwich was enjoined to select the professor and his assistant with this in view.

On the practical plane, the Nautical School was to provide seamanship training through the medium of a small naval excursion in which the complement of 50 students was to be accompanied by the professor; in modern terms, there was to be a bilingual college in permanent shore quarters, with a balanced academic and technical curriculum, and a seagoing tender. With the addition of character training towards a full human development, it was a concept which could hardly be bettered today.

With these arrangements made, the vacancy came to the attention of George Templeman Kingston, then on the staff of the Royal Naval Hospital at Plymouth, most likely as a naval schoolmaster. Born at Oporto, in Portugal, in 1817, Kingston was educated in England and came down from Cambridge with an M.A. degree in 1849. He accepted the appointment as Principal of the Quebec Nautical School in 1852 and was granted an allowance of 40 pounds towards his passage money; the arrangement was that he would be allowed 35 pounds towards his return passage, on completion of the four-year contract, if he so desired.

Leaving England about August of that year, the new principal brought with him a boatswain as assistant, a retired naval warrant officer, who was to be paid at the rate of six pounds per lunar month, and Corporal Thomas Reynolds, late of the 54th Regiment, who was to be messenger and drillmaster on the understanding that his wife would do the housekeeping. Instruments, to the value of 160 pounds, were purchased for the 50 boys and, thus equipped, the school was established in premises converted from the Old Custom House. This building, of cut stone with a tinned roof, fronted on Champlain Street where an entire row of buildings had been demolished, with the loss of 40 lives, when the cliff collapsed in 1841.

With these beginnings, it might have been thought that the Quebec school was off to a fine start but, in fact, it was far ahead of its times. In England, the Royal Navy was then an ever open door for boys, and the merchant service, although rough and ready, provided an attraction for some who made their future under one or other of the well known house flags. In Canada there was not the same call and, as neither in England nor in Canada had certificates of competency yet been introduced, most boys went to sea direct, after a very modest education, to fight their way by force of character and ability from the forecastle to the poop. Perhaps there was something in the idea of training ships which "caught em young and treated em rough"; in 1852 the sea was a rough, tough life, from boy before the mast to mate or master of a ship.

In 1854, the Old Custom House was sold to the Grand Trunk Railway and turned into a station house; the nautical school then moved to 64 Lewis Street, formerly occupied by the Postmaster General. But it was already too late, the School was unable to keep going, and the place was sold.

Not all was lost; G. T. Kingston went to Toronto in 1855 to occupy the Chair of Meteorology at Toronto University. We have already met Professor Kingston, who was the father of the Marine and Fisheries Meteorological service. He too was conscious of the way ahead and, if it was no fault of either party that the Trinity House School was dissolved, Kingston had no hesitation in foregoing his rights to a return passage and in placing his talents at the service of the young Canada.

With the demise of the Trinity House school at Quebec, nautical education all but vanished despite the introduction of mandatory certificates of competency in 1869. Candidates for these certificates as mate or master depended on such practical navigation as they could pick up at sea which was very little in an age when none but the old man dared look at the chart followed by a period of communal cramming with a few shipmates in seaport lodgings before presenting themselves for examination. The navigational theory, modest enough by modern standards, was difficult for most seamen who had but little early schooling, and it is greatly to the credit of those who passed that their determination was successful. As for seamanship, the daily toil in a wooden sailing ship provided more than enough experience in the practical subjects so beloved of the old examiners: shifting topmasts, jury rudders, broken spars, anchor work and the rudiments of stowage were then facets of life of no more concern then the changing of an automobile wheel today. Rule of the road was learnt verbatim and woe to the luckless candidate who could not repeat, in every syllable and inflexion, the sonorous phrasing of the articles. With glassy eye and far-off stare, many a man retrieved the deficiencies of a clumsy and ill written navigation paper with faultless repetition of the lines beginning "These rules shall be observed . . . . ."

By the turn of the century, it was apparent that some scheme of formal education should be provided and, in 1902, the Department of Marine and Fisheries granted a subsidy of $500 towards the maintenance of a private school at Montreal. In the following year this school was absorbed by the Department and others were established at Halifax, Saint John, Yarmouth and Victoria, under an annual budget amounting to just over $3,000. From this sum, even in those days woefully inadequate for this specialized venture into education, local examiners of masters and mates were paid an annual retainer of $250 to act as professors, and superintendents were engaged for a like figure. Despite the high sounding titles of the staff, the curriculum consisted of the most elementary questions and answers in practical seamanship and the merest whiff of pilotage. Tuition was covered by two short lectures each week, in a season running from January till March, held in rented rooms equipped only with a few chairs, a blackboard, a box of chalk and ten fathoms of rope. In pontifical vein, the professors were enjoined to "discourse upon subjects which would interest the class of students attending."

Not surprisingly, there was little public interest in most of these schools, for they were uninspired; while admitting to this state of affairs, the general superintendent reported, in 1906, that he was at a loss to understand the reason. By this time other schools had been opened at Lunenburg, North Sydney, Quebec, Kingston, Toronto and Collingwood, and more followed, notably at Vancouver where the school was well supported. Training aids were introduced with the addition of "first class up to date" lanterns for the projection of diagrams upon a screen and, in 1907, seamanship models made their appearance. These models, usually representing the masts and rigging of a ship or barque, may still be seen in the offices of some examiners of masters and mates. About this time emphasis began to be placed on compass correction which, with the advent of many more steel ships, became an important subject demanding a knowledge of applied magnetism; the deviascope dates from this period. With these measures the navigation schools improved and one annual report went so far as to mention eulogies from the press in Great Lakes ports and on the Pacific coast. In a petulant closing phrase of the same report, this brief glimpse of sunshine was dispelled by complaints of lack of support in Saint John and Montreal.

In 1910, the total appropriation for marine schools had risen to $8,000 but as little more than a quarter of this sum was actually spent, there would appear to have been some malaise. Although then as now a certificate of competency was a necessary passport to employment as an officer, education was limited in the opening years of the century and standards were kept at the simplest level commensurate with the demands of safety and existing legislation. This standard was difficult of attainment for many seamen and for others, to whom the sometimes nebulous benefits of the after guard did not appeal, professional education was a luxury which had little to do with earning a living at sea.

The actual certificate, until 1951 a parchment, is now produced in booklet style similar to a Canadian passport. This is official endorsement as to the professional status of the holder and it can be cancelled or suspended, in cases of proven neglect or incompetence, after due process of legal enquiry. In some cases the defaulter may revert to a junior grade of certificate, in others he cannot hold certificated employment but may go back to sea on deck. Among the older files in the Departmental archives there is one, reeking of dusty proceedings in long forgotten strandings and collisions, wherein are kept ancient cancelled certificates. Once crisp and proud, then sea stained and folded with the years of use, these parchments are now reminders that there was another side to the romance of the sea in the sorrows and disappointments of good men, long dead.

With the great uplift in general education of recent years, and in face of the growing complexity of marine technology, surviving navigation schools were transferred to provincial authorities in 1961 under a federal provincial agreement on vocational training as a whole. Courses of study for certificates of competency are now beyond the resources of the former navigation schools of the Department, although these were greatly strengthened in their later years by help from corporate bodies such as the Dominion Marine Association, the Shipping Federation of Canada, and from some of the more prominent ship owning and marine firms. The purpose of these schools was to prepare candidates for mandatory examinations, after they had spent qualifying service at sea, by providing instruction in the relevant specifics. In this they differed from the Trinity House school of 1852 which, although short-lived, was an attempt to educate boys before they went to sea. Today, as in most professions, there is an increasing demand for education, in the widest sense, in preparation for a career which, commencing with sea technology, may take a man to the realms of business or administration. But before describing this aspect of marine education, mention must be made of engineering training.

We have already seen, in connection with steamboat inspection, how the ambitious engineer of a century ago, such as William Morgan Smith, arrived at the top of the three after apprenticeship to a well known firm and years of progressively widening experience. For most steamboat engineers, necessarily limited to more modest aspirations and far removed from an environment more technical than the local blacksmith, the apprenticeship system was the exception rather than the rule; there was seldom enough skill to go round and, if a man could do a job, most likely he could have it. The early marine engineering examinations were entirely empirical; practical experience at firing a boiler and handling the throttle valve was the best to be hoped for and, coupled with a keen observation, this was indeed sufficient. As steamboats were used in almost every stretch of water in Eastern Canada, and as there were virtually no Canadian seagoing steamers in early days, knowledge of this kind could be acquired on the job. With the coming of larger steamers on the Lakes and elsewhere, many marine engineers came from the ranks of immigrants, some of whom started private schools in the principal ports. This system was well established in Britain where commercial colleges of this nature became well known and were able to operate at a reasonable profit while providing adequate instruction.

After the second world war many trained engineers left the sea and, with the attractions of an expanding economy on shore, it was difficult to fill such berths as were available as the privately owned engineering colleges had closed. In 1954 the Department of Transport entered the field for the first time by the attachment of engineer instructors to their existing schools of navigation at Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and St. Johns, Nfld. and to the Quebec Government school at Rimouski, l'Institut de la Marine Marchande. The Departmental schools continued their traditional policy of preparation of students for statutory examination, but both Rimouski and St. Johns conducted pre-sea training for young men entering a marine career.

The way ahead.

A Canadian Coast Guard Cadet at work on the bridge.

No sooner had the Department disengaged from vocational training in general, than a particular problem demanded attention. In the past, government ships were supplied with officers recruited from the Merchant Marine from which, with the demise of old established seagoing companies, the Department had been well served until the stream dried up. Apart from this source some officers came to Canada as immigrants, some worked their way up from the seaman branch, and a few came from existing marine schools in various parts of the country. All these sources had limitations. In 1964 it was decided to institute a Canadian Coast Guard College. Its aim was to provide full professional training in navigation and engineering to meet the needs of an expanding fleet of sophisticated ships and the demands of the new age in mercantile shipping.

In preparation for this new phase of nautical education, which had been under consideration for some years, courses of study were arranged for the new College which was opened, in September 1965, at Sydney, N.S. in premises formerly occupied by the Point Edward Naval Base. Forty cadets were enrolled to commence a four-year course covering academic and practical subjects to the standard of the examinations for master, foreign going, and engineer first class. In addition the College is bilingual and provides a well balanced curriculum in fields related to the central marine purpose including economic, scientific and administrative disciplines. Under the direction of Captain J. G. Brie, formerly Director of the Provincial Marine School at Rimouski, the Canadian Coast Guard College has opened a new and challenging phase in marine education. This broad training, available for the first time to young Canadians who wish to follow a marine career, can only be compared to a university of the sea. Providing a stimulating immersion in the philosophy of marine thought, the cadet phase of the modern officers experience replaces the drudgery by which men with high potential capabilities were formerly obliged to fill their most impressionable years.

After graduation from College, by which time cadets have experience under training in ships of the Canadian Coast Guard fleet, they may qualify by watch keeping service to enter for the statutory examinations. With hard work and enthusiasm the most senior qualifications can be reached in about eight year from first entry as a cadet. This period will include some four years as an officer in charge of a watch at sea. The career envisaged is essentially seagoing but graduates from the Coast Guard College, following their formative years in the fleet, may be expected to reach eventually the senior positions of the Marine Services of Canada.

The advent of full-time professional marine education presents an intriguing prospect for young Canadians. As the country expands, the calls upon her Coast Guard become daily more numerous and more complex. There was a time, years ago, when the hardihood of the Canadian seaman and his inbred knowledge and experience was sufficient to carry him through a long and successful career in the marine service. This is no longer possible and the Coast Guard officer today, taking care to foster and maintain the best features of our three hundred years of history in marine transportation, must now have a mastery of the scientific principles and techniques necessary for its continuation.

Above all, the advent of the Coast Guard College has reaffirmed those timeless qualities of heart and mind and integrity of spirit without which all knowledge is but dust. In the future, as in the past, these are the pillars of a service which exists to serve others; it can succeed only in proportion to that uplifting aim.