Two small sailing vessels, the “Beaver” and the “Gladwin,” which proved very valuable to the besieged garrison at Detroit in 1763, were the next sailing vessels on the lakes, and are supposed to have been built by the English the year previous.  It is said, that through the refusal of her captain to take ballast aboard, the “Gladwin” was capsized on Lake Erie and lost, and the entire crew drowned.  The “Royal Charlotte,” the “Boston,” and the “Victory” appeared on the lakes a few years later, and went into commission between Fort Erie (Buffalo) and Detroit, carrying the first year 1,464 bales of fur to Fort Erie, and practically establishing commercial navigation.

It is hard to look clearly into the future.  If the recommendations of one J. Collins, deputy surveyor-general of the British Government, had governed the destiny of the Great Lakes, the traffic between Buffalo and the Soo by water, would to-day be in boats of fifteen tons or less.  Under orders of the English Government, Collins in 1788 made a survey of all the lakes and harbors from Kingston to Mackinac, and in his report, expressing his views as to the size of vessels that should be built for service on the lakes, he said he thought that for service on Lake Ontario vessels should be seventy-five or eighty tons burden, and on Lake Erie, if expected to run to Lake Huron, they should be not more than fifteen tons.  What a stretch of imagination is necessary to conceive of the great volume of traffic of the present time, passing Detroit in little schooners not much larger than catboats that skim around the lakes!  Imagine such a corporation as the Northern Steamship Company, with its big fleet of steel steamers, attempting to handle its freight business in sailing vessels of a size that the average wharf-rat of the present time would disdain to pilot.  What a rush of business there would be at the Marine Post-Office in Detroit, if some day this company would decide to cut off three of its large steamers and send out enough schooners of the size recommended by the English officer, to take their place!  The fleet would comprise at least 318 vessels, and would require not fewer than 1500 seamen to navigate.  It is sometimes said that there is a continual panorama of vessels passing up and down the rivers of the Great Lakes, but what if the Englishman had guessed right?  Happily he did not, and vessels of 1500 tons can navigate the connecting waters of Lake Huron and Lake Erie much better than those of fifteen tons could in his time.  That the early ship-builders did not pay much attention to J. Collins, is evident from the fact that, when the Detroit was surrendered to the Americans in 1796, twelve merchant vessels were owned there of from fifty to one hundred tons each.

[Illustration:  “THE RED-MEN SET UPON THEM AND SLEW THEM ALL”]

At the close of the eighteenth century the American sailor had hardly superseded the red men as a navigator, and lake vessels were not much more plentiful than airships are nowadays.  Indeed, the entire fleet in 1799, so far as can be learned, was as follows:  The schooners “Nancy,” “Swan,” and “Naegel;” the sloops “Sagina,” “Detroit,” “Beaver,” “Industry,” “Speedwell,” and “Arabaska.”  This was the fleet, complete, of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Michigan.