British Naval Tradition and the Canadian Merchant Navy

From approximately 1692 until World War 1, the Royal Navy of Britain was the largest and most powerful seaborne military force in the world. There were two reasons why Britain maintained such a powerful naval force. The first was simple geography: Great Britain is an island. The second is that by 1692, England (not Britain until 1707) was a potent economic force in Europe. With the invention of debt financing and the banking system, England was able to maintain a massive economic empire, held together by a network of seaborne trade. Merchant shipping was incredibly profitable in the 17th and 18th centuries, since commodities like spices, sugar, and tea were in such high demand in Europe, but had to be procured from remote locations like India, China, and the Caribbean.

British merchant shipping was closely controlled by the government of the time. Often, the principle financial backer behind long-distance merchant shipping was the Crown itself. As the 13 colonies in North America began to expand and prosper, so too did British economic opportunities and interest. By 1759, and the battle of the Plains of Abraham, this meant direct control of North America by Great Britain.

With British control came British institutions and citizens. Shipping companies like the Hudson’s Bay Company flourished in the absence of organized French economic influence. The Hudson’s Bay Company made large profits by trading in all manner of goods, but it made the most money by shipping furs across the Atlantic. Even in the 17th and 18th centuries, shipping was the lifeblood of the British Empire.

Canada developed as a dominion of Britain well before it was ever an independent nation. The military and naval armaments of Canada were essentially British forces until after World War 1. Legislation like the Naval Services Act of 1910 began the long process of creating a functioning navy, in which the first ship in service was a British one. Until 1931, Canada was essentially an extension of the British Empire militarily, economically, and even culturally in some respects.

What this means is that one can easily argue that Canada’s naval traditions are largely British, both in economic and military terms. One simply cannot examine the Canadian naval tradition without also looking at what it is based on; The British one. The fact that we call our navy “The Royal Canadian Navy” underscores our close ties to the older British naval traditions.