Canal boats hardly require much space. They are merely barges whose uses are largely restricted to canals. They have no power of their own, and their journeys are generally at the end of a towline hitched to a mule or a team which walks along a tow path beside the canal. They are unbeautiful but useful, and usually have a deck house for the use of the bargeman, who is often accompanied by his wife and children. There are no masts from which to spread sails or fly signal flags, but in lieu of this, one sometimes sees the housewife hanging out her washing on a clothesline stretched wherever she can place it. In their attempt to secure the comforts of home the bargeman’s family is likely to have with it a dog or a couple of pigs, and sometimes both. Such a collection of human and animal passengers can live on a canal boat with a considerable degree of comfort, for the dangers of the sea are not for them. Although life on a canal boat is subject to some handicaps, at least it does not include danger from high seas and uncharted reefs. The introduction of the gasolene engine has made possible successful small boats, of almost every size and shape, speedy, slow, seaworthy, or cranky, depending on their design or lack of design. They scoot everywhere on a thousand errands and add a nervous note to ports that otherwise would seem to be calm and self-possessed. These motor boats are infinite in number and are put to every use. Here, however, I shall not do more than recognize the very apparent fact that they exist. These vessels I have named are all a port would need to take care of its overseas commerce. Most ports, however, are busy with an infinite number of other ships engaged in coastwise or inland trade. River steamers, fishermen, ferryboats, and coasting freighters are perhaps commoner than ocean-going ships. Then, too, one sometimes sees a floating grain elevator, not dissimilar in appearance to some grain elevators ashore. There are water barges, which supply ships with fresh water. There are dredges, seemingly for ever at work. There are glistening yachts and frowning warships. There is everything that floats rubbing elbows with everything else that floats, and yet despite the seeming confusion, the whole port is orderly, and seldom indeed are there collisions or accidents to mar the smoothness of the flow of commerce. CHAPTER IX THE ART OF SEAMANSHIP Seamanship is the art of handling ships and is not to be confused with navigation, which is the mathematical science of determining ships’ positions and their courses. Only sailors who have had experience at sea can be adept at seamanship, but it is quite possible for a person who has never seen a ship to learn all the intricacies of navigation. Neither is a knowledge of one requisite to the mastery of the other.