The canoe factory was located at Trois Rivières, just below Montreal, on the St. Lawrence. A standard large canoe was built, and the rate of production was then 20 a year. Franquet gives as the dimensions of the canoes the following (converted to English measurement): length 36 feet, beam about 5½ feet, and depth about 33 inches. Much of his description is not clear, but it seems evident that the canoe described was very much like the later _grand canot_, or large canoe, of the fur trade. The date at which this factory was established is unknown; it may have existed as early as 1700, as might have been required by the rapid expansion of the French trade and other activities in the last half of the previous century. It is apparent from early comments that the French found the Indian canoe-builders unreliable, not to say most uncertain, as a source of supply. The need for large canoes for military and trade operations had forced the establishment of such a factory as soon as Europeans could learn how to build the canoes. This would, in fact, have been the only possible solution. Of course, it must not be assumed that the bark canoes were the only watercraft used by the early French traders. They used plank boats as well, ranging from scows to flat-bottomed bateaux and ship's boats, and they also had some early sailing craft built on the Great Lakes and on the lower St. Lawrence. The bateau, shaped much like a modern dory but with a sharp stern, was adopted by the English settlers as well as the French. In early colonial times this form of boat was called by the English a "battoe," or "Schenectady Boat," and later, an "Albany Boat." It was sharp at both ends, it usually had straight flaring sides with a flat bottom, and was commonly built of white pine plank. Some, however, had rounded sides and lapstrake planking, as shown by a plan of a bateau of 1776 in the Admiralty Collection of Draughts. Early bateaux had about the same range of size as the bark canoes but later ones were larger. After the English gained control of Canada, the records of the Hudson's Bay Company, and of individual traders and travellers such as Alexander Henry, Jr., and Alexander MacKenzie, at the end of the eighteenth century, give much material on the fur-trade canoes but little on the small Indian canoes. In general, these records show that the fur-trade canoe of the West was commonly 24 feet long inside the gunwales, exclusive of the curves of bow and stern; 4 feet 9 inches beam; 26 inches deep; and light enough to be carried by two men, as MacKenzie recorded, "three or four miles without resting on a good road." But the development of the fur-trade canoes is best left for a later chapter.