from “The Bluenose” · Stan Rogers
Once again with the tide she slips her lines
Turns her head and comes awake
Where she lay so still there at Privateer’s Wharf
Now she quickly gathers way
She will range far south from the harbour mouth
And rejoice with every wave
Who will know the Bluenose in the sun?
—Stan Rogers, from “The Bluenose” (1978)
Chapter III
Vessels
Some vessels displace water and float; others contain it and don’t. So much for the difference between a ship and a cooking pot. Or between a seaworthy ship, and one that’s sinking. But for purposes of navigation and maritime law we turn to The International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea. They define a vessel as including “every description of water craft actually used or capable of being used as a means of transportation on water.” That makes for a wonderfully colourful and imaginative flotilla. And indeed each one of these vessels has at one time or another launched itself from Canadian shores: an imaginative fleet from log rafts to highly technical deep-sea craft. Variously propelled by everything from paddle, oars, wind, gasoline outboards, great diesels or steam-turbines, they have been crafted with a range of skills. Intuition and cunning, as well as scientific marine design and construction, have come into play. The inspiration of builders and designers has sometimes drawn upon a blend of both. Though relatively few craft can be represented in this collection, each vessel, from the early Inuit umiaks and First Nations’ canoes, to the schooner Bluenose and the experimental naval hydrofoil Bras d’Or, bears witness to a distinctive marine tradition. Pride of purpose and achievement, and the exhilaration of success, mark each stage of building. Mariners frequently invest their vessels with human characteristics, and either love them or curse them on a whim.
The Haida Canoe
Martine J. Reid (1945– )
The First Nations’ canoe, argues Roy MacGregor in his book Canoe Country (2015), is the foremost unifying symbol of the country. The Haida canoe is a graphic case in point. For the Haida people of the West Coast it was both a seaworthy vessel for commerce and war, and a profound work of art. The canoe expressed spirituality and power, and the role of myth in sustaining community. In the words of acclaimed Haida carver Bill Reid, it was the point of departure for all artistic expression. His widow, Martine J. Reid, recounts her late husband’s perspective on the Haida canoe—visually, symbolically and culturally.
Like other traditional artworks, canoes were vessels of knowledge. They communicated significant information about the individuals and societies that produced them—information that was also expressed in various cultural and spiritual contexts, such as in myths and rituals. Due to their implicit connecting faculty, Northwest Coast canoes were metaphors for different sets of ideas, including wealth and property, exchange and gift, war, marriage and death.
From the time of the Great Flood to the long potlatch journeys of the mid-nineteenth century, the canoe connected the people to the land, the sea, the creatures that inhabit them, other people and the underworld (or spirit world).
In a world where form and spirit fused to create harmonious containers—plank houses, bent-corner chests and boxes, canoe dishes and bowls—the canoe was the ultimate container-conveyor. Made from the land’s most revered tree, the giant red cedar, and with the assistance of spirit helpers, it embodied and connected people to Mother Earth. Canoe effigies were at times represented on totem poles as part of their narratives.
In some southern areas of the coast, deceased individuals were buried in canoes on stilts, sometimes with other canoes inverted over them. In other areas, canoes, or canoe effigies, were raised as mortuary poles.
The canoe also connected Northwest Coast peoples to the aquatic world and its wealth, due to which they thrived. Their mythic landscape associated the canoe with copper, the highest symbol of wealth among the indigenous peoples. In a Tlingit myth, copper first appeared in the form of a canoe. Several coastal groups believed in a mighty spirit, the master of the undersea world, who lived at the bottom of the sea. His Tlingit name is Qonagedet, and his Haida name is Goanagada. A powerful shape-shifter, he sometimes emerged … as a large, self-paddling war canoe, also elaborately decorated and painted … In the south, Kwakwaka’wakw mythology portrays a self-paddling copper canoe personified as Gomogwa, the supernatural being and master of ocean riches. He is the donor of wealth as well as of supernatural treasures, and his copper house can be seen arising from the sea. It is located west of the ocean, a destination attained only through death …
Today, First Nations from all along the Northwest Coast have produced hundreds of traditional-style canoes in both wood and fibreglass and have paddled them over long distances to participate in Tribal Journeys. These gatherings allow us a stirring glimpse into the past, when fleets of traditional Northwest Coast canoes navigated the waters of the Salish Sea, the Inside Passage and the open ocean between Northern California and Alaska.
—from Bill Reid and the Haida Canoe (2011)
The Strait of Juan de Fuca
Barry Gough (1938– )
The writing of marine history, as Gough confesses, is much more than an intellectual exercise in archival sleuthing. It is about experience. For him the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Salish Sea’s outlet to the Pacific Ocean, has been working its magic since the earliest days of recorded history. Having followed what he calls “Ariadne’s thread” through centuries of surmise, myth and the machinations of international politics, Gough affirms Juan de Fuca’s claims to have discovered the strait in 1592. In the words that follow he ponders the meaning of this remarkable West Coast seaway.
As for myself, the voyage in the discovery of history continues, seeking always to make sense of the past and, more, to explain it to the reader as best I can. The pleasant work is fuelled by memory as much as it is done to satisfy curiosity. In and out of my local waters had flowed the tides of empires on ceaseless change. The Strait of Juan de Fuca has held the destiny of nations in its ebb and flow. From its portal the waters extend and open out to the ends of the earth.
Visions of the great ships of yesterday pass by my window. One by one they pass through Juan de Fuca’s strait. Here she comes now, Vancouver’s elegant Discovery on exploration, accompanied by Broughton’s strangely tubby Chatham. They are followed by Alcalá Galiano’s remarkably small Sutil and Cayetano Valdés’ Mexicana.
But wait a minute: only forty years or so after, a smoke-belching steamer comes into view, rounding Cape Flattery rather effortlessly, heading purposefully against tides and currents for Puget Sound and Fort Nisqually. This is the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Beaver. Out of the fog bank comes the barque Harpooner with supplies and mine workers and men for business and for the land. In 1850 the British paddlewheel sloop Driver is seen bringing a young lawyer, Richard Blanshard, to take up the governorship of the young Vancouver Island colony. The Tynemouth and other bride-ships will leave from London, and a hundred marriageable women will step onto the settlement’s docks. During the Fraser River gold rush and the occupation of the San Juan Islands by the United States Army, the three-decker Ganges, a British ship of the line, built in Bombay of teak, enters Esquimalt under sail. This place Rear Admiral Robert Lambert Baynes, echoing its Spanish discoverers, finds glorious and suitable for a naval base, which it becomes, not long afterward—a British anchor of empire in the North Pacific. Captain George Henry Richards, heading a diligent team of six surveyors, has charted the turbulent waters from Cape Flattery right through to the Strait of Georgia on both the Vancouver Island and continental shores, and has even marked the Fraser River for safe navigation up to New Westminster, the newly sited capital of the Colony of British Columbia.
Now the vessels come in increasing number and in greater tonnage. The United States and Royal Navy send some of their largest battleships. The Canadian Pacific Railway develops a trans-Pacific service, and the romance of steam is now in full view as the sleek Empress of Japan speeds for Yokohama with mail and passengers and a mixed cargo from the new railhead port of Vancouver. Inbound cargoes of tea and porcelain from the exotic East arrive, and, in the steerage class, Chinese and Japanese on indenture or other permit.
Back and forth, despite the triumph of steam navigation, the sailing ships still pass on their peaceful occasions. There goes the Ardnamurchan, a typical steel carrier, working out through the interminably long strait with a cargo of lumber recently loaded at Port Blakely, Washington. And lo and behold, from her Victoria home port, there’s the old Thermopylae, fastest of the clippers and famous for beating her rival, the Cutty Sark, in a race home to London from Shanghai, with tea. There sails HMS Herald to western Arctic waters to search for Sir John Franklin. There goes the old whaler Karluk, to serve Stefannson in the Canadian Arctic Expedition, and here, inbound, comes the St. Roch, fresh from a return transit of the Northwest Passage.
In May 1901 the Indian canoe Tilikum is seen working down the strait toward open ocean under sail but driven to the lee shore of Vancouver Island’s hard coast. Now out of view, we imagine her finally escaping the clutches of the storms, tides and currents off Cape Flattery with destination London, then home again by curious circumstances on the deck of an ocean tramp. Others are not so lucky: the American steamer Pacific, past her prime and loaded with Victoria passengers, sinks with catastrophic losses, and later the British naval corvette Condor disappears with all hands.
Now the big ones steam into view. The mighty British battle cruiser Hood arrives as an exhibit of British naval might in 1923; in 1940 she will be sunk in the famous action with the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. In 1942 the massive liner Queen Elizabeth ghosts into Esquimalt Graving Dock for upgrades as a troopship—her existence kept secret, a gang of Victoria High School lads pressed into work parties—then departs urgently on a wartime mission, the fates of democracy hanging in the balance. The British super dreadnought Warspite, veteran of Jutland, refitted recently in a Puget Sound yard, heads out to become flagship of the British Eastern Fleet near war’s end. There she passes, under tow, the battleship USS Missouri, destination Pearl Harbor as the United States Naval Memorial; the signing of the Japanese surrender in 1945 took place on her decks.
The grey, armed ships continue their transits, en route to Korea or Vietnam, taking the military power of the American continent to the Far East, returning battle-hardened. The smart, brightly coloured P & O liners like the Orsova and Oronsay, links of Empire shipping, come and go and then suddenly disappear from our waters. All the while, and for three generations, Canadian Pacific steamers toil on passage to and from Seattle and Vancouver, sometimes crossing to Port Angeles, and are, sadly, no more. Meantime, the Black Ball Line’s MV Coho outlives them all and still bridges the strait, linking communities on both sides of the watery divide, a reminder of what we have in common and hold dear.
Acting by stealth and never seen by us, the Trident nuclear-powered submarines of the United States Navy steal out and back from Puget Sound on silent patrol. They are the new bearers of Neptune’s trident in an uncertain world. More than half a century ago, in 1958, USS Nautilus departs Seattle and exits the strait with a secret destination of the North Pole, under the icecap, then completes a history-making polar transit. Even to Jules Verne this would be heady stuff.
—from Juan de Fuca’s Strait (2012)
The HBC’s Nonsuch—Winnipeg’s Deep-Sea Ketch
Peter C. Newman (1929– )
The Arctic voyage of the ketch Nonsuch in 1668–1669 is unique. Its purpose was not to seek any Northwest Passage to the riches of the Orient, but rather to demonstrate the viability of maritime trade deep into Hudson Bay and southward into present-day Manitoba. The plan cut some fifteen hundred miles off the trade routes that would lead to Quebec City and Montreal. Thus it was that the Nonsuch entered Canadian history and linked what is now Central Canada to the rest of the world by sea. A replica of the Nonsuch, built in Britain by the Hudson’s Bay Company to mark its 300th anniversary, undertook three major voyages of commemoration: in the 1970 and 1971 tours she visited some twenty-eight ports in the St. Lawrence and throughout the Great Lakes, while the 1972 tour took her to ports in British Columbia and Puget Sound. In 1974 she became the centrepiece of the Nonsuch Gallery of the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg. This is a fitting tribute to a prairie province that boasts a protected habitat for the largest concentration of Beluga whales in the world—in the estuaries of the Churchill, Nelson and Seal Rivers in western Hudson Bay.
Royal Navy records list the Nonsuch as having had a beam of fifteen feet, a draft of six feet six inches and an overall deck length of fifty-three feet. This would be about half the size of the Mayflower (1620) and slightly shorter than the sixteen-oared knoors used by the Vikings. In modern terms, the Nonsuch was not as long as the twelve-metre sloops in the America’s Cup races …
By May 1668 the ships had been outfitted; grocers, chandlers, sailmakers, ropemakers, vintners, butchers, haberdashers, timber merchants and ironmongers furnished the [8-gun ketch] Eaglet and [6-gun] Nonsuch as floating department stores. Into the little ships were stowed hundreds of items, including hatchets, spears, scrapers, muskets, blunderbusses, pistols, gunpowder, eighteen barrels of shot, paper, quills, ink, thirty-seven pounds of tobacco, compasses, flags, lanterns, ropes, pitch, tar, axes, saws, hammers, anchors; “shirts, socks and mittens and other slopsellers’ wares;” four dozen pairs of shoes; malt for ship’s beer, eight gallons of lemon juice to ward off scurvy, five thousand needles; food such as biscuits, raisins, prunes, peas, oatmeal, salt beef and pork; wines and brandy; fifty-six pounds of cork; and a trumpet. Both vessels also carried necklaces of wampum, the standard currency of the Indian trade, consisting of small shell beads that had been brought to England by Groseilliers …
On the misty morning ebb-tide of June 3, 1668, the Eaglet and Nonsuch were piloted out of the river by Isaac Manychurch for a fee of £5. By evening they had reached the open sea and turned north in a fresh breeze; ten days later they rounded the Orkneys and headed due west towards the New World. Four hundred leagues off Ireland, they were struck by a storm that nearly broached the low-waisted Eaglet, forcing her to turn back.
Six weeks later, Gillam sighted the coast of Labrador and turned north, navigating the Nonsuch skilfully under clouds of seabirds over the “furious overfall” into Hudson Strait. The tiny ketch sailed past the Belchers and found refuge in the same river mouth where Henry Hudson had wintered more than half a century before. It was promptly named Rupert River, after the expedition’s Royal sponsor …
The return of the fur-loaded little ketch caused minimal stir; its cargo, bartered for goods originally purchased for £650, brought in £1,379 on the London fur market, and the ship was resold for £152. Wages of £535 plus the required startup investments, customs duties, the damage to the Eaglet and other expenses had failed to make the voyage profitable. But the backers were pleased. The thesis that Radisson and Groseilliers had been expounding for more than a decade had been proved correct: it was entirely practicable to sail into Hudson Bay, winter on its shores and return with a profitable cargo of fur.
—from Company of Adventurers, Volume I (1985)
The Ships of Saint John
Bliss Carman (1861–1929)
Situated on the north shore of the Bay of Fundy at the mouth of the Saint John River, Saint John is the oldest incorporated city in Canada. Before the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s made it possible to navigate the river year round, Saint John served as the winter port for Montreal. Until the early twenty-first century, it was the site of Canada’s largest shipyard.
Where are the ships I used to know,
That came to port on the Fundy tide
Half a century ago,
In beauty and stately pride?
In they would come past the beacon light,
With the sun on gleaming sail and spar,
Folding their wings like birds in flight
From countries strange and far.
Schooner and brig and barkentine,
I watched them slow as the sails were furled,
And wondered what cities they must have seen
On the other side of the world.
Frenchman and Britisher and Dane,
Yankee, Spaniard and Portugee,
And many a home ship back again
With her stories of the sea.
Calm and victorious, at rest
From the relentless, rough sea-play,
The wild duck on the river’s breast
Was not more sure than they.
The creatures of a passing race,
The dark spruce forests made them strong,
The sea’s lore gave them magic grace,
The great winds taught them song.
And God endowed them each with life—
His blessing on the craftsman’s skill—
To meet the blind unreasoned strife
And dare the risk of ill.
Not mere insensate wood and paint
Obedient to the helm’s command,
But often restive as a saint
Beneath the Heavenly hand.
All the beauty and mystery
Of life were there, adventure bold,
Youth, and the glamour of the sea
And all its sorrows old.
And many a time I saw them go
Out on the flood at morning brave,
As the little tugs had them in tow,
And the sunlight danced on the wave.
There all day long you could hear the sound
Of the caulking iron, the ship’s bronze bell,
And the clank of the capstan going round
As the great tides rose and fell.
The sailors’ songs, the Captain’s shout,
The boatswain’s whistle piping shrill,
And the roar as the anchor chain runs out,—
I often hear them still.
I can see them still, the sun on their gear,
The shining streak as the hulls careen,
And the flag at the peak unfurling,—clear
As a picture on a screen.
The fog still hangs on the long tide-rips,
The gulls go wavering to and fro,
But where are all the beautiful ships
I knew so long ago?
—from Later Poems (1921)
Schooner Magic
Lou Boudreau (1951– )
Chester, home of generations of mariners, is often touted as one of the most picturesque towns on Nova Scotia’s South Shore. After an adventurous life under sail, a retired mariner remains spellbound by the haunting presence of vessels of an earlier age.
The calm waters of Mahone Bay stretch away to the southeast and a gentle southwesterly breeze blows from over the land. Although the air is still cold, the last of the winter ice has gone and there is the promise of spring in the air. There is a sense of the ocean here. From the granite rocks of Pennant Point to tiny Ironbound Island, this is seafarer country. For so young a country much has gone before. We are now and have always been a sea people, born to a legacy of great schooners … even those of us who claim to be landsmen have an uncle, grandfather, or distant cousin who went to sea from some Nova Scotia port. We were famous schoonermen in days gone by, and when people talked of us the words were spoken with respect. Fine schooners were born on this coast, and our heritage is just as surely steeped in the salty Atlantic as it is rooted in the soil of this land.
I often walk the Chester waterfront in the early mornings, to ponder and take in the beauty. It’s a special time for me because I usually have it all to myself, the sea, the sky, the peace, and the magic. They are all mine for those precious dawn moments and I savour the thought of it.
Sometimes I sit on the old wooden bench on the dock facing the sea and after making sure there is no one watching I peer intently into the mist, searching for the ghost I know is there. I can hear the quiet surge of the ocean on the stones at the water’s edge and the cries of the gulls. The first whispers of a morning breeze brush my face and I can smell the salt of the ocean. And then my early morning daydream takes me further to the southeast, past the tree-covered islands into the great Atlantic.
There, an ethereal apparition from another time fades in and out of the fog, a lithe and lovely Atlantic siren, come once again to stir the hearts of mortal men. She’s the spectre of a tall schooner, silently bound on some mission from a distant land. Tall of spar and long of hull she heels gently, as with canvas taut she reaps the wind. Close-hauled with topsails sheeted tight, the set of her sails is as perfect as her sheerline. The curve of her quarter is as fair as a woman’s hip and her stem lovely to behold. Homeward bound, the faint scent of pine forest drifts across her bow, and she knows that she is close. Born here, near the shores of the bay, the thought of seeing her place of birth stirs her spirit. She has voyaged far and although older now, she lifts her bows with the sauciness of a young girl, throwing the spray to leeward.
A smile comes to my lips; could I possibly be hearing the sounds of a schooner at sea? I strain to listen as the breeze plays tricks on my ears. The creak of wooden blocks and the snap of manila rope come and fade. I can almost hear the faint chants and commands crossing her deck as her crew haul on halyard and sheet.
“Together now, again, and again.”
Tilting my head slightly I catch the faint whispers of the skipper and mate. “Full and by, make fast.”
The image becomes clearer as she closes the land and my schooner comes on under full canvas, leaving a white frothy wake astern, and the graceful curve of her bow wave as it rolls away to leeward makes an angry hiss.
There is the perpetual fog bank off the coast, which she must navigate before making landfall, but there is a familiarity; she knows the rocks and coves and harbours. The first of the sun’s rays break the hills to the west and the Nova Scotia schooner glides into the bay. Rounding the point she comes ghosting towards me and even as her fisherman comes gently folding down, her topsails are clewed up. Her catted anchor is unlashed and her sails come down from forward. She glides near to the dock, and I am startled as I hear the command “let go.” It takes me a moment to realize that I have voiced the words myself. The chain rattles silently out and the schooner comes to a gentle stop. She has come home and my daydream ends. As I walk back to my house I notice that I have been out for an hour; it is now 7:00 a.m. and the neighbours are stirring.
I’ve only lived here three years now but in some ways I’ve been here forever. Born in Baddeck in 1951, I was but a child when my father sailed us away from these shores in a Shelburne-built schooner called the Dubloon. What followed was a voyage lasting some thirty-five years. I sailed to South America, Africa, the Mediterranean, and every island between the US mainland and Venezuela. I sailed the oceans and saw the wonders of the world, but despite all this there was always a feeling that I didn’t belong, I was always a foreigner, a stranger in strange and often inhospitable lands.
It’s different now, the courses I lay are no longer on charts but along the peaceful streets of Chester and the storms I weather are of another nature. I have experienced a wonderful feeling that is new to me, that of belonging. The life of wandering is not a bad or wasteful one but a man needs a home and country. Like the weary schooner that finally returns, I too have come home.
And there is this other secret thing that I have found here, it is not mine alone and so I must share it with you. There is schooner magic all along this coast, and it is free for the taking. The bays and coves are filled with it as are the granite headlands and the rocky shores. It is there for you and I and anyone who would have it. Good for body and soul, this is how to find it. Go quietly at the earliest hint of dawn to the place where you can see and smell the Atlantic. Close your eyes for a moment and face the east and it will come to you.
—reprinted with permission of Capt. Lou Boudreau (2002)
SS Beaver
Norman R. Hacking (1912–1997)
Famous ships develop characters and spawn mythologies. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s SS Beaver was one of these. Two months after her launch on the Thames on 2 May 1835, the 100-foot vessel built of oak and elm made her way under sail and steam to Victoria via Cape Horn and intermediary stops. The voyage from England to her Canadian station took 225 days. She was the first steamship to operate in the Pacific Northwest, linking isolated communities for trade and commerce, and sometimes aiding the civil power for constabulary duties. In order to honour her prominent role in West Coast history, The Maritime Museum of British Columbia established in 2012 the S.S. Beaver Medal. Presented annually, the prestigious medal recognizes the achievements of individuals who have made outstanding contributions to maritime endeavours in British Columbia.
On the night of July 26, 1888, an old-fashioned, untidy little paddle steamer slowly backed out from the City Wharf in Vancouver Harbour, and churned her way towards the First Narrows and the Gulf of Georgia. She was the Beaver, bound for Thurlow Island with logging supplies.
Members of her crew had imbibed a little too freely in waterfront saloons before embarking, and neither seamanship nor discipline was at its best. There was a slight summer mist on the water (later claimed to be a dense fog), and visibility in the Narrows was defective.
Currents were crafty and unreliable, and Captain George Marchant lost control of the vessel. With a barely perceptible grating sound, the little steamer ran high and dry on the beach at what is now called Prospect Point.
The crew were little disturbed by the mishap and stayed aboard for the night. Next morning they rowed back to Vancouver, leaving behind the staunch mortal remains of the first steamboat on the north Pacific coast.
The Beaver was fifty-three years old. Her market value for trading purposes was small. Her owner, Henry Saunders of Victoria, had no use for relics or antiques. And since salvage might cost as much as the ship was worth, her fine old oaken timbers were left to disintegrate on the beach, while vandals and curio hunters stripped her of copper sheathings and every movable object. For several years she remained a familiar sight at the entrance of Vancouver Harbour, becoming progressively more forlorn.
The hull was still more or less intact in 1892, but two years later there remained little more than the ribs to show the former hull, and a steam chest high on the end of a protruding pipe.
It seemed fitting that the Beaver should end her days in Vancouver Harbour, a city newly born, which marked the beginning of a new age of progress in British Columbia.
The Beaver had known old Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River in the days when the word of Dr. John McLoughlin was law on the coast. She had carried James Douglas and Sir George Simpson on tours of inspection to the northern fur posts, and had entertained on her deck the Russian governor of Alaska at Sitka.
She had aided in the development of coal on Vancouver Island, and had seen the growth of Victoria from a wilderness to a capital city. She had been present at the proclamation of the colony of British Columbia, and had carried gold seekers to the Fraser River mines.
She had surveyed much of the BC coastline on behalf of the Admiralty, and she had seen the coming of the first transcontinental railway. She had lived her life to the full, and gave up her proud spirit with the arrival of a new age.
—from The Princess Story: A Century and a Half of West Coast Shipping (1974)
The Sinking of RMS Nascopie
Peter Pitseolak (1902–1973)
Like the ketch Nonsuch that first sailed into Hudson Bay in the years 1668–1669, the 2,500-ton Royal Mail Ship Nascopie was one of the most historic and celebrated ships of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Over 285 feet in length, the steamer-icebreaker Nascopie was designed and built in Wallsend on Tyne in 1911, and named for First Nations people of Quebec and Labrador. Between 1912 and 1947 she made thirty-four voyages into the Canadian Arctic. Toward the end of summer 1947 she struck an uncharted reef at the entrance to Cape Dorset harbour (Baffin Island), where she remained stranded for over two months. On 25 September she broke in half during a storm. Oral tradition among the Inuit has it that when the ship died that September, the old way of life in the North died with it. In the vernacular of that same oral tradition the Inuit story-teller and photographer Peter Pitseolak extols her place in the history of the North.
It was sad; that ship helped the Eskimo people. What it carried helped the people before we had the government. When it sank, we were really sorry.
When the Nascopie came there was always a lot to eat. The old cook used to feed the Eskimo people.
When the ship arrived we went on and worked for two or three days. Today everyone seems to hate the ships, but then we loved them. The Nascopie used to bring all the supplies for the store; if we hadn’t had the Nascopie there would have been no supplies. As soon as the ship arrived we ate. We ate outside; there was no other place. Those who couldn’t work would cook on the shore. They were also paid. The cook fed us. His name was Storekeeper; they used to call out, “Storekeeper!” Ahalona! He gave everything … corn beef, stew … everything. That cook loved to feed the Eskimo people.
In 1946 the old cook was replaced by another. The new cook did not feed the Eskimos. The Eskimo people felt unwanted. With the new cook, the Nascopie was changed. There seemed to be nothing to eat on board! I was the only one who could get food. The new cook invited me—but not the others.
The next year there was a new captain also and with the new captain the ship was lost. The Bay manager had radioed the ship’s captain that I should go down and meet the ship to pilot it into Cape Dorset. The captain said no. He thought he knew everything. If I had steered the ship, it would never have gone aground. I had been steering the ship for three or four years. The new captain did not want me to meet the ship …
That night, when the tides had risen and the ship had let loose its grip on the rocks, someone sent for me to come and help. Earlier that day my help had been refused; now, when it was too late, I was wanted.
On our way out to the ship we met a big barge full of kadluna [non-Inuit] heading for shore. It was full only of white men and they told us the ship had a big hole. I was the only person who heard this said—my companions missed it because of the noise of the motor. I told the kadluna in my boat that there was a hole in the Nascopie. Our boss, the Bay manager, did not want to go to the ship after I told him about the big hole. So I told him, “We must go; there are still people there—they are flashing lights because they want our help.” …
Of all the ships, the Nascopie was the most appreciated by the Eskimo people. The Nascopie’s old cook used to feed the Eskimos, and the Nascopie helped the Eskimo people by taking them along where they wanted to go. We were sorry when she sank. She carried many things to buy that were useful and helped us very much. Since the Nascopie sank, the ships that come are not so much appreciated. When the Nascopie could be seen in the distance, many people were happy.
The Nascopie did not wait for the okiak—the “time when everything is frozen.” By then she was no longer visible in the water.
—as told to Dorothy Eber in People from Our Side (1975)
A Seagoing Work of Art
David Rahn (1946– )
Norwegian immigrant Ed Wahl and his six sons developed one of the most successful wooden-boat yards on the BC coast. For sixty years, over three generations, as the family’s historian Ryan Wahl explains, “the name Wahl became synonymous with efficiency, quality and beauty.” Based in Prince Rupert, the family has produced altogether over one thousand boats—trollers, gillnetters and halibut boats alike. But the launching of their 40-foot troller Legacy in April 1990 marked the end of the era of large-scale wooden-boat building. From then on, metal and fibreglass vessels for both recreation and commerce became the industrial norm. Yet some argued that “tupperware and tin” could never compete with wood.
In the mid-twentieth century the West Coast fishing industry developed some classic wooden boat designs at a number of legendary boatyards, few of which were more highly esteemed than the Wahl family boatyard in Prince Rupert. Wahl boats set the standard by which fishermen judge all others. On the West Coast there is no higher praise for a commercial wooden boatbuilder than to have his work compared favourably to the Wahls’.
Wahl boats are graceful, lovely riding sea boats, functional as you could wish for; but fishermen love Wahl boats most for their beauty. You want to scrape and sand and renew the varnish and paint each season. You feel that you’re entrusted with the care of a masterpiece and letting the finish run down to craze and crack cannot be considered. Your rewards are those perfect, endless days riding groundswells on the nearest thing to perfection in wood you and the seabirds will ever see. Brace in the cockpit, sight down the glistening gumwood rail-cap from the checkers to the bow and watch the hull gracefully rise to the waves and fall back gently as it was meant to do, and the memory of those moments will outlast all the fish you’ll bring aboard.
These are wonderful ships, perfect for their place and time … a family legacy that lives on in the memories of West Coast fishermen lucky enough to have put to sea in a Wahl boat.
—foreword to Ryan Wahl, Legacy in Wood: The Wahl Family Boat Builders (2008)
Lured by a Dream
Philip Teece (1940– )
The “call of the sea” takes many forms: mentoring by seafaring families, fantasies of foreign travel, and the inexplicable attraction known quite simply as “sea fever.” Those who have taken up the sailor’s way offer other explanations as well. In the excerpt that follows, the author meditates on the moment when he decided to build the boat of his dreams, and set off to explore wherever winds and tide would take him. The instructive journey along unanticipated courses would take decades—and change his life.
I was standing on a cliff-top on a crisp, lucid April evening in 1966, watching the light change from gold to orange to dull red on the sea at dusk. As I stood lost in my usual daydream about the islands that had become mere shadowy smudges on the horizon, a portent occurred.
From somewhere in the bay behind me, a little sloop came gliding past the promontory, beating her way slowly out to sea against a light and fitful headwind. About eighteen feet in length, and yet obviously a proper seagoing yacht in miniature, she was ineffably perfect. Her seaward progress was graceful, unhurried; the dying breeze was barely sufficient to cause her reddish sails to swell and draw. Her silent, apparition-like presence on that otherwise deserted sea made her appear like an emanation of my own present mood—a fragment of my dream.
As she ghosted slowly past, her tan sails, backlit by the sunset glow, appeared on fire. A wind stirred, riffling the burnished surface of the sea, and the elegant little craft heeled, shouldering aside a tumbling bow wave. The two dark figures who crouched beside her helm were viewed in profile, their faces peering toward the dimming horizon. (Who were those two late-evening sailors of twenty years ago, and where are they now?)
The miniature sloop was, as I have said, perfect. I stood enthralled on the chilly headland, spellbound by the magical glow of her sails and the silent purpose in her long, unhurried outward tacks. Although the distant islands faded now behind a veil of smoke-like dusk, she seemed to continue on toward the blue-grey line upon which they lay.
Gradually the sun dropped further below the horizon, and the little ship’s sails dimmed to a pale silhouette. I watched her progress for a very long while, until finally distance and gathering darkness obscured, and eventually swallowed her altogether.
Although I was now very chilly externally, I strolled along the cliff path fired with a sudden sense of purpose, as though some decision had been made. I knew the time had come to lay hands on a quantity of necessary money, somehow, and to give my dream a tangible form. I was certain, too, what that tangible form would be, for the little tan-sailed vessel that had just vanished into the darkening mist had been a perfect vision of my future craft.
—from A Dream of Islands (1988)
A Man and His Boat
Sam McKinney (1927– )
Kea was the wooden sailboat in which Sam McKinney—former research associate at the Vancouver Maritime Museum—retraced Captain George Vancouver’s 1792 voyage of exploration through the Salish Sea. His justification for buying her is compelling.
Having explained the “why” of my voyage, I now invite you to step aboard my boat, Kea, and I will tell you the story of both of us. Pour yourself a cup of tea or a glass of rum, then let your eyes wander around the inside cabin of this 25-foot wooden boat. See how the light from the swinging kerosene lantern is reflected in the varnished mahogany of the cabin sides, curved roof beams and cupboard doors and in the soft glow of brass portholes. Around us, books on tide, navigation, maritime history and ocean voyages line the shelves over each bunk. Tucked away in crannies and drawers are heavy woollen sweaters, socks and gloves. By the companionway hangs rain gear, parkas, pants and wide-brimmed foul-weather hats. In the narrow recess of the fo’c’sle, bagged sails and coils of rope are hung from hooks. Ask me, and I can tell you what lies behind every closed cupboard and drawer: tools, sewing kits, spare blocks, bright shackles, binoculars, a brass foghorn, protractors, dividers and charts. You can tell by what’s around us that the boat and I are a matched pair, both of us on the downhill side of our prime and leaning toward the traditional way of things: caulked wooden planks, pine tar, diesel oil, woollen underwear, pipe smoke and Navy rum.
I bought this boat as a present to myself on my 70th birthday, bought it because I needed to break out from under a cloud of uselessness and boredom that hung over me. Such feelings, I found, came naturally with old age, along with the disgust I felt for the skinny, withered torso I would see in the mirror as I stepped from the shower, the fumbling for the wrong key at the front door and the lost hats, gloves and umbrellas I left behind in restaurants and stores. What were my alternatives? I could have joined an exercise class and fought back stiffness. Tied a string to my gloves. Grown a beard to hide the wrinkles. Call the cane a walking stick. Move to that retirement home in a place of sun that would be gated, guarded and gardened. A new career? Impossible. A hobby? How boring. I could have bought a new wardrobe, changed my image from drab sparrow-grey tweeds to something colourful and sporty to go along with the purchase of a red convertible car, one of those flashy imported models. But I am content with my one well-worn old wool jacket and I am determined to get 500,000 miles out of my old Volvo.
Around the house, I was only in her way. I cleaned the cat box, took out the garbage, lifted my feet when she vacuumed the rug and patiently pushed the cart behind her in the grocery store. And yet I led a good life: adored wife of 30 years, comfortable home, reasonable health and financial security. Why, then, that disease of longing for something else when, by all accounts, I should have been content with what I had? The answer was simple: because of who I am and how the person within me likes to live. So I began looking for a sailboat.
—from Sailing with Vancouver (2004)
Union Steamships
Beth Hill (1924–2007)
For the lonely settlements and logging camps of British Columbia’s Inside Coast, the ships of the Union Steamships provided a life-line with the outside world. Here Beth Hill briefly recalls the shipping company that once played so important a role in these isolated and widely dispersed communities—but was eventually left behind in the face of newer technology and shifting economic realities.
If there is a logo for the Inside Coast during the first half of the twentieth century, it would surely be the black-topped red funnel of the Union Steamships, and the leitmotiv would be the sound of their whistles. They were familiar family friends to the people who used them—Cutch, Capilano, Comox, Coquitlam, Camosun, Chilkoot, Cassiar, Chelohsin, Chilcotin, Cardena, Catala—each with her own personality and idiosyncrasies. The glamorous Cardena, on the company letterhead and the flagship for a time, was longest in service (1923–1959), with the Venture a close second (1911–1946). The Cassiar with her big handwheel like an old sailing ship, went into every camp as far as Queen Charlotte Sound. The loggers could wear their caulked boots on the Cassiar but not on any other ship. Altogether there were 51 ships in the Union Steamship fleet, at different times.
The company was established in 1889 by a small group of Vancouver businessmen. The first coastal steamer was the Cutch, pressed into service while three new steamers were being constructed: the Capilano, the Comox and the Coquitlam. The company survived the hard times of the First World War and had a second expansionist period during the 1920s, when the excursion business was developed … However, as early as 1926 the company’s annual report sounded a warning:
“Logging conditions continue uncertain and the company is by no means deriving the amount of revenue from this source as formerly. This is partly due to the fact that log production has been reduced and partly due to the changing conditions of the logging operations. The modern tendency is to mass production at specific points with the result that the scattered camps with the hand-logging system are being gradually eliminated.”
Already the life of the coast was beginning to ebb. Lester Peterson’s article “British Columbia’s Depopulated Coast” describes how increasing centralization of the logging industry was accompanied by the same trend in fishing. As steamship schedules were cut back, the number of homesteaders decreased, for they needed transportation for their vegetables, meats and dairy products. Some could not endure the loneliness. Many of the Indian people were moving to the cities, and the government encouraged isolated bands to join established settlements nearer urban centres, to simplify the provision of services. The thousands of cannery workers no longer moved into the area, a seasonal migration like the fish they once canned. New cargoes—pulp and wood chips—were efficiently moved by barges. Float-planes and new roads further eroded steamboat travel. By 1959 the remaining ships of the Union Steamship Company were sold, bringing to an end 70 years of service.
—from Upcoast Summers (1985)
Behind the Scenes
Robert D. Turner (1947– )
Over nearly a century, the Canadian Pacific operated steamships and motor vessels along the rugged, beautiful and hazardous Pacific Coast. Thousands of skilled, professional mariners, like Chief Engineer Bill Neilson, served on the Princesses and took them through some of the most difficult coastal waters in the world. At the same time, passenger services established the standards of their times. Maintaining the consistency of service that was so well remembered on the Coast Service reflected well on the officials of the steamship line and the officers and crew members of every one of the Princesses.
The CPR was renowned for its fine food and service; excellent catering was a hallmark of the company. The majority of the cooks who prepared the hundreds of thousands of meals on the Princesses were of Chinese decent. For many men, working on the Princesses was a lifetime career. Lam Sar Ning, a senior cook, for example, served on the boats for 43 years and Chief Cook John Kung, a native of Victoria, proudly received a gold pass from the company for 50 years of exemplary service. Long ago, that quiet gentleman showed me his pass and we talked about his days on the ships. He recalled starting in 1925 as a mess boy on the new Kathleen and later as a junior cook beginning his day at 5:30 a.m., with almost no time off, and his years as chief cook on the Motor Princess and later on the Kathleen and Marguerite when 12- to 13-hour days were still common. And of how he organized a meeting with the other senior cooks and management to negotiate for better working conditions, overtime and shorter shifts.
So many people worked behind the scenes: in purchasing, stores, accounts, or handling baggage; in repairing, painting and maintaining the ships; in coaxing aging boilers and engines along from deep in the bowels of an old Princess, or, in the early days, shovelling endless tons of coal in the suffocating heat of the boiler rooms; preparing wonderful meals in the hot kitchens; changing endless linens and cleaning staterooms, or dumping chamber pots; caring for a lost child or a young traveller making a steamship voyage without a parent; chipping ice from the decks; loading cargo at remote ports in the worst of weather; navigating through fog and Pacific storms; and on and on. Endless hours of endless chores.
My sadness is that we cannot remember them all individually. Their achievement was remarkable and the personality and affection that we so often attach to the beautiful steamships is in many ways a reflection of the people who brought them to life.
—from Those Beautiful Coastal Liners (2001)
Prayer for a Naval Ship
Seafaring tradition holds that all those who “go down to the sea in ships,” to borrow a phrase from Psalm 107 of the King James version of the Bible (1611), have always been God-fearing men. Indeed, this profound respect for the workings of the Divine throughout Creation has often been institutionalized. This was certainly the case in the founding of Canada’s navy in 1910, and in its regular use of Christian prayer on formal occasions both ashore and afloat. The Divine Service Book, from which the following prayer and its title are taken, reflects an ancient naval tradition, which regards a ship as essentially her crew. Hence praying for the crew is the same as praying for the vessel they animate, and which sustains their community.
A Prayer For the Ship: O Eternal Lord God, who hast united us as shipmates in the bond of fellowship; enable us to be worthy of those who have served before us; and grant us with a willing spirit to fulfil whatever duty may be laid upon us, that when our work on earth is over we may find our rest in thine eternal service, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
—Department of National Defence, from Divine Service Book for the Armed Forces (1950)
Recalling the Canadian Corvette
First conceived as a “Patrol Vessel, Whaler Type” the corvette was designed to meet the urgent needs of wartime navies caught off-guard by the rise of Nazi Germany. The dynamics of the ensuing Battle of the Atlantic in the years 1939–1945 involved rapidly evolving technology, tactics, experimentation and training. The corvette found itself in the eye of this storm. Designed for inshore duties, this highly manoeuvrable ship quickly took on the challenges of high-seas, antisubmarine, convoy-escort duties. Over two-hundred feet in length, and with a top speed of fifteen knots, she carried a variety of armament, and tackled enemy submarines in close-quarters combat. Constantly modified and updated throughout the war, this tough Canadian-built ship is now commemorated by the last remaining corvette, HMCS Sackville, in Halifax, a museum ship in the care of the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust.
The following two excerpts have been written by different authors. The first one shares the reflections of a Quebec barrister who, as a naval reservist, commanded the corvette HMCS Amherst at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. He focuses on the meaning of the ship for a generation of naval reservists. The second account, by two historians, sets this class of ship into its broader historical context.
Louis Audette (1907–1995)
The corvette was the backbone of the Canadian navy; it was the largest class of ships ever to serve in the Canadian navy and also the largest class of ships ever built in Canadian shipyards.
The Second World War gave rise to an extraordinary expansion in the Canadian navy; of the many thousands of Reserve officers and men who served in the war, few did not owe their early sea time at least in part to a corvette. The ships were marvels of seaworthiness and of personal discomfort; it must be remembered that they were designed before those at the top really gave adequate consideration to the needs of those at the bottom of the ladder.
For sheer worthiness, few ships have ever been better designed. Assigned to fight the U-boat menace, they were barely adequate in speed, their surface armament just met the needs of the moment, their anti-submarine Asdic equipment was barely adequate and their living conditions made heroes of men destined to quite other roles in life.
Whatever their faults and qualities, these fine little ships were productive of an esprit de corps which may not have existed elsewhere. Because the crews were numerically smaller than in frigates, destroyers and bigger ships, they were more closely knit and better known to their officers.
Today there remains only Sackville in Halifax to remind the world of a great past. Nevertheless, throughout the land, many men now old will keep in mind the days they spent in corvettes in harsher times.
Ken Macpherson (1926– ) and Marc Milner (1954– )
No other warship is so intimately connected with Canada’s naval heritage as the ubiquitous corvette of the Second World War. It was, after all, the largest class of vessels ever to serve in the Canadian navy: 123 in various types. It was also the largest class of ships ever constructed in Canadian shipyards: 121 built between 1940 and 1944. These distinctions alone qualify the corvette for special status. It is probably true to say as well—although it has never been determined—that more Canadians went to sea in corvettes than in any other class of ship.
Perhaps more important than mere quantity was the quality of service provided to the nation by its corvettes. Corvettes carried Canada’s naval effort through the darkest days of the Second World War. Without them the Battle of the Atlantic, the single most important campaign of the war, might well have gone the other way. As Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy observed, “The Canadian corvettes solved the problem of the Atlantic convoys.” In doing so the corvettes carved out for Canada and its navy a major role in the North Atlantic campaign, the only theatre of war ever commanded by a Canadian, and including primary responsibility—by 1944—for the close escort of the main convoys upon which the war effort in Europe depended. No other Canadian service achieved so much during the war, and much of that accomplishment was due to eighty corvettes of the first two building programmes that gave the RCN a central role in the difficult years of 1941–1943.
It is also true that the corvette fleet reflected all the strengths and weaknesses of the Canada of its day. In 1939 Canada had the industrial strength and population to build and man simple auxiliary war vessels in considerable numbers. Rudimentary weapons were available from First World War reserves, or from surplus American and British production. But the war which these ships and men were called upon to fight was a modern, highly sophisticated one. Canada lacked the high-technology industry needed to provide the latest weapons and sensors for modern war. For the most part, though, corvettes did their job just by being there, providing the escorts upon which the whole system of trade defence was built. In the process they laid the foundations of the modern Canadian navy.
—from Ken Macpherson and Marc Milner, with foreword by Louis Audette, Corvettes of the Royal Canadian Navy, 1939–1945 (1993)
Rowboat
Kenneth Macrae Leighton (1925–1998)
The author described his wooden yacht as a replica of a “jollyboat,” or a “ship’s boat,” such as Captain William Bligh sailed in his epoch-making voyage after the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. A finely wrought replica of eighteenth-century craftsmanship, the reproduction was built in the 1990s by naval architect Greg Foster in his boat yard in Whaler Bay, Galiano Island, BC. The author rowed it over five hundred miles from Vancouver to Prince Rupert.
My boat is made of red and yellow cedar. There is a small foredeck and an absolutely minuscule deck behind the sternsheets. Both give some shelter for my gear but absolutely none for me, of course. There is a single, unstayed mast for a standing lug sail and a tiny jib. If you don’t know the lug sail, it is an almost square sail such as the conventional old sailing ships carried in the days of Nelson. It hangs from a pole called the yard and is, as we say, loose-footed. In other words, there is no boom such as you see on a modern, fore- and aft- rigged yacht. Nothing to strike the head of the unwary helmsman. The lug sail is nearly as old as time and is about the safest rig you can think of.
Morag Anne sails well before the wind but rather poorly otherwise which is what you would expect from a boat with neither centreboard nor keel.
For those readers who know the lug sail, this is boring information. I must point out, however, that sailing is pretty much a luxury and a bonus on Morag Anne. It’s great to get the sail up but it isn’t often that the wind, if there is any, is coming from the right direction. That’s just a fact of life on this coast. I can’t say it bothers me much. I like to row.
When the boat is fully loaded for cruising, I am moving about six or seven hundred pounds. This is the reason that I make no more than two nautical miles an hour in calm conditions. With a following tide or wind I do better than this; when either or both are against me, much less. If the wind is strong from ahead or if the tidal stream against me is more than two knots there is nothing for it but to anchor and wait for things to change. This sort of thing is what makes patience both a virtue and a necessity in small boat cruising. It is, as they say, good for the soul.
I have absolute trust in my boat’s seaworthiness. Greg Foster built her with loving care, as he does all his work. I can’t count the times I have been asked if I built her myself. Each time my reply is the same. I couldn’t possibly build anything that would come close to his standard. He is a master shipwright and a philosopher in wood …
Some description is necessary concerning what may be called the domestic arrangements. During the day the tent lies under the thwart. In preparation for the night it is draped over the mainsail yard which is attached to the mast and points aft, four feet or so above the deck, the free end supported by a line from the masthead. The front of the tent is wrapped around the mast, the after end is open. Spreaders, positioned fore and aft and fastened to the gunwales, hold it taut and away from the sides of the boat. The thwart is removed and I have a living space of five by nine feet. Who could ask for more?
This may seem complicated but a more simple arrangement would be hard to discover. This is not to say that putting up the tent in the rain after a hard day of rowing, in a choppy sea, with wet decks and numb fingers is a piece of cake or a lot of fun. But if something like this bothers you a great deal all I can say is small, open boat cruising may not be for you.
I cook on a small camp stove but, truth to tell, I don’t do much more than boil water, for my diet is simple and I am no cook. I am well satisfied with Japanese noodles, Cream of Wheat with added raisins and homemade granola. I drink a lot of tea and coffee which taste better at sea, in the open air, than anywhere else in the world.
The head or toilet is, of course, a bucket.
—from Oar & Sail: An Odyssey of the West Coast (1999)
Home to Rest
F.S. Farrar (1901–1955)
Museum ships are an integral part of Canada’s maritime heritage. One thinks of the World War II corvette HMCS Sackville in Halifax, the wartime destroyer HMCS Haida in Hamilton, Ontario, the experimental hydrofoil HMCS Bras d’Or at the Musée Maritime du Québec (L’Islet-sur-Mer), and the Cold War era submarine HMCS Onondaga at Rimouski (Pointe-au-Père). The Pacific Coast boasts an equally famous ship: the RCMP’s legendary St. Roch, now housed in the Vancouver Maritime Museum. It was built in 1928 by Burrard Drydock Shipyard of North Vancouver, with an especially strengthened hull for Arctic service. Commanded by Inspector Henry Larsen, she was the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage from west to east (1940–1942). In 1950 she became the first ship to circumnavigate North America. Her first mate, RCMP Sgt. Ted Farrar, concludes his account of these voyages with a fond farewell to a valiant vessel.
And now, my tale is ended. So too, have the exploits of a gallant Canadian ship.
No longer will she charge unflinching against the fury of an Arctic gale, beneath a torrent of freezing rain slashing against her ports and cutting into the raw, red faces of the men who loved her. Never again will her rudder be twisted forward by cruel-faced growlers against her squat, round hull. For her, no more lonely nights amid grinding ice floes. And no longer will the men of the North, watching from the shores below their far-flung detachments, see the once familiar sight of the two tall masts and crow’s-nests of the little supply boat rounding an ice-bound point for a brief but happy reunion. The St. Roch has gone home to rest.
In the fall of 1954, after a 91-day passage she returned via the South to her birthplace, Vancouver. She was accorded a jubilant welcome as she sailed in escorted by a later Arctic victor, HMCS Labrador. An honour unique in the history of Canadian ships awaited her.
Through public subscription the good people of Vancouver purchased the St. Roch from the Force. She is to be given a permanent berth at Kitsilano Point near the heart of the great western port. There she will be preserved in the tradition of Amundsen’s Gioa, or even Nelson’s Victory. In the years to come the St. Roch will watch quietly over the waters of English Bay, protected and undisturbed … May the wholesome washing of the timeless sea sweeten her solitude.
—from Arctic Assignment: The Story of the St. Roch (1955)