There’s always been this common misconception out among the reading public that being a writer is primarily a solitary endeavour. While this generally may hold true for fiction, it’s certainly not the case for non-fiction and especially not for those of us intent on working up a comprehensive history book. Since I’ve been fascinated with our local maritime culture over the course of my life living here along the northwest coast of the Americas, and having dedicated myself to researching and writing about it for some thirty years now, this required countless hours spent in many a museum, archival collection and library.
Fortunately, having lived on Vancouver Island and, in particular, having grown up in Victoria, I’ve been particularly blessed with the fact that the British Columbia Archives is so readily accessible right next to our provincial museum. Over the years, I became one of the regulars and have gotten to know the institution’s staff by first names. They always have been more than gracious running down particular records for me. Then there’s our Maritime Museum of BC, which is temporarily and very conveniently located just the other side of the Empress Hotel from BC Archives. Here too the museum’s library and archives have been manned by excellent staff. But just as important are their dedicated and knowledgeable volunteers, many retired with a background of working on the water most of their lives.
Meanwhile the Vancouver Maritime Museum (VMM) has also been blessed with particularly helpful staff and volunteers over the years. When I first walked in the door back in the late 1980s, I was met by the curator at the time, a most charming gentleman who proceeded to take me under his wing. Regardless that I had virtually no background in researching maritime history and was a stranger, Leonard McCann led me around the library and familiarized me with all its holdings. Len also was kind enough to reassure me that my project, identifying and researching the history of the fifteen scrapped ships beached at the Comox Logging & Railway Company’s log dump at Royston, BC, to serve as a breakwater, was indeed a worthy project.
Just out the door from the VMM is the City of Vancouver Archives, which also proved a veritable treasure house. Sometime in the past, a collection of primary documents was delivered up to their collection by the Vancouver Maritime Museum (prior to the arrival of Leonard McCann). These include original logbooks and “Agreement or Articles and Account of Crew,” the legal document that crew were required to sign before a ship departed on a voyage. From these, I was able to track the movements of the mother ship Malahat throughout her rum running years and, what was particularly exciting, check out the actual handwritten entries of crewmembers who signed on. Along with primary source material, many a photograph of a vessel that was involved in the rum running trade is held in our archives and museum collections and one can either inspect the original prints themselves at these facilities or, better yet, view them online. Also, another great source of early photos proved to be Vancouver Public Library’s Special Collections. It should also be mentioned that the Greater Victoria Public Library, Alberni District Historical Society and both the Salt Spring Island and Oak Bay archive collections proved rewarding in running down particular threads of information or photographs.
Other institutions farther afield included the Prince Rupert City and Regional Archives, where I was able to access material on what was going down just a little to the northwest outside Alaskan waters. Meanwhile, just across the line in Seattle is the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, of which I’ve been a member for some twenty years, home to a very extensive collection of coastal maritime history. But where I really struck pay dirt was in San Francisco. What with it being a major Pacific port going back to the 1849 gold rush years, it is home to what is probably one of the best maritime history centres on the planet, the J. Porter Shaw Library down on the city’s maritime park. But beside that, there’s the city’s public library just off Market Street, which is home to San Francisco’s History Center. Here I had the most enjoyable time scanning microfilm of the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner newspapers, whose reporters kept the American public very much entertained with news of the latest capture of a Canadian mother ship off the California coast and the subsequent trial of its owners, captains and crew.
Overall, newspapers of the day proved a particularly valuable resource and I spent many an hour flipping through microfilm of the Vancouver Sun and Province and Victoria’s Daily Times and Colonist in the Victoria Public Library and down at BC Archives. By the early 1920s, a particularly excellent source of information proved to be the Colonist’s Marine & Transportation page. With its updates on the arrival of large freighters from Scotland, England and Antwerp loaded down with the finest in Scotch, rye and champagne as well as the latest news on the mother ships sitting off the Oregon and California coast, the message was made most apparent that British Columbia’s liquor export industry was generally an above-board and legal undertaking during the US Prohibition years.
A special mention should be made of an incredible online resource easily accessible to all who have an interest in learning about British Columbia’s floating heritage. This is the fabulous website created by John MacFarlane, nauticapedia.ca. It was here I would often begin my investigations and was able to get a good handle on where and when a particular vessel was built, its specifications and the various owners whose hands she passed through over the years. With this rudimentary information, I could work on chasing down both primary and secondary documentation and fill in the story of a vessel’s years in the trade more efficiently.
But above all, I can’t stress enough how deeply indebted I am to that handful of souls who finally put aside the brotherhood’s creed, “Don’t never tell nobody nothing, nohow” later in life and opened up to share their stories. Fortunately, along with Fraser “Sparky” Miles’s autobiography, Hugh Garling wrote a series of articles on rum running which ran in Harbour & Shipping magazine from late 1988 through early 1991; Jim Stone worked up a biography of his father, Captain Stuart Stone; while Marion Parker and Robert Tyrrell did a fine job of getting rum runner Johnny Schnarr’s most entertaining stories of his adventures out in book form.
Sparky Miles’s son, Jim, deserves recognition too, for being particularly generous in sharing his father’s photo collection with this writer. Then there was another of my mentors, Fred Rogers, who spent many years of his life diving and recording countless shipwrecks along the entire coast of BC, and then went to some effort to work up his findings and publish them all in two books: Shipwrecks of British Columbia and More Shipwrecks of British Columbia. I’m especially indebted to Fred since it was he who gifted me his entire collection of old Harbour & Shipping magazines which just so happened to include Hugh Garling’s articles. Another gentleman who was also of particular help with Hugh Garling’s photos was Bill Singer, owner of the Rumrunner Pub, located down along the beachfront of Sidney, BC, which just happens to overlook Haro Strait, an active marketplace during the rum running years. Then there was my good bud Doug Kerr, who devoted many hours to cleaning up many of the old photos presented in this book. Another individual who was generous sharing photographs was Valerie Allen, who forwarded the photo collection belonging to her grandfather Fred Sailes, an engineer aboard Malahat.
Surprisingly, the first one to open up and share his take on all that went down was none other Captain Charles Hudson, managing director of Consolidated Exporters Corporation Limited, the big liquor export consortium that operated out of Vancouver while Prohibition remained in force throughout the US. Captain Hudson was most gracious and very open to being interviewed by Imbert Orchard and Ron Burton, and today these oral history tapes are available at the BC Archives. And as for the actual participants themselves, who were crewing aboard the mother ships, fast shore boats, packers and basically anything that floated that they could make a good dollar with, a handful stepped forward in later years and allowed themselves to be interviewed and recounted their most fascinating adventures.
My apologies to all those others who provided me with snippets of information or other leads worth checking out, but to credit them all would have required tacking on another page or two to my acknowledgments. Still, special mention should be made of Ken Gibson in Tofino who kept me well informed about a number of the characters over on the west coast of the island who became quite prominent in the trade; my mentor, Frank Clapp, who is always a stickler for primary documentation; and Ron Greene, a most diligent researcher and writer who has served as my man on the ground in the BC Archives. And, last but certainly not the least, my partner, Paula Wild, who has faithfully served as my in-house advisor, mentor and editor over the years.
“History … is not a re-creation of the past. It’s an assessment of the past based on documents provided by people in archives and museums who will answer your letters.”