Canadian Coast Guard
<% else %>A History of the Canadian Coast Guard and Marine Services
by Thomas E. Appleton
British Columbia
The story of Captain George Vancouver RN, in command of HM Ships Discovery and Chatham while on a voyage to the northwest coast of America to acquire a more complete knowledge of the area, is one of the great chapters in eighteenth century navigation. Vancouver had learned his business under James Cook, brightest star in a galaxy of navigators in the golden age of terrestrial accomplishment, and his activities are linked with those of his Spanish counterpart in the rivalry then prevailing between Britain and Spain, Don Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, Capitan de Navio de la R. Armada.
Both men were interesting examples of contrasting types, each in his way the best of an enlightened age. Vancouver, the hard practical seaman and ships navigator, was reared in an exacting professional school under the acknowledged master of the art; Quadra, a Spanish aristocrat, with the sensitive eyes and enigmatic smile of a born patrician, was firmly on the quarterdeck of a royal and ancient service. Strangely enough, despite the rivalries of their respective governments and a traditional national hesitation, both warmed to each other with a real humanity in the lonely conditions of sea service in one of the remotest spots on earth.
Perhaps there had been a lingering sense of former international acquaintance; in the opening years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England, a Quadra had been Spanish Ambassador in London.
In a mutual recognition of their friendship they named the principal island of their joint endeavours "The Island of Quadra and Vancouver"; it is a pity that time and linguistic convenience has ordained the simpler title of Vancouver Island, and that this reminder of a civilized approach to national rivalries, all too rare before or since, has been diminished in a country with some pride in the delicacies of inter-national diplomacy. Fortunately, although dropped from the name of the Island, the personal association is preserved in the weather ships Quadra and Vancouver.
In 1866 Vancouver's Island, as it was called for a while, united with the mainland territory to form the Colony of British Columbia. This remote settlement on the shores of the Pacific was entirely cut off from Canada geographically, and had evolved in a political climate far removed from the early struggles of British North America in the East. Small wonder then that the formidable barriers of the Rockies and the prairies, the most tangible obstacles in the way of Confederation, were not the only ones.
A circuitous route from Canada to British Columbia had been made possible in 1869 by the completion of a railway across the United States, as a result of which San Francisco became the focal point of rail and sea traffic on the Pacific coast and passengers and goods for the colony were shipped from that terminal port. Otherwise, with the exception of fishing and sealing schooners and a handful of steamers, the commerce of British Columbia was sustained by sailing ship to Europe, or to the eastern seaboard of the United States, by way of the long and stormy sea road around Cape Horn.
When British Columbia entered Confederation on July 20, 1871, there existed the bare minimum of aids to navigation, sufficient only to point out one landfall from the fogs and currents of the Pacific Ocean, and one handrail to the port approaches of the naval base at Esquimalt. On the American side of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the United States had established lights at Cape Flattery and New Dungeness in 1857, while the colony had lighted Fisgard and Race Rocks in 1861; there was also a lightship marking the shoals at the entrance to the Fraser River.
The steamer Sir James Douglas, built in 1864 to attend on the dredgers working in Victoria Harbour, was used to service these lights and became the first light station and buoy tender on the West coast. She was a small screw vessel, built of wood in Victoria, with an engine shipped out from England. Like the early government steamers on the St. Lawrence, the Sir James Douglas carried mails, passengers and freight for much of the time and was in demand for the conveyance of officials on surveying and inspection tours.
When the Department first took over the care and management of the British Columbia lights and buoys, it was difficult to make arrangements from far distant Ottawa and, for the first year, the Surveyor Generals Office of the Province was asked to act, in locum tenens, until a marine agent could be appointed. The Colonial Government had previously employed an inspector of boilers, but there had been no steamship inspection, nor could there be any until the Canadian act was amended to include the new Province. When this was done, the marine agent assumed responsibility for the combined charges of inspector of lights and inspector of steamboats.
Steamboat inspection, when it became mandatory with the extension of the Canadian Act in 1873, posed something of a problem for the authorities in British Columbia. In the first place, it was an innovation and, although there were not very many seagoing steamers, there were a number of river steamers, some of them using relatively high pressure steam. Although most were deficient under the new regulations, some of the more recent ones had been built with the act in mind or had been brought up to date by their owners; but the prospect of withdrawal of the others would have inhibited the entire system of transportation in the Province. With a realistic wisdom, which has since become a way of life in Canadian marine administration, the Department of Marine and Fisheries introduced the new legislation in a reasonable way, the act was held in abeyance for a year, and ship owners were given a necessary period of grace in which to bring their vessels to the required standards of safety.
But the greatest step forward in the affairs of British Columbia was to come with the completion of the transcontinental railway in 1885. When the Department of Railways and Canals achieved the zenith of their ambitions in 1887, the year which saw the first passenger train from Montreal roll into the station at Vancouver, a new world of development began to open up, and the Province could look forward to a growing volume of immigrants, capital and markets. Meanwhile, if we compare the present day jet travel to the Pacific coast with the difficulties which were implicit in the period of fifteen years which had elapsed between the establishment of the Victoria Agency and the coming of the Canadian Pacific Rail-way, we can only marvel not that "it was difficult to exercise much supervision", but that it was possible to accomplish any significant rapport between the administrators in Ottawa and their representatives in the field.
The Marine and Fisheries vessels Quadra, Newington and Leebro at the agency in James Bay, Victoria, circa 1910.
By the late eighties, an increasing volume of work, accompanying the building and maintenance of additional light stations, had become too much for the best efforts of the little Sir James Douglas. As a result of repeated complaints that she should not be expected to handle passengers as well as light station supply, she had been relieved of much of the straight commercial work but, even so, the care of lights from Nanaimo to Cape Beale, by way of the Gulf Islands and all other stations between, required a more effective support and, repeating the experience of the early marine service on the St. Lawrence, it was decided to build a thoroughly up-to-date steel vessel, especially designed for the lighthouse service. The result of this decision was the Quadra, a ship which is remembered to this day; she went to the ship breakers about 1930 after a long and varied career.
A scene aboard the Quadra, early 1900's.
The group includes clergymen and Northwest Mounted Police members as well as men and boys.
They were awaiting Captain Walbran on a matter of public interest.
(B.C. Archives)
The C.G.S. Quadra arrived at Esquimalt in January 1892 under the command of Captain John T. Walbran, after an eighty day passage from Scotland where she had been built. To save coal, which his ship consumed at the rate of nine tons per day at her full speed of just over eleven knots, Captain Walbran made sail whenever he could; the Quadra experienced much bad weather on the trip out and, even with her steadying rig as a fore and aft schooner, life was rather uncomfortable at times. Walbran, who had recently joined the Department of Marine and Fisheries, and had been sent to Paisley with the chief engineer of the Sir James Douglas to take delivery, remained with the new ship and became a distinguished officer of the Department. Like his predecessor on the St. Lawrence station, Dr. Pierre Fortin of the schooner La Canadienne, Captain Walbran became one of the principal agents of law and order in a scattered marine community, and the Quadra and her master were often dispatched to investigate matters which would now come under local authority or some other government department. As a magistrate, the captain of the Quadra carried a police constable as part of the ships complement, and the ship was fitted for the administration of justice and police court procedure, even to the provision of cell accommodation for convicted prisoners in transit to more permanent quarters. Apart from naval ships of the Pacific squadron stationed at Esquimalt, which were not available for civil purposes, the Quadra was the only seagoing government ship on the coast and, as such, she was often used for official tours by distinguished state visitors, as well as for the day to day light station and buoy work and the protection of the fisheries.
Meanwhile, the care of aids to navigation in Northern British Columbia had been straining the resources of the Victoria Agency. The fleet was increased by the purchase of the Newington in 1908 and the building of the Estevan in 1912, but the passage of five hundred miles, from the agency base at Victoria to the northern limits of jurisdiction, was a handicap to efficient operation. The coming of the Estevan was a great help, of course; still in service at the time of writing, the Estevan became a legend, even in her early days. She was built at Collingwood, Ont., and, like the Quadra, made the outward passage to the Pacific coast by the Straits of Magellan. The annual report of the Marine Department for 1913 records that:
CGS Estevan
Brand spanking new, the Estevan is shown at Collingwood in 1912 as she prepares for the
long voyage to Victoria, B.C. The first Simcoe, which was lost with all hands in 1917, may
be seen in dock.
(Collingwood Shipyards)
"her staterooms and cabins are panelled in yellow pine, enamelled white, and all the officers and seamen quarters are finished in the latest approved manner".
With the coming of modern ships, the service now required an extension of base facilities and, in 1913, a sub-agency was constructed at Prince Rupert. In 1920, Prince Rupert was raised to the status of an independent agency.
Fisheries work on the Pacific coast was closely connected with the sealing industry. In the annual report for 1874, the Department of Marine and Fisheries recorded the following rather charming note:
"A certain kind of seal is found at the mouth of the Fraser River. In summer it is constantly to be met with drifting down with the current, seated on a log of wood. Another variety of this animal visits the coast at Vancouver Island, and is shot by the Indians who trade in sealskins".
It was the latter variety, of oceanic habits, which quickly evinced a wider interest; if ever there was an attractive bait for the predatory instinct, this was it, and a demand for fine furs, never out of fashion, supplied the incentive.
Just as the presence of cod had acted as a catalyst for adventurous spirits on the Atlantic coast in the early days of Canadian settlement, so did the valuable pelt of the seal attract the hardy seamen of the Pacific coasts of Canada, the United States, Russia and Japan, to the seal breeding grounds, ranging to the Bering Sea and the Japanese coast. Owing to the distance from home of the fishing grounds, and to the international interests which were affected, the protection of these fisheries was beyond the scope of the Department, and ships of the Pacific squadron of the Royal Navy worked with warships of the other interested countries, not without some serious incidents at times, when the schooners of one nation were boarded from the cruisers of another. In 1911, however, the International Pelagic Sealing Treaty was signed to prevent complete decimation of the species. Industrial fishing in North Pacific waters was prohibited to the ships of the participating countries and the Indian was restricted to catching seals by means of canoe and harpoon only. After this date, the Victoria sealing fleet, which had numbered some seventy schooners at the height of the industry, fell into disuse. The Department of Marine and Fisheries now became responsible for the protection of the seal against poaching by commercial fishermen and our ships were frequently employed in this service as well as in the enforcement of fishery regulations in the great salmon and halibut industries of the British Columbia coast.
The Northern Light nipped in the ice-floes of the Strait of
Northumberland.
(Webster Collection, New Brunswick Museum)
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