This year’s Heritage Week theme was Heritage Afloat.
New Westminster has, from its earliest days in the mid-1800s, witnessed countless vessels of many styles, modes of propulsion, varieties of cargo, functionality and storylines.
Many people enjoy the “snagpuller” Samson V, now a maritime museum moored at Westminster Quay, linking back through the four other Samsons to the 1880s. The story of the HMS Plumper, a British Naval survey ship, was of an early vessel on the coast and into the Fraser. It is fascinating to imagine her sitting in the river off today’s Sapperton Landing Park, carrying out her surveys and soundings, numbers that are still seen on charts.
Others find ferries more interesting. The first to cross the river here was the K de K, followed by the Surrey, both of which were replaced by a series of bridges. Who remembers seeing the B.C. Ferries’ Queen of New Westminster sitting at the central dock in the Royal City after a major refit in the 1970s?
There were also freighters that carried the name New Westminster, via the City of New Westminster, as well as a flower-class corvette, HMCS New Westminster, in the Royal Canadian Navy that served in the Second World War. A set of freighters built around the same time had a number of “park” ships with local name connections, including the Queen’s Park, Tipperary Park and Sapperton Park.
The D.L. Clinch, a sailing ship, was honoured by the community when it sailed in late 1859 with a cargo of wood and cranberries. This ship went down in New Westminster’s history as the first to leave the port with cargo for a foreign destination.
A ship that was a familiar sight on the river for many years from about 1918 to the mid-1960s, was the rail car carrier, SS Canora. Many people have personal stories about this ship and its travel between the Fraser River’s Port Mann, Canadian National rail yards, and its initial destination of Patricia Bay on the Saanich Peninsula on Vancouver Island.
Any list of prominent maritime connections locally must include Captain William Irving, a leader in the sternwheeler industry in early B.C., whose family home in New Westminster is a proud, renowned, riverboat captain’s Victorian house, open to the public.
Irving had many paddlewheelers in his day, and a story from June of 1863 about the sternwheel steamer Reliance offers a glimpse of the early trade. At Emory Creek on the Fraser, between Hope and Yale, high water often created a bar that blocked vessels. Captain Irving challenged this bar and won, and the community celebrated.
The New Westminster Historical Society gathering, on Wednesday, March 19, starting at 7:30 p.m. in the New Westminster Public Library auditorium, will feature lots more Heritage Afloat stories and images – join us.
