Site Navigation:

Site Search:

Looking for more? Search for Articles on the Nauticapedia Site.

Arthur Francis MacFarlane

Arthur F. MacFarlane

Arthur was born in Dublin Ireland on 19/11/1889. He landed, from Ireland, with his family at Quebec City on 26/06/1898 traveling in the S.S. Californian. Around 1909 Arthur Francis MacFarlane was running a hand logging operation on the shores of Saanich Inlet. After falling the trees he would assemble small booms and deliver them to Sayward's Mill at Mill Bay BC or to the Sidney BC mill around the end of the Saanich Peninsula.

He found that the contractor who did their towing was very unreliable. In c1910 Major James Francis Lenox MacFarlane purchased a small tug, the Victory, for his two sons Arthur F. & Fred R. MacFarlane. They used the Victory to tow logs and scows around the Mill Bay area. Victory was a small wood-hulled vessel. The brothers sold the vessel. She was destroyed by fire prior to the First World War.

He served with the 5th Regiment Canadian Garrison Artillery before the First World War. He served in the Artillery in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1914 and was demobilized in 1919. He served as a Private in the 54th Battalion, 10th Brigade Artillery in the First World War 1916-1919. He was a Marine Engineer.He operated the tug Victory with his brother Fred in Mill Bay in 1908. He married Annie Elaine Hill on 28/02/1926. He was the father of Douglas MacFarlane. He owned the tug Swiftsure II.

Arthur MacFarlane retired from marine life in 1947 after selling the Swiftsure II. He undertook a number of business ventures in Sooke BC before his retirement. He died on 13/08/1965 at age 76 only 5 weeks after his older brother Fred. His only son, Douglas MacFarlane owned and operated several small tugs in and around Sooke Harbour between 1955-1965 towing logs for Lamford Forest Products. He died at Victoria BC on 13/08/1965.

Vessels Owned: Victory - (with Frederick Randolph MacFarlane)
Wabash - 1910 (with Frederick Randolph MacFarlane) J.W.P. - 1929

References: John D.S. Henderson (Personal Communication 14/10/1999)
Personal Communication (Conversation John MacFarlane - George R. MacFarlane) 1992

To quote from this article please cite:

MacFarlane, John M. (2012) Arthur Francis MacFarlane. Nauticapedia.ca 2012. http://nauticapedia.ca/Articles/MacFarlane_Arthur1.php

Nauticapedia

Site News: April 25, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,359 vessel histories (with 15,634 images and 13,293 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).

In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!

My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.

© 2002-2023