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Companies
The DeKleer Brothers: Builders of Fraser Sailboats and Endurance 35s
While the history of wooden boats has been comprehensively chronicled from the earliest prehistoric dugouts to 20th century fishing boats, tugs and yachts, the same cannot be said of fibreglass boats. For two to three decades fibreglass boat building was a thriving cottage industry on Canada’s west coast. Arie and Len DeKleer developed an enduring fleet of yachts.
The People’s Steam Navigation Company
For a short time this company competed for dominance on the passenger run from Victoria BC to Nanaimo BC only to be put out of business by the E & N Railway.
Yarrows Ltd.
Once a major employer on Esquimalt Harbour this company passed out of existence in the 1990s. Building naval and merchant vessels they were a scion of the great British ship builders.
MacFarlane Brothers Towing
The history of a pioneer west coast tug boat family and the vessels that they owned and operated over nearly a 100 year span in the forest and fisheries towing industries.
Capital Iron and Metals Ltd.
Today’s popular Victoria BC department store had beginnings as a ship breaker and scrap metal dealer. Moving slowly from that to surplus marine equipment sales to hardware to a fully fledged department store is part of British Columbia's maritime heritage.
Site News: December 21, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,824 vessel histories (with 16,274 images and 13,929 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).
Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 45,000 processed so far this year (2024).
The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3996 images).
Thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of vessel histories in the database. Ray has been documenting the ships of Vancouver Harbour for more than 60 years.
Thanks to contributor Mike Rydqvist McCammon for the hundreds of photos he has contributed to illustrate British Columbia’s floating heritage.
My very special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.