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Vessels Built by S. Madill Ltd.

compiled by John M. MacFarlane 2015

David Hill–Turner states "Sam Madill moved from Manitoba to British Columbia after Wthe First World War. A blacksmith by trade, he set up his own company in the early 1920s. After the Second World War, he bought a shipyard and went into producing small tugs and boom boats until the 1960s. They are best known internationally, however, for their mobile spars and yarders that were used in the forest industry. Norm Madill,Sam’s son,was one of the first certified stick welders in BC. He departed Nanaimo c.1964 in a former missionary boat, built himself a steel yacht in Holland and sailed for many years. Chuck Madill managed the company."

Author’s Note: This is a partial list (work in progress).

Vessel Images: Can you help us fill gaps in the vessel images in the database? If you have pictures of missing vessels that you have taken and would be willing to contribute to the database to make it more complete all our users would be very grateful. Please send them to admin(at)nauticapedia.ca

Note to Reader: Vessel names containing Roman numerals in parentheses (e.g. Floater (II)) indicates more than one vessel in the database with the same name. The numerals in parentheses are NOT part of the vessel name but are used to distinguish one vessel from another in the database.

To quote from this article please cite:

MacFarlane, John M. (2015) Vessels Built by S. Madill Ltd. Nauticapedia.ca 2015. http://nauticapedia.ca/Articles/Vessel_Builders_Madill.php?Page=6

Site News: April 24, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,289 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.

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