Site Navigation:

Site Search:

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

The Hot Springs Cove Story

Book Cover

Cover of the New Book (Photo from the Michael Kaehn collection.)

Michael Kaehn has produced a combination ’insiders story‘ and guidebook to the fabled Hot Springs Cove on Vancouver Island’s West Coast. The site is a little out of the way but many people who have never been there have heard about it and its founder Ivan Clarke (Kaehn’s grandfather). The site is protected now as Maquinna Marine Provincial Park, a place of special significance and historical importance.

The book has been carefully researched from family archives and memories and the whole story is generously shared with the reading public. Just published in 2019 by Harbour Publishing it is easy and enjoyable to read – each chapter revealing the detail of life on the early remote west coast like few other sources. Life was not easy and it was definitely different from that of someone living in more populated areas. Dependent on the sea for supplies and customers its definitely a marine history story.

I particularly am fascinated by the story because in the 1930s my grandfather (a tug boater) broke his leg and recuperated with daily plunges in the hot pool. But the book tells a broader story of settlement, surviving the depression, wartime service, transition into modern times and the establishment of the marine park. You may never visit but this is the book to do some serious armchair exploring - a great summer book.

It available directly from the publishers or through better bookstores in your community. I highly recommend it.


Nauticapedia

Site News: May 07, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,798 vessel histories (with 15,646 images and 13,431 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