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Workboats For the World
by Robert Allan 2023
Workboats For the World)
Robert Allan, the eponymous third generation British Columbia naval–architect and proprietor of Robert Allan Ltd. has written the story of his Vancouver ship design firm. An unusual Canadian story of three generations of Robert Allans (all naval architects) who have emerged as world leaders in tugboat design.
Co–authored by the prolific and talented Peter Robson the book is a massive 590 pages. The two authors laboured over the book for several years to ensure its completeness and accuracy. It is a fascinating read, rich with detail and anecdotes, and encyclopedic in its coverage of a huge personal and corporate success story. It is highly readable and beautifully designed and richly illustrated (in both colour and B&W on almost every page. Rarely is a book published on the Canadian nautical industry that is so rich in detail and also so readable.
The book is not just about the hundreds of vessels designed by the firm but also about the founder, the owners and the staff who have worked together to make it such a global success. Published by Harbour Publishing it is a book which should be in the library of every enthusiast of nautical history.
Site News: March 24, 2025
ANOTHER MILESTONE REACHED
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 95,326 vessel histories (with 16,457 images and 14,217 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).
The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,600 entries (with 4,003 images).
My thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of the vessel histories in the vessel 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 continues to contribute 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.
Thanks to John Spivey who is in his 4th year of fact checking all of the entries in the vessel database, one-by-one.