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Point Atkinson Light

by John MacFarlane and Captain Alec Provan 2016

Point Atkinson Light (Photo from the Captain Alec Provan collection. )

Point Atkinson Light (List of Lights 386 G5426) is a white hexagonal tower, red band at top with 6 buttresses. It exhibits Flash 0.25 s; eclipse 0.75 s; flash 0.25 s; eclipse 3.75 s. Year round. Chart:3481

Point Atkinson Light (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection. )

Captain Vancouver recorded that he had named Point Atkinson on Howe Sound (N entrance point to Burrard Inlet, in West Vancouver (municipality), New Westminster Land District) after a "particular friend". The most likely candidate appears to be Thomas Atkinson, RN, who later was the Sailing Master of HMS Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar.

Point Atkinson Light old Fresnel lens in storage (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection. )

References: https://www.notmar.gc.ca/publications/list-livre/pac/p3855-en.php; http://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/bcgnws/names/9827.html; BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office; Walbran, John T; British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906: their origin and history; Ottawa, 1909 (republished for the Vancouver Public Library by J.J. Douglas Ltd, Vancouver, 1971);

To quote from this article please cite:

MacFarlane, John M. and Captain Alec Provan (2016) Point Atkinson Light. Nauticapedia.ca 2016. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Light_Pt_Atkinson.php

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.

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