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The Monument Plaque to Captain William Byers
by John M. MacFarlane 2017
The plaque commemorating Captain William D. Byers. (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection.)
On the seawall of the Inner Harbour at Victoria BC there is a plaque commemorating William Byers.
Captain Byers was one of the successful sealing captains operating from the west coast of Vancouver Island up to the Bering Sea.
Until fur seal hunting was banned in 1911 the seal hunt was an important part of the marine economy of Vancouver Island.
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John M. (2017) The Monument Plaque to William Byers. Nauticapedia.ca 2017. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Monument_Byers.php
Site News: March 24, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 91,427 vessel histories (with 15,578 images and 12,853 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,612 entries (with 4,007 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 semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 10,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.