The Nauticapedia

Site Navigation:

• Searchable Databases

  • Biography (People) Search
  • Vessel (Ship) Search

• Articles Archive

  • Pacific Nautical Heritage...

    • Vessels & Ships
    • Marine Industry
    • Nautical & Maritime Heritage
  • Gallery of Light and Buoy Images
  • Gallery of Mariners
  • Gallery of Ship Images
  • Gallery of Ship Wrecks
  • Gallery of Monuments and Statues
  • Gallery of Nautical Images
  • Gallery of Freshwater Images
  • Gallery of New Books

  • Canadian Naval Topics…

    • Reserves
    • Admirals
    • Vessels
    • Interesting Topics
    • World War II
  • Nautical History Videos
  • UNTD
  • British Columbia Heritage
  • Arctic and Northern Nautical Heritage
  • Western Canada Boat and Ship Builders
  • Gallery of Arctic Images
  • Reflections on Nautical Heritage
  • British Columbia Heritage

Site Search:

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

The Western Express

by Will Magnum 2017

The Western Express (Photo from the Will Magnum collection. )

The Western Express was built in 1943 as the USATS YMS–297 by Tacoma Boat Building Co. at Tacoma WA USA. She is 39.2m x 7.5m x 3.5m (128.6’ x 24.6’ x 11.6’) wooden hull 246.94gt 146.47rt and powered by a 1200hp engine (re-powered in 2004 by 2–455bhp diesel engines). She could also have been the USS YMS–431 or USS YMS–432. (From The Nauticapedia)

The Western Express (Photo from the Will Magnum collection. )

The Western Express (Photo from the Will Magnum collection. )

From speaking with the owner of the Western Express he did tell me that the ship had sunk once before in the Queensborough area. And he had it raised Apparently one of the fish holding tanks is ruptured. And he had been on vacation for some time. I’m assuming with all the bad weather that we had this winter that the pumps must have failed in the ship and had gone down due to instability.

The Western Express being removed from the shipping channel (Photo from the Will Magnum collection. )

To quote from this article please cite:

Magnum, Will (2017) The Western Express. Nauticapedia.ca 2017. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Western_Express.php

Site News: December 21, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,824 vessel histories (with 16,274 images and 13,929 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).

Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 45,000 processed so far this year (2024).

The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3996 images).

Thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of vessel histories in the 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 has contributed 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.

---