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Who We Are

We are a small group of volunteers – individuals who all have strong professional backgrounds in maritime heritage. We are all authors of books, articles and papers related to this body of knowledge as well as career links to active marine agencies in Canada. We are all volunteers and do this work as enthusiasts for the love of maritime heritage. Our contributing writers and authors have similar backgrounds and are volunteers when working with The Nauticapedia.

The Curator of the Nauticapedia Project is:

John MacFarlane

John MacFarlane

As Director of The Nauticapedia Project he is realizing a dream dating back to 1976 to highlight the defining stories of British Columbia’s heritage. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, (London U.K.) in 1994. He is the scion of three generations of Pacific coast tug boaters and naval officers. He is a retired Director of the Maritime Museum of British Columbia in Victoria BC and is now the Curator Emeritus of that venerable institution. He is the author of numerous books and articles on maritime, naval and aviation topics including Canada’s Admirals & Commodores; Canada’s Naval Aviators and the Official Guide to Pacific Rim National Park.

Nauticapedia

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.

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