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Fish Camp Disaster at Sooke BC

by John MacFarlane and Douglas MacFarlane 2017

Nelson Brothers Fisheries Ltd. barge being towed by tug Demac II from Becher Bay (Photo by Irving Strickland from the Victoria Times 08/1967. )

Nelson Brothers Fisheries Ltd. fish camp being moved ashore. (Photo from the Douglas MacFarlane collection. )

A two storey fish camp owned by Nelson Brothers Fisheries Ltd. fell off a barge and sank in water 100 metres off shore. Captain Douglas MacFarlane took out his tug Demac II and salvaged the structure. He towed it slowly and gently to shore and into shallow water in Becher Bay BC. At low tide it was repaired and pulled onto dry land. It was reloaded onto a barge and resumed its voyage to Port Renfrew BC.

Captain Douglas MacFarlane 2015 (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection. )

Douglas MacFarlane was born in Sooke BC in 1927. He is the son of the well-kmnown marine engineer Arthur Francis MacFarlane and Annie Elaine Hill (who settled the land at Milnes Landing on the banks of the Sooke River). He was a tug skipper towing logs in and around Sooke Harbour BC 1955-1995. When the Lamford Forest Products mill in Sooke closed his harbour towing business also closed. He is currently (2017) a retired resident at Milne's Landing near Sooke BC. He is very knowledgeable and a long time enthusiast for the logging and towing heritage of the west coast of Vancouver Island and a great supporter of the Sooke Museum.

To quote from this article please cite:

MacFarlane, John M. and Douglas MacFarlane (2017) The MacFarlane Tug Boaters at Sooke BC. Nauticapedia.ca 2017. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/MacFarlane_Sooke.php

Site News: November 2, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,538 vessel histories (with 16,140 images and 13,887 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3989 images). Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 35,000 processed so far this year.

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.

Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who continues (almost every day) to proof read thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 14,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.

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