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The Plaque Commemorating William Harley Blagborne
by John M. MacFarlane 2017
The plaque commemorating William Harley Blagborne (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection. )
On the seawall of the Inner Harbour at Victoria BC there is a plaque commemorating William Harley Blagborne.
He served as an Able–Seaman in the five–masted schooner City of Alberni.
He started his career as a master of seiners. He sailed in the City of Alberni. He was qualified as a Master Mariner. He was the Master of the deep sea salvage tugs Island Sovereign, Sudbury and Sudbury II. He made many marine rescues and salvage operations from the Sudbury and Sudbury II. For example, in November 1956 the American Liberty ship Thunderbird (owned by Terrance Navigation Co. of New York) lost her propeller in mid–Pacific while en route Japan to Willapa. The Sudbury towed her for a week through gales successfully to her port. In 1958 he brought the Sudbury II from Australia to Vancouver.
He died at the age of 59 while supervising the retrieval of a runaway barge off the southern end of Vancouver Island.
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John M. (2017) The Plaque Commemorating William Harley Blagborne. Nauticapedia.ca 2017. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Monument_Blagborne.php
Site News: November 20, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,591 vessel histories (with 16,203 images and 13,900 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).
Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 40,000 processed so far this year.
The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3996 images).
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 for the last couple of years) 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.