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Echoes of the Whistle An Illustrated History of the Union Steamship Company w/DJ
Echoes of the Whistle An Illustrated History of the Union Steamship Company by Gerald Rushton
Hard Cover w/ dust jacket
143 pages
Copyright 1980
CONTENTS
Introduction 8
Preface 9
Map of Ports of Call 10
1889-1918 THE FIRST RED-AND-BLACK-FUNNELLED SHIPS 11
1889-1918 THE UNION FLEET IN PHOTOGRAPHS 25
1919-1939 "THE UPCOAST STREETCAR LINE" 47
1919-1939 THE UNION FLEET IN PHOTOGRAPHS 59
1940-1959 POST-WAR STRUGGLE; THE WHISTLE IS SILENT 93
1940-1959 THE UNION FLEET IN PHOTOGRAPHS 104
1889-1959 Ships' Roster 132
Ship Names of Indian & Spanish Derivation 141
Acknowledgements 143
INTRODUCTION
In 1889, just three years after the founding of the City of Vancouver, a small group of citizens who wanted to move around Burrard Inlet with a little more celerity than the transportation of the day provided and who saw as well the need for a coastal shipping line, established, with the aid of some outside capital, the Union Steamship Company. Within three years the company was serving northern ports and within ten it was shipping men and materials to the Klondike Gold Rush. But between the Port of Vancouver and the Alaska peninsula lies the whole of the British Columbia coastline, a maze of twisting inlets, bays, and fjords where pioneering settlers were establishing logging, mining, and fishing communities. It was to these ports of call that the Union Steamship Company carried the means for survival and growth. Later, the company also established resorts where holidayers and residents from the Lower Mainland could enjoy a break from their workaday routine, sailing there on a Union ship. The company provided excursions for a day or overnight or longer, some ships running cruises to the north.
It was the familiar little red-and-black-funnelled ships of the Union fleet that pioneered development of the British Columbia coast. They served, for nearly three-quarters of a century, over 200 communities, ranging from tiny industrial float camps to large, bustling holiday resorts. This fleet of coastal messengers, whose masters threaded their way through little-known and half-surveyed inlets and channels with incredible skill and seeming nonchalance, chalked up a safety record unsurpassed by any equivalent service anywhere in the world. Not surprisingly then, nearly a third of the early Pacific coast pilots had served their apprenticeship as Union Steamship masters.
When the company ceased operations in January 1959, it was more than just the closing of a local service: it was the passing of a pioneer era. A link with Vancouver's beginnings was severed and what had been an integral part of coastal life suddenly became history-the record of the past.
In Whistle Up the Inlet Gerald Rushton told the story of the company's operations from an inside point of view. Here, in the companion volume, Echoes of the Whistle, the emphasis is on the visual record, which is very largely that of the ships themselves.
The people of Vancouver and of British Columbia have been wonderfully served with this photographic record of a notable part of their maritime heritage.
-Leonard G. McCannCurator, Vancouver Maritime Museum August 1980
DUST JACKET COVER
The doughty, red-funnelled ships of the Union Steamship Company were more than mere ships to the inhabitants of British Columbia's widely dispersed coastal communities; they were a lifeline. They were also beautiful ships, built with care and attention to detail that only added to the nostalgic memories they fostered in almost everyone who knew them. From the company's beginning on 11 July 1889 to its sad demise 70 years later, more than 50 ships proudly carried the company's colours, and even now the names Camosun, Carden, Lady Alexandra, Lady Rose and Lady Cynthia evoke a long-gone past of isolated timber camps, company picnics, and leisurely travel from Vancouver to Victoria.
This illustrated history of the company portrays the men and ships who maintained links between isolated communities along 4,000 miles of rugged coast. It also captures something of what life was like in those communities, where people came to know the Union Steamship Company as their only reliable tie with the outside world. More than 200 photographs have been meticulously researched by Gerald Rushton, with the help of Leonard McCann, curator of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Rushton has provided an introductory text and informative captions, creating a sequel to his earlier book, Whistle up the Inlet, which was a best seller when first published and about which Norman Hacking of the Vancouver Province wrote, "the story is suffused with that warm glow that seems to typify recollections of ships and the sea ... a job well done by a man with love in his heart for the old ships and the old ways."
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