SS Beaver and Dock Damaged
Early photos show damage to both Beaver and Dock.
(Click images for complete view)
The SS Beaver, occasionally referred to as “The Dominion’s Replacement”, dragged it’s anchor in a storm last night and appears to have struck the Assembly Wharf, now sitting with stern more or less buried in the pilings.
The extent of the damage is not yet known, but it appears that most of the wooden cladding has been pounded off the vessel, and that several of the dock pilings have been either pushed aside or snapped off. The Beaver, it should be remembered is a steel hulled vessel clad in wood so as to resemble an old time wooden ship.
Beaver in Bad Location
The replica Beaver was built in 1966 by the Royal Canadian Navy from a disused ammo carrier. The vessel is made of steel, with the wooden planking fastened to a metal framework which is welded to the hull exterior. The effect was to mimic the look of the original SS Beaver, the first steam powered ship to work our West Coast.
The project was the Navy’s contribution to the celebration of the Colonial Union Centennial Celebrations of Vancouver Island and the colony on mainland British Columbia.
SS Beaver in better times
The replica SS Beaver carried political leaders and citizens to the original Beavers ports of call up and down the coast and the Gulf of Alaska.
Recent spending reached $1,000,000 with her solid steel bottom being re certified and her upper works having undergone major renovations for a planned cruising schedule.
There is no fuel or oil aboard the vessel.
Update: As of this afternoon, the vessel was tied to the pilings just to one side of the Wharf, closest to Cowichan Bay Village and the Eelgrass zone.
@JR Wilson
That might be a good idea in part. I don’t think poking holes in ships and letting them sink will do anything positive however.
We need to have a place where, for a reasonable or even a nominal price, boat owners can take these vessels. Perhaps the government could subsidize it for a while, as they do other sorts of things, like recycling programs, roads, infrastructure, til the backlog gets cleared.
The entire issue of problem vessels, (large boats anchored out because nobody knows what to do with them, and NOT boats being lived on by people who own and cherish them) has long been mishandled on this coast.
The storm we had last night was the first of the season and it turned out to be relatively weak inside of Cowichan Bay where this Beaver was anchored. Although I wondered how it would stand up during the storm season, I am surprised it dragged loose last night.
We are pretty fortunate in the marinas that it didn’t come our way and the folks with boats anchored out must be thanking their lucky stars to not have been ploughed under.
It’s bloody high time we got rid of big boats like that which aren’t being looked after. Scrap the damn thing already, or tow it to deep water and poke a hole in its bottom.