Introduction

In the early 1920s, people seeking adventure and a unique travel experience could take a cruise up and down the west coast of Vancouver Island on the “Good Ship” SS Princess Maquinna, visiting dozens of stops on the steamer’s regular run from Victoria to the north end of the island and back again. This ship, built in Esquimalt, one of a fleet of nineteen Princess ships owned and operated by the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company (CPSC, part of the global Canadian Pacific Railway empire), had been in service since 1913. In her early years the Maquinna catered mainly to west coast locals living or working at many far-flung, remote locations along the coast. A decade later, however, the owners recognizedthe need people had for recreation and enjoyment, and began trumpeting the many attractions of the ship and the wild, west coast of Vancouver Island.

Imagine being a tourist stepping aboard the SS Princess Maquinna in the summer of 1924, looking forward to an unforgettable, week-long voyage of some 770 nautical miles (1,420 km) up and down the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island. The Canadian Pacific brochures boasted that passengers would view magnificent scenery; eat scrumptious meals in the ship’s elegant dining room (perhaps even at the captain’s table); sleep in comfortable, well-appointed cabins; play deck games such as quoits and shuffleboard on the upper deck; and meet interesting fellow passengers, many from west coast communities. The enticements on offer included tourists being able to interact with the friendly captain, officers and crew and learn from them about the ship and about the west coast. They might learn how the ship could travel in fog and still keep to her timetable; how the ship, captain and crew coped with wild winter storms; interested passengers might even be invited down to the engine room to see how the vessel’s triple expansion steam engine worked.

In good weather, passengers could step out on deck and see all sorts of wildlife: whales, seals, sea lions, Pacific white-sided dolphins and hundreds of varieties of birds, including bald eagles. When the ship stopped at some ports of call, passengers could disembark and take tours of local communities, fish canneries, logging camps and whaling stations.

Along the way, passengers would likely encounter Nuu-cha-nulth First Nations people who had lived along Vancouver Island’s west coast for thousands of years. CP brochures depict magnificent totem poles that passengers would see, and mention how passengers could buy keepsakes such as woven baskets and carvings from Indigenous women selling their handicrafts at various stops along the way. Passengers could take time at Friendly Cove to wander through the haunting graveyard, with its assortment of “tokens of remembrances” enhancing the stockade-like enclosures around some of the graves. In Quatsino Sound, voyagers might encounter some of the few remaining Indigenous women with flattened heads, the result of shaping infants’ foreheads, by strapping on boards.

Passengers booking passage for a trip on the SS Princess Maquinna in 1924 would know that the ship regularly leaves Victoria harbour at 11 p.m., three times a month, proceeding from there along the Strait of Juan de Fuca until, in the early morning, she arrives at her first port of call, Port Renfrew, a small logging and fishing community. After a short stop, an hour’s sail brings the vessel to Clo-oose, one of the most interesting calls of the entire journey, located on a particularly treacherous stretch of the coastline known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Here, as there is no dock, Ditidaht men and women paddle out from shore in their dugout canoes to the freight doors at the side of the ship and load goods and people into their canoes, carrying them ashore through the heavy surf. Dunkings could occur in rough weather, adding to the excitement.

Shortly after leaving Clo-oose, located on the West Coast Lifesaving Trail—created to provide shipwrecked sailors a lifeline on this dangerous coast—the ship turns in to Bamfield, tying up at the dock overlooked by the imperial government cable station. This relay station is on the “All Red Line” cable telegraph network, a global network running only through British imperial territories. It began operations in 1902, relaying messages from Australia and New Zealand across the Pacific, transferring them across Canada and on to Great Britain. Passengers have time to visit the palatial station and talk with some of the young—mostly Australian—men working the telegraph keys.

From Bamfield, the steamship sails up the 30-mile (50-km) Alberni Canal to Port Alberni, stopping along the way at a variety of fish-packing plants where large quantities of herring and pilchard are rendered into fish oil and meal. After sailing back along this narrow stretch of water, the Maquinna turns north across Barkley Sound, through the Broken Islands, making a stop at Sechart, one of three whaling stations on the trip. If passengers can stand the stench, they watch workers render whales into oil, meat and meal, and perhaps pick up a whale tooth or a piece of baleen or bone as a souvenir. Later, at Ucluelet, a treat awaits those passengers with a green thumb. Here George Fraser’s magical garden awaits, where he raises plants and seeds for shipment the world over. So renowned is Fraser that a rhododendron bearing his name still grows in Kew Gardens in London. Not interested in gardens? Take an excursion, run by a local family, to go and see the most stunning strand in all of Canada, Long Beach. Eight miles (13 km) long, used by the locals as part of the rough roadway between Ucluelet and Tofino, the beach is a wondrous sight.

Three hours steaming from Ucluelet brings the ship into Clayoquot Sound, where she makes calls at the growing village of Tofino, and at Clayoquot, on Stubbs Island, set on a lovely sandy spit with a long curving dock topped with rails for its freight trolley. Leaving Clayoquot, the ship sails north, up the protected waters of the sound, to Kakawis, the large Roman Catholic Indian Mission School, and from there to the village of Ahousaht, on Flores Island.

Two hours after rounding Estevan Point, at the north end of Clayoquot Sound, the Maquinna arrives at historic Nootka Sound, where Captain James Cook landed in 1778. Friendly Cove, as Cook called the harbour, possesses a dramatic collection of totem poles; here passengers may learn how, a decade after Cook’s visit, a confrontation in this isolated community almost led to a war halfway around the globe, between Spain and Great Britain.

After leaving Nootka Sound the Maquinna steams north into Esperanza Inlet and Kyuquot Sound, where she makes a variety of stops at remote logging camps, reduction plants, various mines and at another whaling station, Cachalot. Everywhere she stops, the ship drops off mail, passengers and foodstuffs, as well as needed industrial supplies, while picking up passengers and local products for shipment to Victoria and beyond.

After rounding Brooks Peninsula—which sticks out of the west side of Vancouver Island like a thumb—the Maquinna enters the protected waters of Quatsino Sound, where she makes several stops, the most important at the pulp and paper mill at Port Alice. Finally, at Holberg, she makes her final stop on the northern leg of her journey, 385 nautical miles (710 km) from Victoria.

Turning south, the Maquinna stops at various ports of call to pick up passengers and freight on her way back to Victoria. There, passengers disembark in the inner harbour early in the morning, seven days after setting out on a trip that will surely live in their memories for years to come, and perhaps will tempt many to return for another voyage sometime in the future.

For over four decades, the faithful Princess Maquinna repeated this lengthy trip up and down the west coast countless times. Some of her trips were shorter, turning back to Victoria from Nootka or other way ports, but she never flagged, never quit. She steamed back and forth in summer and winter, in calm and storm, in war and in peace, creating for herself a legendary status, and becoming the best-loved boat in BC’s maritime history.

This is her remarkable story.