Twilight of the Union Steamships

The Union Steamship Company served communities along the West Coast up until they were supplanted by airplanes and small motor boats in 1956. Few would have guessed that as little as a generation earlier, when they were still the main way of transporting people and supplies. In the conclusion of her segment about the Union Steamship company, Lynne Jordan talks about the company’s twilight years.  

Image credit: The ‘Lady Cynthia’ was a converted minesweeper, which the Union Steamship company utilized between 1925 and 57. Savary Island, Powell River, Cortes Island and Stuart Island were among the places it visited. – Photo by James Crookall, City of Vancouver Archives via Wikimedia (Public Domain)

Her narrative starts during the Great Depression, when there were fewer passengers coming to Cortes Island.

A group of Whaletown residents, including members of the Women’s Institute, asked the Union Steamships to do cruises in this area.

One of the cruises that came out of this initiative went to Savary Island and Whaletown. This resulted in a lot of real estate sales on Savary, which had been largely empty until then. A lot of Vancouver residents, businessmen and doctors realized it was an excellent place to put a summer cabin.

“Savary Island got its start because of the Union Steamships,” said Jordan.

“Another cruise stopped at Whaletown on the way to Toba Inlet. They never really got off the ship except in town. It was a three day excursion altogether and fairly cheap. The price of your ticket included all your meals.” 

 One of the Union Steamships ‘ferry captains’ retired to Whaletown. Prior to signing on with the company in the early 1900s, Captain James Findlay got his ticket sailing ships around the Horn. That qualified him to be a captain of just about any ship on the ocean and he captained some freighting to distant ports. The Union Steamship Company hired him to bring their new ships back to Vancouver. Most of them were built in Scotland, and he sailed them around the Horn to Vancouver. That’s why they called him ‘the ferry captain.’ 

“When he  retired, he chose Whaletown to stay, but left his wife and two children in Vancouver. They only came up for holidays in summers to visit him. Findlay built two cottages,  one for the kids and his family on property which was across the street from where the Whaletown Clinic used to be,” explained Jordan. 

After he was gone, the Davidsons found one of his trunks in the basement and also the metal frame of a bed that hung on a wall and then swung up out of the way. They donated the bed frame to the Cortes Island museum.

Reverend Boas lived in that house before moving into what was once the Whaletown Clinic.

In 1947, the Union Steamship Company played an important part in the story of a Model T Ford that attempted to drive around Cortes Island. Frank Hayes and Rod Griffin started in Mansons Landing. Jordan described the ‘road’ to Squirrel Cove as  ‘the kind with two bare strips and salal growing down the middle.’ From there they followed logging roads to Von Donop Inlet, Green Valley, Carrington Lagoon .

“They went on what they called fore and aft bridges that were built for logging trucks and the cats.  They were basically just two logs laid across the, a river with a great space in between them. And the top was flattened off for the wheels. They were set at the width of  the wheels on the trucks and this Model T Ford just barely fit. So it was a little iffy because the gap between the two of them could swallow the whole car and they managed to make it across all these bridges,” said Jordan.

They arrived at Whaletown on ‘boat day.’ That’s when the spokes on one of their wheels broke. 

“The road had just been too rough,” said Jordan. “Luckily they made it that far and the captain of the ship was heading from there to Manson’s. He took pity on these men who had basically a three wheeled car that they would now have to try and get back to Mansons over this very rough road. He put the slings out, lifted the car onto the deck and took them to Mansons Landing.”

Jordan said Whaletown thrived during the years it was served by Union Steamships, however they had difficulty keeping to their schedule. 

“There was one story about old Mr. Marley, who lived up Robertson Road in the Gorge. He had a whole bunch of mail he wanted to send out. He was planning to go down to the wharf about nine o’clock when the ship was supposed to come in, but he heard the whistle as it came into Whaletown four hours before. There’s no way he could get there in time, because it was a mile and a half, or two miles away. So his mail  didn’t go out till the next boat.”

After radio phones were put on steamships, they were able to radio ahead  so that their customers would know when to expect them. 

Businesses and homes along the coast took to radio phones. They were mostly Spilsbury & Tindall radios serviced by Jim Spilsbury from Savary Island. He and his wife lived on a boat because they were constantly selling and installing radio phones. Spilsbury eventually bought a float plane, then more float planes. 

“Spilsbury basically started BC Air to service radios up and down the coast,” explained Jordan.

The old Union Steamships were on the way out by the 1950s. A new competitor, the Gulf Line, used ships that were twice as fast. They took over a lot of the servicing and a number of the Union Steamships were sold to the Northland Shipping, which also acquired some of the ‘Gulf Wings.’ 

“I gather they were more costly for upkeep and that’s when the planes were beginning to really take over for both mail and passengers to the island. Boats became an extra and people didn’t use them very much,” said Jordan.

Boats were too slow when it came to medical emergencies. A number of injured loggers who were put on Union Steamships died before they could reach a hospital. Pregnant women who wanted to give birth in a hospital had to leave two or three weeks before their due dates.

The arrival of float planes changed that. Women could wait a little longer and people were able to access hospitals faster. 

“In 1954, the Whaletown Community Club asked the Department of Transport to put in a sea plane float, since so many planes were coming in. Eventually seaplanes, rather than ships, brought the mail,” said Jordan. 

The ships continued to haul freight, but were largely pushed out of the passenger service. The Gulf Line, Northland Shipping and Union Steamships amalgamated.  

“It was three companies, all in one, and they started selling off ships until they faded,” said Jordan.

“The other thing that brought business down for the steamships and the Gulf wings was, late in the forties, outboard engines became the norm and developed very quickly.  People that originally had row boats to get around in, now had faster boats with a motor on the back. This basically put a lot of that shipping out of business, because people could now get to Campbell River or Powell River and pick up their own supplies.” 

Top image credit: View of Vancouver Island from an approaching floatplane – Photo by Thomas Lipke on Unsplash

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