- bringing a little life into your lights
On October 14, 2011 I wrote the article Thomas Crosby V – One of the “Bookboats” which described the church mission boat from the United Church of Canada. Now, a good friend Carol Jeffrey found a reference to a new mission boat, the Columbia III which worked for the Columbia Coast Mission from the Anglican […]
– as told to me by Mike Gallagher – deckhand and acting skipper “W. H. Pierce” and mate on the “Thomas Crosby IV”. The following guestbook entry was received by Ron Ammundsen, webmaster of the BC Lighthouse web pages and forwarded to me. It was signed by Michael Gallagher. Between 1952-56 in the summers, I was aboard the […]
Every lighthouse light has its own characteristics – 1. the number of flashes per minute, 2. it’s range, which is dependent on intensity, lenses, and height, and 3. the number of beams from the light, plus other identifying features. Flashes per Minute The number of flashes per minute is regulated by the speed of rotation […]
Godships – Little Ships Carry the Gospel Up the BC Coast by Oliver R. Howard This is a story of the pioneering efforts of the United Church (UC) Marine Mission on the coast of British Columbia. It involves boats and boating in missionary work up and down the BC coast, visiting Indian villages, lumber camps, […]
After writing about the Bookboats and how the Thomas Crosby V used to bring us books to read from their onboard library, I was reminded of the libraries on each lighthouse I worked on. Each keeper that worked the island would leave a few books behind, mostly pocketbooks, and they would take with them new ones from […]
One of the interesting things about writing articles about lighthouses, is that one gets to do a lot of research on maritime matters such as boats, shipping, photography. My last article on the Thomas Crosby V (TCV) left me with the question, what happened to the ship itself? According to all the reports she was […]
One of the most frequent visitors to the lighthouses, beside the Coast Guard (CG) ships and helicopters, was the United Church medical mission boat, nicknamed a God-Boat or Godship, the Thomas Crosby V (TCV). The following article used to be on the Prince Rupert Library (PRL) website. The article was borrowed with their permission before it […]