Photos of British Columbia lighthouses by Cyril R. Littlebury in the years 1922 to 1932 with thanks to Dudley R. Booth for permission to publish – please visit Dudley’s new website at Historic Photos. There are many more photos there besides lighthouses.
When Dudley Booth developed some old negatives his father gave him he found a treasure trove of scenes from 1920s and 1930s Vancouver.
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Continue reading Lighthouse Photos by Cyril R. Littlebury c. 1922-1932
In June 22, 2011 I published an article about the Triple Island 3rd order lens which has now been replaced with a flashlight (see the article).
I have never spent any work time on Triple Island, but I have landed there once or twice with the Coast Guard helicopters as a passenger. I never did have any time to explore.
There are two lighthouse keepers on Triple Island who rotate every twenty-eight (28) days with two other keepers. I always wondered what it would be like to live there in this day and age.
One of the keepers, my friend Glenn Borgens, has sent me some wonderful photos of the inside of the Triple Island lighthouse that I am going to share with you. For twenty-eight days, it looks like a comfortable place to live and work. Continue reading Triple Island – Inside the Lighthouse – 2012
– Roy Carver (son of C. E. Carver on Kains Island 1933 – 1944)
One of the daily duties of a light house keeper was to estimate the wind speed during each day and record it, along with other meteorological observations and measurements, which also included sea water temperature, and a sample of sea water which was taken at a depth bellow the surface, weather permitting of course.1
The small glass bottles with cork stoppers of sea water were stored in wooden boxes with many little squares, one for each bottle. These boxes would be shipped out when the supply ship re-supplied the station once a year, usually in July. As far as I know Father never did find out what happened to the bottles of sea water after they left the station.2
For an individual to estimate wind speed is a pretty tall order, especially on the edge of an island. If the wind is blowing in your face one would judge the wind speed higher than if it was blowing from behind you (behind the island), so wind speed estimating was not very accurate, even with the crude wind speed indicating instruments supplied at the station. Continue reading The Wind Speed Indicator Episode c.1935
I did not think that Mise Tales Two would come out so soon. If you do not know what Mise Tales is then please see Mise Tales One.
January 25, 2012
I received a comment today from Len O’Hara at the Gabriola Georgia Strait Cam website. He said:
I just wanted to let you know that we have a live-streaming camera over Entrance Island (lighthouse) and the Georgia Strait. The camera returns to Entrance Island every tour. We also have a good video of the Coast Guard hovercraft rounding Entrance Island in our Community section under By The Sea.
Len hoped that I would find it interesting. I did, and will, and hope that you will too. I am viewing it in the night right now and you can see the flash from the lighthouse. Just imagine if you were a boat on the water – comforting flash is it not?
You never know, you might even see some killer whales going by in the daylight. BC Ferries to Nanaimo goes right by there.
Are there any other webcams on the British Columbia Coast? Please let us know.
Later. Oops, I didn’t look – there is a link on the website to some more webcams. If you know of any others not listed, please let us know. Continue reading Mise Tales Two
I received the following in an email today. Based on yesterdays’s MCTS announcement, I think this applies. Government thinking sometimes is so adverse to public wishes that I think government ministers must live in another universe.
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The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that; “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
However, those in government will apply a more advanced strategy to solve the same problem.
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse’s performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more
to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
And of course….
13. Promoting the dead horse to a Civil Service supervisory position.
For those of you that do not know, MCTS (Marine Communications and Traffic Services) is “the Branch of the Canadian Coast Guard that provides communications and vessel traffic services to the sea-going public”.
“MCTS monitors for distress radio signals; provides the communications link between vessels in distress and the JRCC/MRSC; sends safety information; handles public communication; and, regulates the flow of vessel traffic in some areas. MCTS is an important link in the SAR system”.
The above is a quote from the official Canadian government website on Maritime Search and Rescue. (about half-way down the page)
In late [27th] May of 1990, the container vessel Hansa Carrier encountered a severe storm in the north Pacific Ocean (approx. 48°N, 161°W) on its passage from Korea to the United States.
During the storm, a large wave washed twenty-one (21) forty foot (40 ft.) shipping containers overboard. See this video of damaged cargo ships and cargo being lost.
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Five of these 20-metre containers held a shipment of approximately 80,000 Nike® shoes ranging from children’s shoes to large hiking boots. It has been estimated that four of the five containers opened into the stormy waters, releasing over 60,000 shoes into the north Pacific Ocean.
That winter of 1990, hundreds of these shoes washed ashore on the beaches of the Queen Charlotte Islands , western Vancouver Island , Washington and Oregon.
After hearing of the accident, oceanic scientist Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer seized the opportunity and established links with beachcombers and formed a network of people reporting the landfall of the contents of this spill.
When Oregon newspapers began running the story, the Associated Press picked it up, and the word spread. The publicity resulted in many additional reports of the finding of Nike shoes on Pacific beaches. Dubious about some of the reported finds, Ebbesmeyer decided to confine his study to only those shoes found in groups of 100 or more. Even with this restriction, he accounted for approximately 1300 shoes from the more than 60,000 released.
Despite a year in the ocean, much of the footwear was in fine shape and wearable after a washing. Unfortunately, the shoes were not tied to one another so that matching pairs did not always reach the beach together.
“I remember this very well as I could never find a matching pair!” – retlkpr
Each shoe, however, had an identifying serial number, and with information obtained from the manufacturer, Ebbesmeyer was able to determine that the shoes were indeed from the Hansa Carrier.
The accident turned into a scientific gold mine. With information on the locations where the shoes were found, Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham were able to use the spill to test and calibrate their ocean current model. In the past when researchers have released a multitude of drift bottles1 to provide data for testing models, only about one or two percent of the drift bottles are typically recovered. Thus, the accidental release of approximately 61,000 shoes and the recovery of approximately 1600 shoes (2.6%) provided data as good as any pre-planned study.
Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham used the OSCURS (Ocean Surface Currents Simulation) computer simulation model to determine where and how the shoes may have drifted after the containers were swept overboard.
The model suggested that the main landfall would have been around the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the central coast of British Columbia approximately 249 days after the spill.
The first reports of shoe landfalls came from Vancouver Island and Washington approximately 220 days after the spill. A large number of shoes were recovered in the Queen Charlotte Islands and northern Oregon suggesting that when the shoes neared the North American coast some were diverted north and others south by coastal currents.
In the summer of 1992 (two years after the incident), shoes were reported arriving at the northern end of the Island of Hawaii. After reaching North America these shoes may have continued southward along the California coast and then been pushed off the coast by currents moving westward to Hawaii.
The rest of the story is on the website of Keith C. Heidorn (aka the Weather Doctor).
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This also happened with rubber ducks (aka friendly floatees)!
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FOOTNOTES:
1 See the story by Jeannie Nielsen about finding, and getting paid for the Drift bottles.
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Check the Wikipedia article on the Hansa Carrier and other incidents of a similar nature.
And if you are interested, this is where the other 57,000+ shoes probably ended up!
This is a never-ending story. as more and more stuff is dumped into the ocean every year. See the story on the Japanese Tsunami debris.
Take a look here for what you can beachcomb in the next few years – more Nike® shoes, Lego, etc.
– story from Candy-Lea Chickite
My grandmother loved to tell this one to me. I think she may have had the wrong name of the lighthouse keeper. She said it was her father, or maybe she said her father told her the story – I was young when I heard it but I think it may have been a Mr. Grafton who was the fellow involved. I believe the story is true . . . (a Thomas Grafton was on Point Atkinson lighthouse from 1889 – 1910 and his dates are right for this story – JC)
Back before the days of radios, when a ship entered the Vancouver Harbour they would use a megaphone and call in the name of their ship to the lighthouse at Point Atkinson.
One pitch black evening a horn sounded, the keeper hailed his welcome and asked the vessel to identify itself.
“Wat-a-matta Maru” was the echoed reply in a heavily accented Oriental voice.
“I say again, what is the name of your vessel?” hollered the keeper enunciating each work emphatically.
“Wat-a-matta Maru!”
“This is the Point Atkinson lighthouse, and I DEMAND you identify your vessel before entering the harbour!” replied the keeper of the light.
Again, “Wat-a-matta Maru!” was the return call.
Incensed now, the lighthouse keeper yelled back, “There’s NOTHING the matter with me, WHAT the HELL’s the matter with YOU!”
The next time you go to the beach and pick up a piece up something from the sand, think of the story of how it arrived there. Is it something lost from the local town, or something that has drifted for years to arrive here just for you?
Early in the 1900’s – commercial Japanese crab fishermen began replacing wooden and cork floats on their fishing nets with free blown glass floats. When the nets broke loose or were lost, the net rotted and the glass balls floated free from their nets and drifted across the Pacific, along with much other debris, on the Kuroshio Current (also known as the Black Stream or Japanese Current). This is a north-flowing ocean current on the west side of the North Pacific Ocean and it is part of the North Pacific ocean gyre1.
1910 – PRESENT – Every year the Kuroshio Current brings material from Asia to North American shores – floats, shoes, boats, wood, bottles, cans, etc. – garbage! Continue reading Japanese Debris On The BC Coast – Is it from the Japanese Tsunami?
Have you ever sat on a lighthouse, or a wharf, or a high hill and seen a ship in the distance? No radio, too far for binoculars, bad eyesight – “What ship is that?” you wonder.
Wonder no more! The Internet is full of ship tracking programs. Select one to suit your needs. You can find any ship that is required to report, anywhere in the world. I doubt you will find drug smugglers, or such like that. Let me know if you do!
The programs are listed in the order I found them – not in best to worst, etc. You take your pick. Try them all. Let the readers know in the comments section which program you found the best.
For information on how this works and was developed, see this ESRI website.
1. sailwx.info This online program is very interesting. It has information on:
Ship Tracking – All ships, Oceanographic research vessels, Tall ships, Cruising yachts
Marine data – Tides, Wind, Water Temperature, Barometer, Hurricanes
