Lighthouse History – 29 (1907-06-29 – 1907-08-13)
The following extracts taken from early Victoria, British Columbia (BC) newspapers are credited to Leona Taylor for her excellent work in indexing the papers. Full information can be found here: ”Index of Historical Victoria Newspapers“, 2007-09.
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Work is to be commenced at once on a central wireless telegraph station for Clover Point, Victoria, and also at Pachena Point on the West Coast. Other stations will afterward be established at Cape Lazo, near Comox, for communication with northbound steamers; at Estevan Point, near Hesquiat where a 1st class lighthouse will be constructed, and at Point Grey near Vancouver…
At each station a residence will be constructed for the chief operator and family, and accommodation for 2 operators. At Pachena and Estevan Pnts the stations will be operated from the lighthouses…
When Pachena Point station is ready for service wireless apparatus will be placed on the Empress steamers which will then be able to communicate with the stations at either side of the Pacific a day or 2 before reaching land. Arrangement has already been made to equip the coasting steamers of the Canadian Pacific Railway… [Colonist, 1907-06-29]
Steamer Maude will leave today for Estevan Point on the Vancouver Island coast with lumber for the tramway of the new lighthouse to be established near the Hole-in-the-Wall. Thomas N Tubman, who will have charge of the work, with a force of about 10 workmen, will go on Maude to commence the work. Steamer will anchor behind the rocks lying off shore about 5 miles to the westward of Estevan Point, where a landing will be established and from here the trolley and tramway extending about 4 miles will be built. A wooden roadway will be built, the expense of putting down steel rails being too great. It is estimated that $7,000 would be required for the necessary rails. Horses will be used to draw a car carrying material for the construction of the fog alarm, keeper’s house and wireless telegraph station, which will be established this year. Construction of the light tower will not be commenced until next year.
Quadra, which has just left the ways at Esquimalt after being overhauled will also leave today for Estevan Point, taking Captain Gaudin, Agent of Marine, and Cecil Doutre, commissioner of wireless telegraphs for the Dominion government, who go to look over the site. A call will also be made at Pachena Point lighthouse, where a wireless telegraph station is also to be established. The work of erecting the mast at Estevan Point and the building of the house for the operators will be carried out as soon as possible following the decision of the commissioner with regard to the plans to be followed.
The sea breaks in full force against the Hole-in-the-Wall at the extremity of Estevan Point, and the only place available for small vessels to lie is in a little bay about 4 miles to the Northwest. There is good shelter there, and it is from this place that the tramway is to be built. [Colonist, 1907-07-20]
Yesterday following Maude which left with a cargo of lumber to build the 4 miles of tramway necessary before material for the new lighthouse, fog alarm and wireless telegraph station at Estevan Point can be loaded, Dominion Government Steamer Quadra left at noon for Pachena Point, Estevan Point, Cape Scott and other points carrying Captain James Gaudin, Agent of Marine and Fisheries, Cecil Doutre, commissioner of wireless telegraphs for the Dominion government, and Mr Morse, his assistant. The party went to look over the sites for the proposed wireless telegraph station. [Colonist, 1907-07-21]
Flotsam of many wrecks is scattered along the beach at Estevan Point, where the crew of Steamer Maude, Captain Anderson, which is under charter to the Marine Dept, has been rafting lumber ashore for the construction of a 4 mile tramway and the dwellings which are to be the nucleus of alighthouse station and wireless telegraph depot on the headland at Hole-in-the-Wall, on the West Coast Vancouver Island. Maude returned from the island coast last night, after discharging her cargo of lumber and putting T N Tubman, the contractor in charge of the work, and a party of carpenters ashore.
Part of the planking of a broken boat of the lost British ship King David was brought by Engineer McNeill, of Maude, as a relic of the graveyard of ships where the new light is to be established. Anther more gruesome find made of various wrecks that litter the beach, was a human bone.
Since shipping has visited the island coast there have been many wrecks in the vicinity of Estevan Point, the last being that of King David, which went ashore off Bajo Point about 18 months ago. King David, poorly provided with charts, piled up on the rock off Bajo Point, her crew landing on the beach near Estevan, within 8 miles of an Indian village, the existence of which they were unadvised. They had been there nearly a month, imagining themselves far removed from any human habitation, when they sent a boat’s crew to Cape Beale. This boat never arrived at its destination and the chief officer and those in it were drowned.
Maude was anchored inside the reefs about 4 miles distant from where the lighthouse and wireless station is to be established at Hole-in-the-Wall, and the lumber made into rafts and towed ashore with the Steamer’s boats. The work was accomplished quickly, the vessel having been away only 6 days. She will load another cargo and will leave for Estevan the beginning of the week. The lumber is to be used in the construction of a wooden tramway over which cars will be drawn with horses to carry the material to the site selected for the lighthouse and wireless station.
The wreckage is stated to be very considerable in the vicinity. Among the most disastrous of the wrecks at Estevan Point was that of a Massachusetts bark, which occurred several decades ago, the vessel being totally lost and the bodies of her crew washed on to the beach. Some of the Indians at the Hesquiat village nearby were given medals, which they still treasure, for assisting to bury the victims of this disaster.
Cecil Doutre, Superintendent of wireless telegraphs who is arranging for the construction of the government wireless telegraph station in this province, is leaving for Ottawa and until his return in Sep Mr Morse, who until recently was Superintendent in Canada for the Lee-Forest Wireless Telegraph Co, will superintend the work…
From Bamfield news has been received that the work of building a coast trail is well advanced, 7 miles of the road between Bamfield and Pachena having been completed. [Colonist, 1907-07-27]
A 4-masted schooner, name unknown, was close to the rocks of the Vancouver Island coast yesterday morning, and but for a fortunate change of tide, would have piled up near Clo-oose, not far from where the barkentine Vesta and barks Uncle John and Janet Cowan went on the coast. The vessel, evidently a lumber Schooner, was sighted from the lighthouse at Carmanah Point yesterday morning, according to a message received here. She was then 3/4 of a mile distant from the shore and 2 miles South of Carmanah. All morning she lay close inshore and in danger of drifting on the rocks. She was becalmed and helpless, and it seemed that she was likely to be set on which at the change of the tide yesterday afternoon she drifted offshore.
Clo-oose, near where Schooner was reported in danger of going on the rocks, has been the scene of many wrecks since the days when the old China trading packets of King George, and even before their day, Indians of the vicinity have traditions of Japanese fishing vessels cast ashore there before this coast was settled by the white man and before the wax-laden ship found near Nehalem, which has been a mystery since its discovery many years ago, was found on the Oregon coast. About a dozen vessels have gone ashore near the West Coast village in as many years. Uncle John, Janet Cowan, Atalanta, Vesta and others. The hull of Vesta is still to be seen on the shore. [Colonist, 1907-07-30]
Steamer Maude is loading her 3rd cargo of building material and general supplies for the fog alarm and wireless telegraph station being built at Estevan Point, Hesquiat, where a lighthouse will be constructed next season… [Colonist, 1907-08-13]