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Vessels Built by the Kishi Family Boat Works

compiled by John M. MacFarlane 2013 with historical builder notes by the Britannia Shipyards NHS, City of Richmond

There were multiple generations and different branches of the Kishi family tree working as boat builders in Steveston during a 77 year period. They generally built wooden purpose rigged gillnet fishing boats.

Kishi Boat Works (1st business c.1912–1942)

The first business, Kishi Boat Works, was started by brothers Teizo and Otomatsu Kishi around 1912. The boat works was built on the banks of the Fraser River near the Phoenix Cannery. They were joined by their nephew, Saeji Kishi, in 1923. Saeji had apprenticed as a carpenter in Japan and immigrated to Canada in 1917. By 1936 Teizo’s son, Kiheiji Kishi, operated the business. (The Britannia Shipyard is unsure what happened to this branch of the family after internment. It’s possible they went to Japan.)

Richmond Boat Builders (1929/1932–1942)

In 1929, Saeji Kishi left the Kishi Boat Works to start his own company. He moved near Britannia Shipyard and took over the abandoned Tamoto Boatworks for 3 years. In 1932, he and his head carpenter Matsuo finished building the Richmond Boat Builders building (which still stands at Britannia today). Saeji and five carpenters including Matsuo built up to 24 or 25 boats a year, mostly 24–26’ wooden Gillnetters. Saeji and his family were interned in 1942 at Christina Lake. They continued to building fishing boats, transporting them to the coast via CPR. Various individuals leased the Richmond Boat Builders work shop until 1969, when it finally closed. The last boat built there was the 35’ wooden gillnetter, Silver Ann, overseen by Sadajiro Asari who had owned the Asari Boatworks on Sea Island before the war.

Vessels Built by the Kishi Boat Works

Kishi Boat Works (2nd business c.1951–1985)

In 1951, Saeji’s family returned to Steveston and started working out of the original Kishi Boat Works building near Phoenix Cannery. In 1954, Saeji suffered a severe stroke and never worked again. His sons, Jim and Wayne, took over the business. They built, repaired and finished boats without hiring other carpenters. They also stored up to 80 boats in winter on the land surrounding their boat works. They had a marine ways for pulling the boat from the water and then put them on rollers to move the boats around the site. In 1982, Wayne Kishi passed away. In 1985, British Columbia Packers – who owned the land – wished to redevelop the area. They wanted to knock down the Kishi Boat Works. At the time, Jim was still repairing a sizeable number of boats, with half the Steveston fishing fleet made up of wooden boats. A local campaign was launched to save the Kishi Boat Works building. Jim effectively retired, not able to contemplate starting over again in a different location at his age. In 1987, the building was moved to the western end of the Britannia Shipyards site. In 1989, the building burned down in mysterious circumstances. Jim Kishi passed away in 2004.

Vessels Built by the Saeji Kishi Boat Works

Author’s Note: This is a partial list (work in progress).

Vessel Images: Can you help us fill gaps in the vessel images in the database? If you have pictures of missing vessels that you have taken and would be willing to contribute to the database to make it more complete all our users would be very grateful. Please send them to admin(at)nauticapedia.ca

Note to Reader: Vessel names containing Roman numerals in parentheses (e.g. Floater (II)) indicates more than one vessel in the database with the same name. The numerals in parentheses are NOT part of the vessel name but are used to distinguish one vessel from another in the database.

To quote from this article please cite:

MacFarlane, John M. (2013) Vessels Built by the Kishi Shipyard Nauticapedia.ca 2013. http://www.nauticapedia.ca/Articles/Vessel_Builders_Kishi.php

Site News: April 15, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,123 vessel histories (with 15,628 images and 13,098 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).

In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!

My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.

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