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A Display Anchor at Metchosin BC
by Christopher J. Cole 2016
The Recovered Anchor on Display at the Municipal Hall (Photo from the Cole Family collection. )
Wendy Cole noticed an anchor on display outside the Municipal Hall of the District of Metchosin BC. It displays an anchor which was accidentally snagged by the EVCO Spray and recovered just off the Construction Aggregates dock at Royal Roads. In 1988 Skip Kennedy acquired it and presented it to the Municipality. I think that it must have belonged to one of five vessels that lost anchors during a storm in 1883.
Sign denoting significance of anchor (Photo from the Cole Family collection. )
On January 12, 1884 the Port Warden for the Ports of Victoria and Esquimalt reported that: On April 14th, 1883 a strong southeast gale sprang up increasing in violence and force all day. The ship Duke of Argyle parted her cable losing the anchor and 70 fathoms of chain. She was driven ashore at Royal Bay near Royal Roads.
In the same storm the lumber laden Connaught and the barque Tiger parted their cables and drove ashore. The Southern Chief and the Gettysburg went ashore as well. All four vessels were wrecked and later sold at auction.
To quote from this article please cite:
Cole, Christopher J. (2016) A Display Anchor at Metchosin BC. Nauticapedia.ca 2016. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/TITLE.php
Site News: April 19, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,229 vessel histories (with 15,629 images and 13,195 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.