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The Plaque Commemorating William Harley Blagborne
by John M. MacFarlane 2017
The plaque commemorating William Harley Blagborne (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection. )
On the seawall of the Inner Harbour at Victoria BC there is a plaque commemorating William Harley Blagborne.
He served as an Able–Seaman in the five–masted schooner City of Alberni.
He started his career as a master of seiners. He sailed in the City of Alberni. He was qualified as a Master Mariner. He was the Master of the deep sea salvage tugs Island Sovereign, Sudbury and Sudbury II. He made many marine rescues and salvage operations from the Sudbury and Sudbury II. For example, in November 1956 the American Liberty ship Thunderbird (owned by Terrance Navigation Co. of New York) lost her propeller in mid–Pacific while en route Japan to Willapa. The Sudbury towed her for a week through gales successfully to her port. In 1958 he brought the Sudbury II from Australia to Vancouver.
He died at the age of 59 while supervising the retrieval of a runaway barge off the southern end of Vancouver Island.
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John M. (2017) The Plaque Commemorating William Harley Blagborne. Nauticapedia.ca 2017. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Monument_Blagborne.php
Site News: April 24, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,289 vessel histories (with 15,634 images and 13,293 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.