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An Isolated Danger Buoy – G.B. Church
by John MacFarlane 2012
Located over the wreck of the G.B. Church is an Isolated Danger Buoy. Originally named as the Cerium and then as the G.R. Velie, the G.B. Church was built in 1943 in Goole, Yorkshire UK. In 1967 she was owned by Continental Explosives Ltd., Vancouver BC. In 1977-79 she was owned by Centennial Towing Ltd., Surrey BC. In 1984-91 she was owned by #267866 British Columbia Ltd., Vancouver BC. She was struck from the Registry of Shipping on June 26, 1992, but already in 1991 she had been sunk as an artificial diving reef. This was one of the earliest purposeful ship sinkings of a vessel to promote sport wreck diving. She is still a popular destination for recreational divers, although overshadowed by the more glamorous RCN destroyers that have been sunk by the Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia. It is located on the boundary of the Princess Margaret Provincial Marine Park. The mast is at 5 meters (15 feet) and the keel at 27 meters (90 feet) where the average visibility is around 12 meters (35 feet). The dive should only be made by certified and experienced divers.
An isolated danger buoy is moored on, or above, an isolated danger that has navigable water all around it. Consult the chart for information concerning the danger, (dimensions, depth, etc). It may be used to mark natural dangers such as small shoals or obstructions such as wrecks.
Site News: April 25, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,359 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.