Rust in peace

(continued from A bit of logging camp history.)

Simpson's Folly, they called it. Al Simpson, of the Iron River Logging Company, had built the causeway out into Georgia Strait, but the waves were too strong, and broke up his log booms. He added pieces of derelict ships to make a breakwater, starting with a 68 year old, three-masted clipper ship, the St. Paul, in 1942. The winter storms shifted them around, so he had them dynamited to the ground.

Remains of one of the Oyster Bay derelicts

Near the top of the breakwater, the old iron doesn't collect seaweed.

It wasn't enough. This is open coast, and the currents are strong.

In 1944, H.R. MacMillan bought the logging rights and camp. He expanded its operation, and brought in over one hundred worker's cabins. A cafe, the Blue Grouse, opened next door. And he began an ambitious program to protect the bay, adding, over time, a whole fleet of drowned ships.

The HCMS Matane, Royal Canadian Navy

... British Columbia's first Chief Forester. MacMillan reportedly gained considerable experience in world lumbering during World War I. With his colleague Whitford Julian VanDusen, another forester, MacMillan incorporated a company in 1919 to sell British Columbia lumber products to foreign markets. In 1924, they established a shipping company that would become one of the world's biggest charter companies. ( In response to competition, they began) ... to purchase mills and creat(e) the first truly integrated forestry company in British Columbia.
During World War II, MacMillan acquired numerous small mills and timber tenures on the south coast of British Columbia. (Wikipedia)

When World War II ended, many of the ships used in the war effort became redundant, and were sold off. In 1947, MacMillan bought and beached the Matane (almost new: built in 1943), the Levis, and the Charlottetown, from the Royal Canadian Navy.

Another view of the Matane. This was a large ship.

More ships followed:

• the WWI destroyer President Burns, 
• the Union Steamship steamer Lady Pam, 
• the Consolidated Whaling Company tender Gray (b. 1889), 
• the Island Tug and Barge Company’s chip barges Drumwall (aka. Puako) and 
• Betsey Ross (b. 1943), 
• the San Francisco car ferry Golden Bear, 
• the steam freighter Chatham, 
• the car ferry Border Queen, 
• two tugs (Cape Scott was one), 
• the 245-foot Muriel (built 1920), and 
• a large floating drydock.

The ships rested there, slowly rusting, until the mid-1950s, when rocks were brought in to replace them; the ships then were "removed". A 1956 report from the Campbell River Museum archives claims that "Removal of the hulks of old vessels has been underway for some years ... will be completed in 1956."

"Hat guy". Not much left of this ship.

Their footprints are still rusting peacefully today, in 2017.

Rust and barnacle remains.

As to how much they rusted and deteriorated, I put it down to the fact the tide goes out past them and exposes them entirely to air, twice a day, whereas sunken ships are entirely underwater forever and thus somewhat protected from oxidation (rusting.) (From Fransen CR; Graveyard of the Canadian Navy, Flickr.)

(Also see Ted Boggs collection, Campbell River Museum, for photos of logging camp and booming grounds, 1942 - 1945, and Helen Mitchell collection, for typical bunkhouses.)

A bit of logging camp history

In 1923, a pair of loggers set up a small logging camp at Oyster Bay, just north of the outlet of the Oyster River. The land is flat here; streams and creeks dawdle down to the coast, stopping here and there to make sloughs and flooded meadows. Roads across the wetlands were corduroy; cut logs laid across the road bed (or swamp bed), sometimes with sand or gravel fill. It made for a bumpy ride in those old logging trucks.

The bay itself is more a slight dent in the coastline, open to the waves and currents of Georgia Strait. Better a semi-bay for mooring log booms than none, and the flat surrounding land was a good place to lay out workers' cabins and logging machinery.

Looking inland from the tip of the breakwater. Flat river bottom land ahead.

The flatlands had other residents in those first years. Around the depression years, a relief camp housed young men otherwise out of work. They cleared land, worked on the roads; the cordwood road was gravelled; there were bridges to build and repair.

In 1938, a dry year, sparks from small logging operations set off dozens of small brush fires in the Campbell River - Courtenay area. Oyster Bay is in the centre. One fire grew into a raging blaze that eventually consumed 470 square kilometres of Vancouver Island Forest; at the end, over 2000 men fought it, hopelessly until the rains came.

When that was over, the Forestry department hired 40 men to cut a road through from Courtenay to Campbell River; they also replanted trees that had been lost in the fire.

The breakwater, today. Rocks and rust. Simpson's ship pieces.

As World War II was getting underway, the need for lumber grew. Al Simpson, of the Iron River Logging Company, bought the old logging camp and built a causeway out into the bay to enclose his booming ground. As added protection from the huge waves kicked up by winter storms in Georgia Strait, he sunk parts from dismantled ships as a breakwater.

Rusted ladder. One of Simpson's collection?

The causeway was here. Looking straight east across the channel.

And now, we have a real bay. Coastal currents have been bringing in sand and debris, piling up along Simpson's causeway at first, then on the added breakwater, changing the shape of the shoreline, even building bird habitat.

Three pilings left over from the causeway, with flying kildeer.

Google map. Oyster River at the bottom, the wide-open "bay", with the modern, enclosed bay at the star.

Tomorrow: MacBlo, the war's remnants, and today's hulks.