Beaver (steamship)

{{Short description|1836 paddle steamer, first steamship in the North Pacific}}

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|Ship image=Steamship Beaver.jpg

|Ship caption=Beaver about 1870

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{{Infobox ship career

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|Ship country=Canada

|Ship flag=File:Hudsons Bay Company Flag.svg flag]] {{shipboxflag|Canada|1868}}

|Ship name=Beaver

|Ship ordered=

|Ship builder=Wigram & Green, Blackwall Yard, London

|Ship laid down=London, England

|Ship launched=9 May 1835

|Ship acquired=

|Ship commissioned=

|Ship decommissioned=

|Ship in service=1835-1888

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|Ship reinstated=

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|Ship fate= Wrecked 25 July 1888

|Ship notes=

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{{Infobox ship characteristics

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|Header caption=

|Ship class=

|Ship type=Sidewheel paddle steamer

|Ship tonnage=109 tons

|Ship length={{convert|101|ft|9|in|m|abbr=on}}

|Ship beam={{convert|33|ft|m|abbr=on}}

|Ship speed=

|Ship draft={{convert|8|ft|6|in|m|abbr=on}}

|Ship hold depth=

|Ship propulsion=*Two {{convert|35|HP|kW|abbr=on}} Boulton & Watt steam engines

Two {{convert|13|ft|m|abbr=on|adj=on}}diameter paddlewheels [42in bore and 36 inch stroke;2cyl]

|Ship sail plan=Brigantine

|Ship complement=

|Ship armament=4 brass cannons{{cite web|url=http://www.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com/page212.htm|title=Beaver at the Vancouver Maritime Museum website|access-date=2008-01-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928010433/http://www.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com/page212.htm|archive-date=28 September 2007|url-status=dead}}

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Beaver was a steamship originally owned and operated by the Hudson's Bay Company. She was the first steamship to operate in the Pacific Northwest of North America, and made remote parts of the west coast of Canada accessible for maritime fur trading. At one point she was chartered by the Royal Navy for surveying the coastline of British Columbia. She served off the coast from 1836 until 1888, when she was wrecked.

Service

Beaver served trading posts maintained by the Hudson's Bay Company between the Columbia River and Russian America (Alaska) and played an important role in helping maintain British control in British Columbia during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858–59. In 1862 the Royal Navy chartered her to survey and chart the coast of the Colony of British Columbia. She also provided assistance to the Royal Navy at Bute Inlet during the Chilcotin War.

Loss

A consortium that became the British Columbia Towing and Transportation Company in 1874 purchased her, and used her as a towboat until 25 July 1888. On that day an inebriated crew ran her aground on rocks in Burrard Inlet at Prospect Point in Vancouver's Stanley Park. The wreck finally sank in July 1892 when the wake of the passing steamer Yosemite struck it, but only after enterprising locals had stripped much of the wreck for souvenirs. The Vancouver Maritime Museum houses a collection of Beaver remnants including the boiler and two drive shafts for the paddle wheels, one raised in the 1960s and the other returned from a collection in Tacoma, along with the boiler. A plaque commemorates the site of the sinking. Divers surveyed the wreck in the 1960s. However, when the Underwater Archaeological Society of BC did so in the 1990s, they found she had mostly disintegrated due to rot and currents.

Image gallery

File:Engine of Paddle Steamer Leven, Dumbarton - geograph.org.uk - 174441.jpg|Side lever engine off PS Levan; Beaver's engine had two cylinders and was built by Boulton and Watt.

File:Wreck of the Steamboat, S.S. Beaver, British Columbia (S2004-891 LS).jpg|The wreck of S.S. Beaver

Image:SSBeaver Plaque.jpg|Plaque commemorating Beaver in Stanley Park, Vancouver.

References

Horner, John B. (1921). [https://books.google.com/books?id=J8IdAAAAMAAJ Oregon: Her History, Her Great Men, Her Literature]. The J.K. Gill Co.: Portland
Pethick, Derek, The SS Beaver, 1974