Floating Households

Tugs

As contemporaries often observed, Victoria’s harbour during the Edwardian period was a hive of activity. Tugboats were the worker bees within that hive. Some of these vessels were built locally at shipyards such as William Turpel & Sons at Point Hope, underscoring the city’s role not only as a port of operations but also as a centre of shipbuilding.

Tug Madge approaching Victoria harbour, c. 1908
Image courtesy of BC Archives, E-00654

Tugs moved the raw materials of the regional economy. Vessels such as the tug Spray towed log rafts from logging operations on southern Vancouver Island to mills in the Upper Harbour, while tugs Owen and Sadie hauled coal barges from Ladysmith to fuel Victoria’s industries and households. Others carried out less celebrated work. Several tugs owned by Capt. William E. Gardner were contracted by the City of Victoria to tow garbage scows into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where the city’s refuse was dumped at sea.

Compared to passenger steamers and coastal freighters, tug crews were small, typically consisting of a master, an engineer, a fireman (stoker), cook and a couple of deckhands.

Tugboat masters often came from established maritime regions such as Nova Scotia, but the census also reveals the presence of more local figures. Capt. Robert Reginald McMicking, master of the Petrel, was born in Victoria. His father, a notable pioneer, created the city’s telephone system. At the time of the 1911 census, Capt. McMicking was preparing to lay communication cables between Victoria and the Gulf Islands—an indication of the varied technical roles performed by tug operators.

Previously, McMicking was commander of the tug Lorne. That vessel was the queen of Victoria's tugboat fleet. Built in Victoria at Turpel's shipyard in 1889 for the Dunsmuir coal company, the Lorne was a legend on the Gulf of Georgia and Puget Sound. She was designed to carry large quantities of coal from the Wellington mines near Nanaimo to markets in the Pacific Northwest and to escort ocean-going transport ships out to sea.

The following tugs are listed in order of enumeration:

The tug Lorne in Victoria harbour
Image courtesy of City of Vancouver Archives

In keeping with maritime tradition, many of tugs were named for the wives and daughters of their owners.

These vessels formed distinctive floating households, as illustrated by the crews of the Sadie and the Spray.