According to coastal historian Rick James, the earliest, verifiable wreck documented along the B.C. West Coast by the Underwater Archaeological Society of B.C. is the East Indiaman Lord Western which was wrecked at Sydney Inlet in December of 1853 after taking a cargo of raw logs in Sooke. This and other early shipwrecked are recorded in Marc Jacques' Historic Shipwrecks of Northeastern Vancouver Island (Vancouver: Underwater Archaeological Society of B.C., 1999), with some chapters by Rick James. It's a record of maritime disasters from the sinking of the Alpha on Chrome Island (at the end of Denman Island) through to Cape Scott, including many ships lost through Seymour Narrows.

With Rick James, Jacques Marc also wrote Historic Shipwrecks of the Sunshine Coast (Vancouver: Underwater Archaeology Society of B.C.: 2002). It all started when James Marc found a Canadian Pacific Steamship cup while diving under an abandoned dock site about twenty years back-and now his Pacific Coast Ship China (RBC Museum $75) identifies more than 280 china patterns and dates shipping china used along the Pacific coast of North America, and includes descriptions of more than 59 Pacific Coast shipping companies from the late 1800s onward.

BOOKS:

Pacific Coast Ship China (RBC Museum 2008) 978-0-7726-5979-8

[BCBW 2008] "Maritime" "Disaster"