Robert C. Scott wrote a biography of Captain William Oliver, the coastal missionary who was born in Bishopston, Scotland on March 19, 1848. Trained as a ship's carpenter, Oliver missed the sailing of his vessel from New Westminster after a bout of drinking and sought help from Mary St. Methodist. With the guidance of Reverend Ebenezer Robson, Oliver devoted his life to missionary service and built the first ship used by Thomas Crosby, the Glad Tidings, in 1884. Until his retirement in 1929, Oliver worked for the missionaries of the coast as a shipwright and skipper of the Thomas Crosby III. He died in February of 1937. Incorporating ships' logs, Robert C. Scott wrote a tribute, My Captain Oliver (Toronto: United Church Publishing, 1947), having joined Oliver in his maritime mission service in 1925. Wilfred H. Morris also wrote Captain William Oliver, A Fisher of Men (Trujillo, Peru: Casa Evangelica de Publicaciones, 1941).

BOOKS:

My Captain Oliver: A Story of Two Missionaries on the British Columbia Coast (Toronto: United Church of Canada, 1947).

[BCBW 2005] "Missionaries" "1900-1950" "Maritime"