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Merry Island Light

by Captain Alec Provan and John MacFarlane 2016

Merry Island Light (Photo from the Captain Alec Provan collection. )

The Merry Island Lighthouse (List of Lights 449 G5510) and exhibits Flash 0.4 s; eclipse 14.6 s. Year round. Chart:3535. It consists of a square base, with a tower (12 metres (40 feet) in height) rising from the corner of the building. Two red maple leaves, sculpted in relief, add to the visual interest of the lighthouse.

Merry Island Light is located on the SE. extremity of the island in Welcome Passage, between Thormanby Islands and SW side of Sechelt Peninsula, New Westminster Land District.

Merry Island was named for someone with almost no association with the Pacific coast of British Columbia, James C. Merry MP. This British politician was the owner of a racehorse that won the Epsom Derby.

References: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/lhn-nhs/pp-hl/page01.aspx#bc; https://www.notmar.gc.ca/publications/list-livre/pac/p2652-en.php;

To quote from this article please cite:

Provan, Captain Alec and MacFarlane, John M. (2016) Merry Island Light. Nauticapedia.ca 2016. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Light_Merry_Island.php; Captain John Walbran British Columbia Coast Names

Site News: January 14, 2025

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,957 vessel histories (with 16,337 images and 13,935 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).

The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3998 images).

My thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of the vessel histories in the vessel database. Ray has been documenting the ships of Vancouver Harbour for more than 60 years.

Thanks to contributor Mike Rydqvist McCammon for the hundreds of photos he continues to contribute to illustrate British Columbia’s floating heritage.

My very special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

Thanks to John Spivey who is beginning his 4th year of fact checking all of the entries in the vessel database.

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