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Sternwheelers on the New Westminster BC Waterfront

Sampson and Native

New Westminster British Columbia is located on the navigable lower Fraser River and was once the capital of the Crown Colony and jumping off spot to river shipping. The Samson V (on the right), built in 1937 at the Star (Mercer's) Shipyards, was the last steam-powered sternwheeler to operate in Canada (Canada Department of Public Works).She was retired as a snag boat in 1980 and is now a museum vessel. She is 136 feet long, 31 feet wide and draws 4.5 feet of water. Her engine was built in 1909.

Nauticapedia

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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