Vancouver Sun Article
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Vancouver Sun Article June 29, 2010VANCOUVER - There's nothing quick about the SS Master. For one thing, it takes two days to fire up its antique boilers to raise enough steam to leave the dock. And when underway, going from forward to reverse is a production for the 88-year-old tug, compared to today's whippersnappers, where reversing is accomplished by just moving the throttle. "For us it's all telegraph signals and bells from the wheelhouse to the engine room, and we have to to stop engines before we can reverse because we've got no transmission," says Chris Croner, president of the SS Master Society. And while the grand old lady of the Vancouver waterfront takes her own sweet time to change direction, the non-profit society operating the last wooden-hulled steam tug still afloat in North America, will have to move a lot smarter. The society has lost its provincial lottery funding, so Croner and his 40 or so mates are now going to the public to raise money to keep the Master operating. "We used to get between $20,000 to $40,000 from the lotteries, but that's gone now with the government cutbacks to charities so we've got to come up with other ways to raise money," Croner says. This week the vessel, built in False Creek in 1922 by Arthur Moscrop, who built the RCMP's famed St Roch the first vessel to sail the Northwest Passage from west to east is undergoing its yearly maintenance and steam certification at Allied Shipyard in North Vancouver. It costs about $50,000 a year to maintain the Master, which worked as a tug until 1959. During its service it hauled barges carrying the stone to construct the Hotel Vancouver from Texada Island and coal from Vancouver Island to False Creek for city hall and Vancouver General Hospital, with a trip down the Fraser River to supply the old B.C. Penitentiary in New Westminster. She's 200 tonnes dead weight, 85 feet long, with a 20 foot beam and draws 12 feet, built of B.C. fir "and everyone here should be proud of her she's the last one of its kind left," says Croner. "At one time there were 200 boats like this on the coast. The rest sank, were broken up or converted to diesel." He's hoping the public responds to the society's plea for help. "We're just a bunch of blue-collar workers trying to keep this thing going. The Master is a heritage object an icon for the Vancouver waterfront," he said. The Master will be on public display at weekends at the Maritime Museum in Kitsilano beginning the weekend of July 10 and will be seen during the summer at various public waterfront events, such as the Wooden Boat Festival on Granville Island in August and The Party on the Pier in North Vancouver, July 18.
By Gerry Bellett |
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