Bloedel, Stewart

& Welch

Limited

MANUFACTURING

PACIFIC COAST FOREST PRODUCTS

LOGGING OPERATIONS

Complim en bs of

Bloedel - Sarita River - Franklin River

PREST-O-LOG PLANT

Vancouver

SAWMILLS — Port Alberni - Great Central

PULP MILL — Port Alberni

SHINGLE MILLS — Vancouver - Port Alberni

ment of their sleeping accommodation
with plenty of room for all of them.

SENSE OF HUMOR

They also have another thing much
needed in this job—a sense of humor.
I saw in their small messroom a Law-
son Wood painting featuring a sea-
sick puppy. Bearing in mind the kind
of sea I had already experienced on
this coast, I admired the nonchalance.

Although this vessel is primarily
and very actively a functioning
R.C.M.P. Unit (since the “Mounties”
took over the B.C. Police) she is
no whit less a seafarer’s pride. Fred
Brooksbank, despite the curious an-
achronism of his Mountie uniform for
sea duty, has the salt water in his
blood and always has had. He went
to sea at the age of seventeen—and
served his due time in lighthouse
tenders, in various fishpackers, in the
Alaskan coastal passenger trade—and
he had actually applied for a job
aboard one of the Provincial Game
Department’s boats, P.G.D. 2, when
the police heard of his application.
They had been told that he was a
likely character, and asked the Game
Department please to hand their man
over.

Every bit of Skipper Brooksbank’s
sea experience is needed in his duty
aboard P.M.L. 16. He must be ready
to sail in all kinds of weather, along
dangerously rock-strewn inlets and

TWENTY-THIRD EDITION

down stretches of the sea that have
been the graveyard of many bigger
ships before him.

In addition to all the other police
duties, the ever-ready vessel makes a
separate, thorough-going monthly
patrol of the West Coast shoreline
that is her “beat.” The trip lasts, as a
rule, from eighteen to twenty-one
days, and involves between 800 and
1,000 miles of sea patrol, with a
double call at all points en route ex-
cept the destination farthest away.

For a relatively small ship that
monthly patrol means a lot of pre-
planning, and pre-stocking. Every bit
of ship’s gear must be inspected, and
be entirely dependable. Everything
from the radio telephone equipment
to the order of the papers in the
police files must reflect the same kind
of 100%, efficiency that marks all else
about the operations of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police. For the
monthly patrol can, and does, uncover
urgencies and emergencies of every
known description, and some of the
more exclusively a West Coast pro-
duct.

INVESTIGATIONS

The ship calls personally to investi-
gate any complaints. If requested she
patrols the waters during any big
and probably-noisy dances or other
public festivities. (The water is deep,
and the waterside paths can be very

Export Company

Limited

ALBERNI PACIFIC LUMBER DIVISION

Port Alberni, B.C.

slippery.) If, in mid-winter, any of the
far-isolated homestecaders are “iced
in,’ P.M.L. 16 can usually break
through with needed supplies. She
can also rush people out to hospital.
She can stand by, with a local lifeboat,
and save life at sea. She can search
for lost vessels and, taking a leaf from
the saga of her better-known brothers
ashore, she can usually “get her ship.”

With the help of the few local
magistrates who function on_ this
little-visited coastline, they hold their
own court on board, and hear their
own cases. When necessary, they
carry prisoners, in the focs'le jail,
down to Port Alberni for tranship-
ment to the mainland or “wherever
the court shall so direct.” And they
dispense the same degree of justice to
and for the Indians of the Coast as
they do for the white men.

They have helped people to get
married, to be born, and to be
buried. Skipper Brooksbank remem-
bered a case where they carried the
body of a young man who had been
drowned against the rocks, ten miles
up through dense forest to his home,
on his mother’s land, for burial. One
of the P.M.L.’s crew, Engineer Gur-
ney, is a Justice of the Peace, and has
the legal authority that enables him
to function in many needed ways.
Another one .. . but it is needless to
single them out, for each one of these

Page Fifty-three