the one possible exception of the ketch
Nonsuch.

It was aboard the S.S. Beaver that Chief
Factor James Douglas sailed when he foun-
ded Fort Victoria, and the Beaver continued
in the service of the Company on the Pacifle
Coast for almost forty years.

She was built in England for the Com-
pany by Green, Wigrams & Green of Black-
wall, on the Thames, in 1835. Her boilers
were by Bolton, Watt & Company. She
was a paddle steamer, built of British and
African oak with a keel of English elm.
Considerable copper was used for her bolts
and her mountings.

She left England, under sail, on August
29th, 1835, Capt. David Home in com-
mand. She was escorted by the Columbia.
She successfully rounded Cape Horn, the
first steamship to do so en route for the Paci-
fic Coast, even although she carried her
paddles inboard and her engines were car-
ried as cargo. The engines, by the way,
were thirty-five nominal horsepower. It was
not until after her arrival in the Columbia
River in April, 1836, that these engines
were fitted into her. For many years the
old Beaver played an important part in the
development of British Columbia and the
Pacific Coast. She did splendid service dur-
ing the California gold rush of *49, and the
Fraser River gold rush of °58. She took a
prominent part in practically every historical
event on the coast between 1836 and 1874.
Between 1862 and 1869 she was used by the
British government for a short time in chart-
ing the coastline. In 1874 she was sold by

TRAVELLERS HOTEL

BILL ROBINSON, Operator and Manager
FULLY LICENSED

Noted for Its Hospitality and Excellent Service

First-class Dining Room

LADYSMITH, B.C.

TOM BERTRAM, Pharmacist

LADYSMITH DRUG STORE

Phone 26 Ladysmith

for

A Complete, Modern Drug Service

CASSIDY HOTEL

Napoleon Manca, Proprietor
&
Licensed Premises

Half Way Between Nanaimo and
Ladysmith

R.R. 2, Nanaimo, B.C.

WINTER EDITION

the Hudson’s Bay Company for $17.500 to
Stafford, Saunders, Marton, Rudlin, Colt-
man and Williams of Victoria and did serv-
ice as a general freight and tow boat.

On the 26th of July, 1886, with Capt.
George Marchant in command, she went on
the rocks at Prospect Point, Vancouver. She
remained there, piled up, for almost four
years, when in 1892, exactly one hundred
years after Captain George Vancouver had
sailed into Burrard Inlet in his ship, the
Discovery, her engines broke through her
hull and she slowly disintegrated and dis-
appeared into the seas upon which she had
for so long done faithful service.

The Pacific Coast Beaver was not by any
means the first ship of the name to be in the
service of America’s fur traders. As far
back as 1785, the North West Company had
a sailing vessel called Beaver working out of
Detroit—a small, decked ship of 34-foot
beam and four-foot hold, which cost them
over £1800 to build, a lot of money in those
days for so small a ship.

John Jacob Astor, the German-American
fur trader, owned a ship of the same name.

In far-off Honolulu, the writer strolled
into a little cafe one night and there he
noticed in a corner a beautiful wood-carving
of a beaver on the traditional log, and evi-
dently of considerable age. Investigation
disclosed that it had been removed from
what had been known in the early days as
“The Old Beaver Coffee Saloon,” a haunt
of Hudson’s Bay Company officials some
time between 1834 and 1859, during the
period the Company ran a depot there, when
the islands were known as the Sandwich
Islands. And not very far away from that
cafe he came across the symbol again, this
time as a weather-vane on a building close
to the waterfront. This weather-vane was
broken and rusted, and some of the letters
indicating the four points of the compass
were missing, but the figure of the beaver
still stood out valiantly against the ravages
of time and the South Sea hurricanes, a
memorial set up by some ship’s carpenter or
engineer, belonging to the Company of fur
traders and set up again on the new building
after the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ware-
houses and trading there were no more.
Thus the fur traders clung to the name and
symbol of their calling even if it had to be
perpetuated in such mundane things as
weather-vanes and coffee saloon sign-posts.

THE BEAVER CLUB OF THE Nor’ WESTERS

Back in 1785, when the older wintering
partners of the North West Company, resi-
dent in Montreal, sought to form a select
and exclusive club of their very own and
cast about for an appropriate name for it,
it was only natural that they should choose
the symbolic fur trade word, “Beaver.” Of
this famous club of fur traders very little
is known, for its members did not speak
of it to outsiders, nor did they write much
about it in their journals. But it has been
disclosed that the Beaver Club was a social
organization of the partners of the North
West Company, that it was formed in 1785,
and had a membership of but nineteen at its
inception, and all of those members were

tried winterers in the great Northwest. One
of the conditions of acceptance for member-
ship was that the applicant or invited mem-
ber must have passed a winter in the Pays
dEn Haut, and he had to obtain the unani-
mous vote of the club members.

The Club’s quarters in Montreal were at
Beaver Hall, the mansion of Joseph Frob-
isher, a noted Montrealer.

The Beaver Club gradually widened its
membership until this amounted to fifty-five,
with ten honorary members in addition, and
at these figures it remained to the end of its
existence.

With the commencement of each season,
a dinner was held at which all members
resident in Montreal at the time were ob-
liged to be present. If any failed to advise
the secretary of their inability to attend, the
delinquent was “Considered of the party
and subject to the rules of the Club.” Mem-
bers were not permitted to hold a party at
their homes on Club days, nor were they
allowed to accept invitations to attend else-
where. Illness was considered the only
legitimate excuse for the absence of any
member then in town.

The meetings were held fortnightly, from
December to April, in addition to which a
summer club was operated for the captains
of the fur trade boats, some of whom were
honorary members of the Beaver Club.

The Beaver Club always did itself proud
in the matter of food and drink. Pemmican
and choice beaver cuts were brought from
the West, from far-away Athabasca, by
canoes manned by French-Canadian voy-
ageurs, to grace the table and titilate the
palates of the members, who entertained
themselves in brilliant, expensive and at
times, roistering fashion.

There was an established list of special
toasts, five in all, which had to be honoured.
After these, members and guests followed
their own bent. No doubt the dress for the

WHEAT SHEAF HOTEL

August Mahle, Proprietor

Licensed Premises
Six Miles from Nanaimo on the Old Road

R.R. 2, Nanaimo, B.C.

PATRICIA
HOTEL

JACK ZUZIC, Proprietor

LICENSED PARLOUR

Nanaimo, British Columbia

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