PACIFIC FLEET

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 43, 19 August 1930, Page 9

PACIFIC FLEET

THE CANADIAN LINES

PALATIAL VESSELS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

VANCOUVER, 24th July.

The launch of the Empress of Japan, costing £3,000,000, by the C.P.E. recently draws pointed attention to the palatial passenger fleet now taking up the transpacific and Pacific-Canadian coast service on behalf of that company and its Government-owned competitor, the Canadian National Steamships, Ltd.

The royalty of the Pacific Ocean finds its home to-day in Vancouver, a city whose bewildering growth is further enhanced by the announcement that the first steel mill west of tho Great Lakes is to be erected here. There are now 42 ocean-going lines entering the port o£ Vancouver which, 44 years ago this month, was wiped out by fire, leaving only two wooden shacks. From no port on the Pacific Ocean do finer ships sail than those owned by the two great Canadian transportation companies to the Far East or up and down the coast of British Columbia. A thousand master mariners make their home in Vancouver, handling the Empresses, the Princesses, the Princes, and the Ladys. Sailors from non-British ports will tell you there is nothing on the Pacific to compare with the palatial floating palace Empress of Japan_ in size, finish, speed, and accommodation. The now Princesses are, too, magnificent specimens of the shipbuilder's art; they and their brother Prince ships, though owned by different companies, rank side by side in quality. After them come the Lady type, de luxe coastwise craft. The clipper prow of the first of the Empress fleet, the Empress of Japan, which held the speed record of the Pacific for 22 years, is mounted on the shores of Stanley Park, facing The Narrows and The Lion's Gate, through which all ships making for Vancouver come and go. Since her day, her sister ships carry the palm of speed and seem destined to hold it for generations. EARLY HISTORY. , The first Prince and Princess arrived on this coast in 1787 when the British trader Prince of Wales and the British vessel Princess Royal arrived. Tho second Prince of Wales was a lake steamer, built at Victoria, 8.C., some time prior to 1865. Prince Alfred was - a side-wheeler. A second Prince Alfred came from Australia; she was put on the coast trade to San. Francisco, and was wrecked in 1874. The second of the Princess .class, the Princess Eoyal, took the first British Columbia lumber to Australia in ISSB. A New York steamer, the Olympia, was bought in 1879 by the Hudson's Bay Company and, renamed Princess Louise, made; history on the coast. She was the last word in comfort and speed, and many tales are still told of her by pioneer residents. In the Lady class, now owned by the coastal company, the Union S.S. Co., the first was the British ship Lady Lampson, which arrived in 1869 with cargo for the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1878, the Lady Washington, was built and went on service in Puget Sound. The beautiful but wicked little schooner Lady Mine was built at San Francisco. Originally a pilot boat, she went into the illicit sealing trade, and latterly had a thrilling career as a rumrunner till she piled on the rocks of tho west coast of Vancouver Island, homeward bound. . But tho present snappy, modern vessels of the Lady class never broach the conventions.