A LENS ON VANCOUVER'S PAST
Photography by Walter Frost
S.S. EEMDYK (2)
TECHNICAL DATA
Type:
Tonnage (GRT):
Length:
Service Speed:
Complement:
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Grain Cube:
Bale Cube:
Passengers:
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Year Delivered:
Years In Service:
Year Dismantled:
General cargo ship
7,655
148.44 m / 487 ft.
12.0 kts
63
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589,000 cu. ft.
549,000 cu. ft.
0
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1915
1920-1933
1938
Interesting Facts & Figures
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The Eemdyk (2) (Capt. G.J. Barendse) was the first HAL ship to reach Vancouver when she steamed through the First Narrows on September 29, 1920. She docked at Vancouver’s CPR Pier H where she took on 5,000 cases of freshly canned B.C. salmon which joined the 37,250 boxes of Washington apples taken on in Seattle (the first such refrigerated shipment made from the west coast).
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Eemdyk Passage, a channel separating Bentinck Island from Vancouver Island, is named after an incident that occurred on October 14, 1925. At midnight, the Eemdyk (Capt. L. Rijnink) ran aground hard 10 mi. southwest of Victoria on Bentinck Island as she was crawling out to sea in a blinding fog. None of her crew were injured at the time but seven men and the Victoria-based tugboat Hope were lost to the turbulent waters during subsequent salvage operations. Six weeks later, the Eemdyk steamed out of Vancouver after undergoing repairs to her hull at the Burrard Drydock Company.