Dashing Wave Shipwreck Northeastern Vancouver Island

The Dashing Wave was one of seven clipper ships built by Fernald and Pettigrew at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Built for Samuel Tilton & Company she was launched July 15, 1853.  Ship-rigged, she was a medium clipper and measured 181’8″ long, 39’6″ in beam, and 21’3″ deep.  Her gross tonnage was 1,180 (old measure) or 1,054 tons (new measure).  She had a single deck, three masts, an elliptical stern, and an eagle head.  She was carvel-built with timbers such as oak and pine.  Brass bolts were used in part of the vessel and her hull was sheathed in yellow metal.

Loss
Loaded with cannery supplies, the Dashing Wave left Seattle under tow of the tug San Juan on March 14, 1920.  When opposite Macdonalds’s logging camp at Oyster Bay (14 km south of Campbell River), the captain, on duty since Seattle, turned the tug over to the first mate.  At 3:39 am on March 16 the San Juan towed the Dashing Wave ashore on the Shelter Point, south of Campbell River.  Dashing Wave’s crew got off without any trouble as the weather was clear and the seas calm.  The Comox Argus newspaper did not say whether the San Juan actually beached herself.  However, it described the Dashing Wave as being “hogged” on the reef, that is, bow and stern drooped lower than the midships, and suggested there was little chance of saving the vessel.  It was correct. The Dashing Wave was declared a total loss.

For more information on the Gulf Streams and other shipwrecks on the Sunshine Coast, go to: UASBC.Com. You can order the publication Historic Shipwrecks of the of the Sunshine Coast from the Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia publications.

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