NAVIOS EM FESTA NO CANADÁ

Fala de Júpiter

"Eternos moradores do luzente
Estelífero pólo, e claro assento,
Se do grande valor da forte gente
De Luso não perdeis o pensamento,
Deveis de ter sabido claramente,
Como é dos fados grandes certo intento,
Que por ela se esqueçam os humanos
De Assírios, Persas, Gregos e Romanos.

Photo & Copyright Steve
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 24

MASTROS

De outra pedra mais clara que diamante.

Em luzentes assentos, marchetados
De ouro e de perlas, mais abaixo estavam
Os outros Deuses todos assentados,
Como a razão e a ordem concertavam:
Precedem os antíguos mais honrados;
Mais abaixo os menores se assentavam;
Quando Júpiter alto, assim dizendo,
C'um tom de voz começa, grave e horrendo:

Photo & Copyright Steve
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 23

FINAL DA CARREIRA

Júpiter

Estava o Padre ali sublime e dino,
Que vibra os feros raios de Vulcano,
Num assento de estrelas cristalino,
Com gesto alto, severo e soberano.
Do rosto respirava um ar divino,
Que divino tornara um corpo humano;
Com uma coroa e ceptro rutilante,

Photo & Copyright James
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 22

TEMPORAL NA FLÓRIDA, USA

Deixam dos sete Céus o regimento,
Que do poder mais alto lhe foi dado,
Alto poder, que só co'o pensamento
Governa o Céu, a Terra, e o Mar irado.
Ali se acharam juntos num momento
Os que habitam o Arcturo congelado,
E os que o Austro tem, e as partes onde
A Aurora nasce, e o claro Sol se esconde.

Photo & Copyright Anonymus
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 21

TRIANGLE ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

The lantern and lens from the Triangle Island Lighthouse are on display at the Sooke Region Museum in Sooke.

Latitude: 48.384124
Longitude: -123.706092

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SHERIGHAM POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

On the night of February 26, 1862, the Anna Barnard, bound from San Francisco to Sooke for a load of lumber, approached Vancouver Island. Captain Olmstead and his seven-man crew could hear the pounding surf, but thick, soupy fog prevented them from seeing exactly how close to shore they were. Their luck ran out when they struck rocks a few miles from Sheringham Point. As their bark began to break apart, the captain and two crewmen launched a lifeboat but almost immediately the small vessel overturned in the surf. Captain Olmstead managed to swim to shore, but the cook and seaman who were with him drowned. The five remaining men aboard the bark climbed up the mast, where they passed a white-knuckled night clinging to the rigging until the tide went out and they were able to wade ashore.
Unlike so many other shipwrecks along the west coast of Vancouver Island, the story of the wreck of the Anna Barnard is known because members of its crew survived and, after being assisted by First Nation people, were taken to Victoria to tell their tale.

Even after Carmanah Point Lighthouse was built at the northern entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1891, there were still several nautical miles of unnerving darkness before a ship entering the strait from the north would catch the light from Race Rocks. This dark void disappeared in 1912 with the establishment of the Sheringham Point Lighthouse.

Manuel Quimper, a Peruvian-born navigator sent by Spain to explore the coast of Vancouver Island, was the first to map the point, and he named it Punta de San Eusivio in 1790. The name didn’t last for long. During his 1846 survey aboard the H.M.S. Herald, Captain Henry Kellet changed the name to Sheringham Point in honor of Commander William Louis Sheringham of the Royal Navy. Captain Kellet had served under Sheringham, whose accomplishments included surveying the south coast of England and Wales and assisting Captain Francis Beaufort in the compilation of Sailing Directions.

The site for the Sheringham Point Lighthouse was purchased from the Clark family in 1912 for $226.02, and construction began that same year under a contract to T. Stedham. The Annual Report of the Department of Marine and Fisheries for 1913 lists the following expenses associated with the work:

tower, wooden dwelling, boathouse, and oil shed - $8,457
seven foot lantern room, third-order triple flashing optic and freight - $7,609.50
installation of apparatus, inspection, traveling and other expenses by day’s labour under L. Cullison - $4,898.49
The hexagonal reinforced concrete lighthouse stands 20 metres (64 ft) high and was designed by William Anderson. Also at the station were a small boathouse, east of the tower, a square, white fog alarm building with a gable roof, located between the tower and the shore, and a substantial keeper’s dwelling, situated up the slope, well back from the tower. The original fog alarm building has since been replaced by a square, concrete building with a flat roof, while no keeper dwelling remains.

The original fog horn, which was operated by a steam engine, was replaced around 1925 by a diaphone horn powered by compressed air from oil engines. The fog alarm was later equipped with an automatic low visibility detector.

Eustace Travanion Arden lit the light for the first time on September 30, 1912. Sheringham Point with its dramatic view of the Olympic Mountain Range and close proximity to town had very little turnover. Keeper Arden remained at the station almost thirty-four years, retiring on February 18, 1946.

Alfred Dickenson served at the Capilano Lighthouse until the spring of 1946, when the light was electrified and operated from the signal tower on nearby Lions Gate Bridge. As Dickenson was sixty-one at the time, there was talk of his retirement, but he preferred to take another assignment if possible, so on June 13, 1946, the tender Berens arrived to transport Alfred, his wife Annie, and their few crated belongings to Victoria, from where they would travel by truck to their new home at Sheringham Point. A southeast gale was blowing with heavy rain the day they sailed for Victoria, and Annie became quite seasick. “Most of the stuff is soaked,” Alfred complained, “damned disgrace how things are handled, several things broken.”

After having spent twenty-four years in a small dwelling perched above the First Narrows, the Dickensons likely expected improved conditions at Sheringham Point, but such was not the case when they arrived. “In all my life I have never seen such a disgraceful condition for a government lightstation,” Alfred lamented. “I do not blame the temporary keeper, this dump was never looked after, hell of a mess … Engines just a bunch of junk.” During his first night of service at Sheringham, the light stopped at 12:30 and again at 1:10 a.m.

Keeper Arden, a loyal Tory, had been granted the position of first keeper at Sheringham Point over more qualified men, who just happened to lack his political connections. The Dickensons inherited the outcome of such patronage, but given Alfred’s diligence, the station surely didn’t remain in a dilapidated state for long.

John W. Burton became keeper in 1968. He and his family loved the spot and one of his daughters was married in the lantern room in 1976 with sixteen people, including the minister, all crowded in the small space. Burton reluctantly left the station in August 1989 when the light station was de-staffed.

The third-order Fresnel lens originally used in the lighthouse was removed in 1976 and is now located at the Sooke Region Museum, where a panel of it can be viewed by appointment.

The Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society was formed in 2003 to work for the preservation of the tower and the creation of a public park on the surrounding ten acres. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) completed a land swap in early 2008 with a neighboring landowner to help make the park possible. The land around the lighthouse, formerly owned by Western Forest Products, was sold to a private developer and is currently being developed into home sites. In 2010, controversy surrounded the sale of other nearby lands by Western Forest Products to the same private developer. Conservation groups are actively petitioning the government to purchase those lands for public use.


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RACE ROCKS LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on Great Race Rock in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, about 15km (9 miles) southwest of Victoria.

Latitude: 48.29837
Longitude: -123.53171

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PROSPECT POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Before the Cleveland Dam was built in 1954, the uncontrolled Capilano River plowed into Burrard Inlet near First Narrows churning up tons of silt and rock that even with diligent dredging made wide variations in where the shallows lay. Because of this, as well as the river’s rush of less buoyant fresh water, ships going through the Narrows hugged as tightly as possible to Prospect Point, opposite the river mouth.
On July 25, 1888, the steamship, Beaver slammed into the Prospect Point. The first steamship on the West Coast, the Beaver, built in 1835, was first used by the Hudson Bay Company, then transferred to the Royal Navy in 1863, where for seven years, she was used to survey the British Columbia coast line. Later sold to the British Columbia Towing and Transportation, she was used to tow barges, log booms, and sailing vessels, until she met her demise when her drunken crew ran her aground.


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PORLIER PASS RANGE REAR LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

The rear range light is located on Virago Point, the northwest point of Galiano Island, while the front range light is located on Race Point, just across Lighthouse Bay from the rear light.

Latitude: 49.0129
Longitude: -123.5859


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PACHENA POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located in the West Coast Trail Unit of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve about 15km (9 miles) south of Bamfield.

Latitude: 48.722092
Longitude: -125.097542

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MERRY ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on the southeast point of Merry Island, marking the southeast entrance to Welcome Passage.

Latitude: 49.467486
Longitude: -123.912011

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GREEN ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on the southwest side of Green Island, just south of the U.S./Canada border.

Latitude: 54.568611
Longitude: -130.70875

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ENTRANCE ISLANDS LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

In 1967, nearly 200 tubbers entered Nanaimo’s first bathtub race, and of those, an amazing forty-seven made it across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver. The length of the course is still thirty-six miles, but the annual World Championship Bathtub Race now follows a roughly circular route with Entrance Island, a thirty foot high barren outcropping of rock thirteen kilometres (eight miles) outside Nanaimo Harbour, serving as the first checkpoint.
Departure Bay and Nanaimo Harbour were busy ports in 1872, shipping coal to destinations throughout the Pacific Rim. In that year alone, 50,000 tons of coal cleared Departure Bay, and with all that shipping, it was inevitable that the Department of Marine and Fisheries would call for a lighthouse to mark the area.

FX Exchange Rate
On January 6, 1875, the Nanaimo Free Press announced that a lighthouse would be built on Entrance Island. As a ship sailed up Georgia Strait, a light on Entrance Island would come into view before the lights at Point Atkinson and the Fraser River were lost. The site for the lighthouse on the northeast corner of the island was the same spot where many years earlier, Imperial surveyors had piled up a heap of stones as a daymark.

The contract for building the light station, along with Berens Light in Victoria Harbour, was awarded to Mr. Louis Baker of Montreal, who committed to construct both lights for $6,900. Baker arrived with much fanfare in August 1875, and promised the light would be up and running by November. But in February 1876, the work was only two-thirds complete, and Baker, after withdrawing all his money, absconded from Nanaimo aboard the steamer Goliath, leaving behind unpaid and angry workmen and suppliers. James Gordon, who was hired to complete the light station, followed suit two months later.

Crooked contractors were not the only thing to plague the construction. Like many a lighthouse, its completion only came after lives were lost in the process. In November 1875, three workmen, M. Longden, Walter Sawyer, and George Furguson, left the island in a “good sea boat” and shortly thereafter found it necessary to tack. The Free Press reported what followed. “In doing so, Longden (who weighs about 225 lbs) failed to change his position. This caused all the weight to be on one side, and the boat filled and turned bottom upwards. The three men managed to get on the keel of the boat. In a short time Sawyer slipped off and was seen no more. After the boat had drifted about a mile in the direction of Lighthouse Island, Longden was seen to drop into the chilling waters. The boat, with Furguson still clinging to the upturned keel, drifted into the Gulf. …The men on the island used their best endeavors to save the unfortunate men, by throwing planks and sticks out towards them, but without avail. There was no other boat on the island.” The boat was later found, but no trace of the three men was ever discovered.

The lighthouse, a square white tower, rising sixty-five feet above high water and attached to a keeper’s dwelling, was declared finished in April 1876 by Arthur Finney, who also oversaw construction of the Point Atkinson lighthouse. It cast its beam for the first time when John Kenny lit its six lamps on the night of Thursday, June 8, 1876.

Kenny resigned six months later, and Robert Gray replaced him. Gray, who served for twenty years, watched in horror in November 1881, when, during a fierce gale, a boat crashed onto the rocks of the island. Gray ran down with a rope to try to assist the passengers, two men, two women, and three children, but a wave struck the stern, overturning the boat, and carried all its occupants out to sea.

In 1891, a fifth-order dioptric apparatus, visible for fourteen miles and equipped with a red sector to warn of Gabriola Reefs, replaced the original light. A larger, fourth-order lens with a twin capillary burner was installed in May 1905, and a revolving lens floating upon a mercury bath replaced this in 1921.

The light station also saw a progression of fog signals. An engine room housing a steam-powered foghorn was built in 1894. In 1915 the signal was converted to diaphones with gasoline engines driving the air compressors.

Keeper Gray’s successor, M.G. Clark saw a canoe carrying two Indians capsize just off the island in July 1902. He and his assistant, John Roberts, quickly launched the station boat and rowed out to save the men. For their good deed, they were each awarded a pair of binoculars and earned a solid, though not sustainable, reputation, which Clark milked for years to come.

Clark and his wife owned a ranch near Orlebar Point on Gabriola Island, a half-mile away from Entrance Island. Mrs. Clark disliked living on Entrance Island, so spent all her time at the ranch. Surprisingly, Keeper Clark spent little time on the island himself, hiring assistants to perform his lighthouse duties and work at the ranch as well.

In a letter to the marine agent, Hugh Brestin described what it was like to be an assistant for Keeper Clark. “When I got there, I was made to feed the chickens, dig his garden, clean his house down for his angel wife.” Brestin was hired in February 1909, and resigned just three months later.

Brestin’s successor was also conscripted as a ranch hand. In November 1910, after working all day at the ranch, he set off in a rowboat at sunset for Entrance Island to tend the light. He never made it. Clark waited until the next day to report the disappearance, causing suspicions to linger for quite some time over the death of the assistant.

A month later, Clark wanted off the island and petitioned for a pension stating that he was in poor health with his eyesight failing to such a point that he could no longer even clean the lamp. The superintendent of lights went to Entrance Island in February and reported that for a man who could barely see, Clark was quite adept at reading fine print and was able to climb the stairs very quickly. His pension request denied, Clark decided that he might be able to keep the light for a few more years.

In June 1911, Allan Pope and his wife answered Clark’s ad for an assistant. They were told Mr. Pope would be expected to “keep things clean and smart about the lighthouse” and tend a flock of chickens, while Mrs. Pope would be responsible for the housework. On finding that Clark really expected them to tend both the ranch and the light, Pope wrote the marine agent, stating that Clark rarely spent time at the lighthouse, Mrs. Pope was expected to do all the Clarks’ laundry as well as clean the lighthouse “top to bottom,” and “they were not the first people that Mr. Clark [had] treated unfair.” Clark soon thereafter fired Pope for being tardy in getting to the ranch in the mornings.

Clark was finally let go in 1913, and his successor, W.E. Morrisey, continued to take advantage of the assistants. Edwin and Bertha Perdue were hired to help at the lighthouse in October 1914, and shortly after, Bertha wrote Victoria asking if there were a set of rules and regulations for lightkeepers that she could read to determine if assistants normally had to stand watch twenty-two hours a day, feed pigs and chickens, and be confined to just two rooms without access to a washroom. The marine agent replied that only the lightkeeper was an employee of the department and assistants were “wholly under the order of the lightkeepers.” After two months at the station with no pay, the nearly starving Perdues engaged the services of an attorney, but this action simply infuriated Morrisey, who promptly ordered the couple off the island.

Since Morrisey, a succession of lightkeepers have faithfully kept the light burning, even while experiencing personal tragedies. One notable example is Michael O’Brien, who in October 1928 had the painful task of radioing Victoria, “My wife drowned last night, rush a relief immediately.”

Sometime around 1970, a cylindrical concrete tower was built a few feet away from the dwelling, replacing the original light. The tower stands 14 metres (45 feet) tall, with a focal plane of 19 metres (62 feet), and flashes a white light every five seconds.

Situated so close to Nanaimo, Entrance Island Lighthouse watches over a large number of boaters and kayakers, and an annual flotilla of bathtubs. The boating community, in turn, keeps its eye on the lighthouse. In 1995, when it was announced that Entrance Island might lose its keepers, more than 100 kayakers, in an act of protest, formed a “human life preserver” around the island.


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DRYAD POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on the northern end of Campbell Island along the Seaforth Channel.

Latitude: 52.185139
Longitude: -128.111667

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CHATHAM POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

In July 1792, Captain George Vancouver wound his way northward through the Discovery Passage, where he made the following entry in his logbook on the 15th and 16th of that month.
winds being too light and variable to command the ship against the influence of such rapid tides, we were under the necessity of waiting for the ebb in the afternoon of the following day, when with pleasant weather and a fresh breeze of NW, we weighed about three o’clock turned through the narrows [Seymour Narrows] and having gained about 3 leagues by the time it was nearly dark, we anchored on the western shore in a small on a bottom of sand and mud in 30 fathoms of water to wait the favourable return of the tide. On July 16, 1792 with the assistance of a fresh SW wind and the stream of ebb, we shortly reached Johnstone Straits, passing a point which after our little consort [the HMS Chatham which accompanied the HMS Discovery on Vancouver’s 1791-1795 expedition] I named Point Chatham, situated in Latitude 50 degrees 19 1/2 ‘, Longitude 234 degrees 45’. This point is rendered conspicuous by the confluence of three channels, two of which take their respective direction to the westward and south-eastward towards the ocean, as also by a small bay on each side of it; by three rocky islets close to it; by three rocket islets close to the south of it and by some rocks, over which the sea breaks to the north of it.
And so was this stunning corner of the world described.

A light was first erected at Chatham Point in 1908, to mark the point where the Discovery Passage makes a sharp turn to meet the Johnstone Strait. It was a white steel cylindrical tank on a concrete base surmounted by a white steel pyramidal framework. Built offshore on a rock that stands about five feet above the water, the white flashing light was exhibited twenty-six feet above the sea. The current structure is marked with a green band across the top.

In 1957 a diaphone fog horn operated by air compressed by oil engines was placed on a bluff at the point. Along with the fog signal building, two one-story keeper’s dwellings, and a boathouse were built to complete the light station. Oscar Edwards, who had a long career in the BC light service, became the first keeper when he was transferred from Chrome Island Light Station on February 26, 1957.

The station is still staffed, and the keepers’ work, which includes maintaining the station and collecting marine and weather data is critical to local air and marine traffic.

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CAPE MUDGE LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located at the southern tip of Quadra Island, Cape Mudge Lighthouse marks the southern entrance to Discovery Passage.
Though a seemingly tranquil spot passed by ferries and cruise ships headed for Alaska, just a few miles north lie the dreaded Seymour Narrows, which George Vancouver described as “one of the vilest stretches of water in the world.”

Charles Sadilek, whose journals are housed at the Museum of Campbell River, experienced just how wicked the whirlpools of Seymour Narrows could be on June 18, 1875 while aboard the USS Saranac, a three-masted gunboat used as a floating laboratory for the Smithsonian Institute.

Sadilek wrote, “I have never seen an inland body of water more threatening than Seymour Narrows. Even the ocean in a temper has no such ravening aspect.”


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AMPHITRITE POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Off the coast of Japan, a wave forms and then intensifies as it propagates four thousand miles eastward across the Pacific Ocean. High above, westerly winds gather moisture-laden clouds as they blow over the warm waters. When both of these elements meet land for the first time, it is a force to be reckoned with.
Welcome to the west coast of Vancouver Island, where warm moist air masses, forced upward by the island’s mountain ranges, dump their weight of water on the coastline below as ferocious waves pound the rugged shore.

Captain Harry Scougall and thirty-five others aboard the Pass of Melfort didn’t survive the double blow they were dealt by the elements off Amphitrite Point on Christmas Day, 1905.

The Pass of Melfort and its Captain were not originally scheduled to make their trip to the Northwest that ended that dreadful winter day. The story going around at the time was that the Pass of Branden, a sister ship to the Melfort, had been assigned to make the trip, but when a more favorable charter came in, the owners dispatched the newer Branden to the Antipodes and in its place sent the four-masted, steel-hulled Melfort to Seattle for a load of timber.

That autumn, when the voyage was being arranged, the owners approached Captain Scougall, a fifty-five-year-old retired veteran, and asked if he wouldn’t mind taking the voyage since the current captain appeared to be useless. Captain Scougall, a kind, friendly chap, agreed “out of consideration for his former employers.”

Thirty-eight days after setting off from Panama, the Pass of Melfort met up with Captain Olsen and the British bark Broderick Castle off Southern California. The Captains signaled that they were both headed to the Puget Sound, but when Captain Olsen landed at Port Townsend, he was surprised to learn the Pass of Melfort wasn't there. Olsen speculated that the Pass of Melfort had been caught in the storm he encountered off the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where he had to perform “the toughest bit of sailing he had ever done.”

The Pass of Melfort had missed the Strait and was driven further north by the relentless storm. First Nation people saw a distress rocket over the Uncluth Peninsula on the north shore of Barkley Sound just before dawn on Christmas Day and paddled with the news to the village of Ucluelet.

Both settlers and members of the First Nation scoured the area for signs of a ship, and soon discovered the grim remnants of the Pass of Melfort on a reef, just east of Amphitrite Point, fifty yards from shore. Even as they were combing the shore in hopes of finding survivors, the monstrous seas continued to batter the rocks and “rush into the bay as though in a tide race.” No survivors were found.

Just two weeks before the wreck, the whistling buoy marking the reef had disappeared in heavy seas.

After the Christmas Day tragedy, the shipping industry pressed for a light at Amphitrite Point, and in January 1906, the Department of Marine and Fisheries authorized the construction of a small square wooden tower, painted white and located on the outermost high rock at the point. The tower, which cost $141.54, was equipped with a dioptric lens holding a three-wick, 31-day Wigham lamp. The coxswain of the lifeboat station at Ucluelet was charged with maintaining the light, which the Victoria Times predicted “should prove of incalculable value to a vessel drifting in close to the island shore on such a night as the one in which the Pass of Melfort went to her doom.”

The tower withstood tumultuous tempests for eight years until January 2,1914 when a tidal wave demolished it. The very next night, a replacement lantern was hung from the look-out station situated further back from the bare rock.

Sea captains requested an “up-to-date lighthouse, a wireless station and fog alarm at or near Amphitrite Point,” and construction of the current one-of-kind squat tower began in January 1915.

Originally, the plan was for the tender Leebro to land supplies at the site, but high tides and heavy surf hampered the effort, so instead small vessels were used to lighter supplies ashore. Marine Agent H. L. Roberston, the foreman, wrote, “the last time they attempted the passage with a load in the workboat, they nearly upset & that has put the fear of the Lord into them . . . the surf was breaking right up against the base of the rock & sweeping clear over the top of the high rock to SE of site.” The remaining supplies were wisely landed at the lifeboat station and hauled overland to the construction site. With the steady winter rains, the road turned into “a mass of mud from one end to the other” and within a week had disappeared under six inches of sucking mud.

Despite the weather, the workers kept on schedule, blasting 125 yards of rock, hauling seventy cubic yards of gravel and 420 sacks of cement, and pouring six cubic feet of concrete every three minutes during their fourteen-hour workdays. The lighthouse went into operation in March 1915. It stands six metres (twenty feet) tall, with a focal plane of fifteen metres (fifty feet) and flashes a white light every twelve seconds.

The Ucluelet lifeboat crew maintained the light and horn until July 1918, when their boat was withdrawn from service. Jim Frazer, who had been maintaining the light, took over as keeper for ten dollars a month, a quarter of what he had previously been earning doing the same job for the Naval Service Board.

The squat tower was not a suitable dwelling, with the diaphone taking up half the living space, and poor ventilation causing steam and foul air to pass through the quarters. Frazer lived a mile from the tower and would hike down every night at sunset, in all kinds of weather, to light the lamp, return at midnight to wind the revolving mechanism, then come back at sunrise to extinguish the light. Frazer’s replacement, Frederick Routcliffe, resigned in 1928, claiming “the present quarters at the station are unfit to live in in very wet weather.” A dwelling was finally constructed in 1929, which included a telephone line connected to the village of Tofino.

In Greek mythology, Amphitrite is the sea-goddess wife of Poseidon. Seven ships of the British Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Amphitrite, and the point on Vancouver Island is named after the sixth of these, a twenty-four-gun, 1064-ton vessel, built in Bombay India and stationed in British Columbia from 1851 to 1857.

The unsheltered waters off Amphitrite Point continue to be pounded by severe winter storms, packing thirty to fifty-foot waves, hurricane force winds, and bone chilling rain - an average of three metres (120 inches) annually. Canada’s one-day record rainfall was set near the point on October 6,1967 – 48.9 centimeters (19.3 inches). Many shipwrecks serve as a testament to the unruly elements, including the Pass of Melfort, now a popular diving spot.


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TRIAL ISLANDS LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

On Friday morning, March 22, 1895, Frederick Adams sat down and wrote out his will. For the last two years, he had been overseeing the construction of the Legislative Buildings in Victoria, engaging in a cantankerous relationship with the hot-tempered architect Francis Rattenbury. Adams, in his mid-fifties, later that night would board the steamer Velos, with the barge Pilot in tow, and start a 250-mile journey to Haddington Island, near the northeast corner of Vancouver Island to procure a load of stone for the buildings. It would be his last day.
The weather had turned sour, and Captain James L. Anderson of the Velos suggested they delay the trip until the storm cleared, but, being behind schedule, Adams was anxious to get under way.

At 9:30 p.m., Captain Anderson, Adams, and five crewmen aboard the Velos, and twenty-four men, mostly laborers and stonemasons, on the Pilot left Victoria Harbour.

Around 10:00 p.m., as they entered Enterprise Channel between Oak Bay and Trial Island, they came up against a fierce southeasterly gale meeting the flood tide. Captain Anderson, thinking the weather too rough to proceed, attempted to turn back to Victoria. In the process of turning, the sea struck the rudder, causing the rudder chains to break and the Velos went broadside in the violent current. Almost before the crew realized the chains were broken, the sea thrust the steamer onto rocks lying out from the mainland, and she quickly sunk, stern first, leaving just a portion of the bow above water. The crew attempted to use the lifeboats, but the steamer filled so quickly, it was impossible to lower them.

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QUATSINO LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on the southeast end of Kains Island just off the west coast of Vancouver Island at the entrance to Quatsino Sound.

Latitude: 50.441194
Longitude: -128.032444

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PORTLOCK POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

While surveying the Gulf Islands in 1861, Captain Daniel Richardson of the Royal Navy named Prevost Island’s eastern extreme Portlock Point after Captain Nathaniel Portlock, who served as a master’s mate aboard the H.M.S. Discovery and H.M.S. Resolution in the 1770s. Nathaniel Portlock would later command the King George on a successful fur-trading expedition to the Pacific Northwest from 1785 to 1788.
Today, thousands of visitors view the diminutive lighthouse on Prevost Island as they comfortably slip past the Portlock Point aboard a ferry, but most will remain ignorant of the pain, suffering, and death that occurred at this seemingly peaceful outpost.

An unmanned stake light was established on Portlock Point in 1890 at the request of George Rudling, captain of the steamer Islander, to help vessels make the transition between Swanson Channel and Trincomali Channel on their way between Vancouver and Victoria. Five years later, G. A. Frost built a square pyramidal wooden tower, with a kitchen attached, on the point at a contract price of $870. The tower stood forty-eight feet tall, from base to vane, and exhibited a fixed white light at a focal plane of seventy-two feet with a red sector covering Enterprise Reef. The light, produced by a dioptric illuminating apparatus of the seventh-order, was put in operation on November 1, 1895.


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POINT ATKISON LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Perched atop a rocky bluff, Point Atkinson Lighthouse winks its watchful eye letting cruise ships and mariners know they have left ‘the city’ and are finally now ‘at sea.’
Point Atkinson was named by Captain Vancouver, for a “particular friend” on July 4, 1792, when Vancouver sailed past the rocky peninsula aboard the Discovery’s yawl. Today, Lighthouse Park encompasses the point at the entrance of Burrard Inlet and sixty-five hectare (185 acres) of virgin forest, which were set aside in 1881 to serve as a dark backdrop to the lighthouse.


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OGDEN POINT BREAKWATER, BRITISH COLUMBIA

A 1914-1915 appropriation of $1,100,000 provided the initial funding for the construction by the Department of Public Works of the breakwater and two concrete piers at Ogden Point. The rubble mound breakwater has a length of 2,500 feet and is capped with granite blocks and a concrete superstructure. The two concrete piers were originally about 800 feet long and 250 feet wide, with a clearance between them of 300 feet.
Ogden Point was named after Peter Skene Ogden (1793 – 1854), a fur trader and explorer employed by the Hudson Bay Company. Roughly 10,000 granite blocks, weighing together over a million tons, were quarried at Hardy Island and shipped to Victoria for use in the breakwater. Completed in 1916, Ogden Point Breakwater was marked the following year by a square, white pyramidal concrete tower that displayed an occulting white light at a height of forty feet above high water. Messrs. Parfitt Brothers erected the tower at a contract price of $1,655, and an unwatched acetylene beacon originally provided the light.

An electrically operated fog alarm was installed on the breakwater in 1919, and in 1926 a cable was laid to supply the needed electricity from shore.

Over the years, the piers at Ogden Point, which were serviced by railway at one time, have been home to a grain terminal, a fish processing and cold storage plant, and a ferry terminal. Various lumber companies also shipped their goods from the piers. Today, a heliport and horse-drawn carriages operate from the piers, but the most visible customers are the mammoth cruise ships that regularly call at the port during the summer months. Cruise ships log over 200 visits to Ogden Point each year, bringing over 400,000 visitors to picturesque Victoria.


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LENNARD ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on southwest point of Lennard Island.
Latitude: 49.110417
Longitude: -125.923528


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FISGARD LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

It seems only fitting that just outside the charming city of Victoria, British Columbia stands the historic and quaint Fisgard Lighthouse.
Fifty years after Captain Vancouver sailed through the Strait of Georgia and named Vancouver Island after himself, the Hudson Bay Company established control of the island and built Fort Victoria, named after Queen Victoria, in 1843. Puget Sound Agricultural Company, a branch of the Hudson Bay Company, started developing large farms near Fort Victoria, and by the time Vancouver Island was established as a colony in 1849, Esquimalt Harbour had become a major port for British ships.

Then came the gold rush. In the late 1850s, gold strikes on the mainland’s Thompson and Fraser rivers brought thousands of prospectors through Victoria, the only source of supplies in the region. Victoria quickly became a boomtown, with a dash of British flavor.

In November 1859, Captain J. Nagle, Victoria’s harbourmaster, seeing the need for an aid to navigation, paid $100 for a lantern and placed it on MacLaughlin Point, at the entrance to Victoria Harbour. Unfortunately, five months later, the lamp’s tubes overheated and melted down, and Nagle had no funds to replace them.

Desiring a replacement for Nagle’s light, Victoria’s merchants petitioned the assembly to allocate funds for a formal lighthouse, but the bill never passed. By then, Captain George Richards, the captain of the HMS Plumper, which was used to survey the British Columbia coast, convinced Nagle that the lighthouses Richards had proposed for Fisgard and Race Rocks were more crucial, and efforts began in earnest to establish these lights.

Commander James Woods, who was surveying Esquimalt Harbour in the brig HMS Pandora in 1846, named the outcropping of volcanic rock just outside the harbour, Fisgard Island, in honor of the assistance he had received from the frigate HMS Fisgard. The island was selected as the site for the lighthouse because it could provide direction for ships to enter Esquimalt Harbour or anchor in Royal Roads, the body of water just south of Fisgard Island, before heading into Victoria. Construction began in 1860, with a design by German-born engineer and architect, Herman Otto Tiedeman, and work overseen by John Wright, a local contractor.

The tower has a two-foot-thick solid granite foundation which is surmounted by fortress like four-foot-thick brick walls and topped with another granite slab, ten inches thick by four feet. The tower stands 14.5 metres (48 feet) tall with a focal plane of 21.5 metres (71 feet). The two-story keeper’s dwelling, also made of brick, has a pair of rooms on both floors each measuring eighteen by fourteen feet. Victoria’s paper, the Colonist, noted that the tower’s spiral staircase, cast in San Francisco, “certainly reflects a great credit on the designer and to see it will amply repay a visit to the Lighthouse.”

While work was underway on the tower, George Davies, aged twenty-eight, was hired in England to be the first full-time keeper on Canada’s West Coast. He signed his yearlong contract on Christmas Eve, 1859, and was given a wage of “150 pounds per annum without rations” along with a dwelling “exclusive of bedding and linen.” He and his wife, Rosina, and three of their four children, boarded the Grecian on January 19, 1860, and set sail for Victoria, a journey that lasted seven months.


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DISCOVERY ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on Sea Bird Point at the eastern end of Discovery Island.
Latitude: 48.4245
Longitude: -123.2258


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CARMANAH POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located in the West Coast Trail Unit of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve about 26km (16 miles) north of Gordon River.
Latitude: 48.6115
Longitude: -124.751333


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CAPE BEALE LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Part of the compromise to persuade British Columbia to join the Canada Confederation in 1871 was the agreement to build a transcontinental railroad. Several sites were considered for the railroad’s western terminus, including Port Alberni, situated a third of the way up Vancouver Island at the end of a long inlet that almost cuts the island in two. Cape Beale Lighthouse, the first to be constructed along Vancouver Island’s western shore, was built with that plan in mind and would have saved ships two to three days of sailing to reach Burrard Inlet, near present day Vancouver, where the terminus was eventually set.
Cape Beale, situated at the southern entrance to Barkley Sound forty miles north of Cape Flattery, was named by Captain Charles Barkley in 1787 to honor John Beale, the purser of Barkley’s ship, the Imperial Eagle. Beale, along with 2nd mate Miller and four other crew members were killed by Indians at the Hoh River on the Olympic Peninsula, near Destruction Island later that same year.

In 1872, Benjamin W. Pearse, the assistant surveyor general of the newly formed province, along with several civil engineers, tried unsuccessfully to land on the cape to scout a suitable site for the light. Unwilling to concede defeat, the men attempted to hike six miles overland to the cape from Bamfield, but were thwarted by the impenetrable rainforest that barred their way.

The following year, they succeeded in landing on the rocky cape, which connects to the mainland by a tidal beach, and selected a site for the lighthouse.

Construction began later that year by a crew supervised by Charles Hayward, of Hayward and Jenkinson. The workers and building supplies were transported to the area by the schooner Surprise, which anchored at Dodger Cove, near the Ohiat Indian Village and Trading Post on Diana Island, just north of Cape Beale. From there, Hayward hired First Nations people to raft the materials over to Cape Beale and haul them up the steep incline to the site.

The original light station consisted of a keeper’s house and a thirty-one-foot tapered tower, painted white and topped by a black lantern room enclosing a second-order Fresnel lens.

The light, 167 feet above the sea and visible for nineteen miles, was first lit by Robert Westmoreland, on July 1, 1874. Keeper Westmoreland noticed that the supplies he received did not match the bills of lading and was quite vocal in his speculation that James Cooper, the marine agent in Victoria, might have something to do with it. Cooper sued for slander, and won, costing Westmoreland his job, which he had held for just four years. The marine agent, however, got his due, when further investigation uncovered that Cooper had indeed been skimming off the top. Cooper was arrested but skipped bail and fled the country before a trial.

Westmoreland’s successor, Emmanuel Cox, had earlier served as an overseer on Lord Hamilton’s estate in County Cork, Ireland, but wanting to escape class distinction, had emigrated to California. Upon hearing that Vancouver Island resembled Ireland, Cox relocated there and found work as an agricultural laborer. In 1874, the Governor General of Canada, Lord Dufferin, and Lady Dufferin, the daughter of Lord Hamilton, sought out Cox when they visited Victoria. Appalled to find her old friend working at a level little better than her father’s tenants, Lady Dufferin used her political weight to have him appointed lighthouse keeper at Berens Island in Victoria Harbour. Three years later, Cox was promoted to Cape Beale and moved there with his wife, Frances, and five children, Frances, Annie, Gus, Pattie, and Ernest.

Mrs. Cox never complained of the isolation at Cape Beale or the fact that she was the only white woman for miles around. John Mack, a member of the First Nations, was hired for $5 a month to provide assistance at the station and watch for the Union Jack flying, a signal of distress. He faithfully performed these tasks for an amazing fifty years.

In 1894, John spotted the flag and rushed to the station to discover that his friend, Emmanuel, had died of a heart attack. Next, John paddled his canoe forty miles to Port Alberni to inform Pattie of her father’s death, arriving at two in the morning. Mrs. Cox’s request to replace her husband as keeper was denied, and the fifty-eight- year-old widow was left destitute without claim to her husband’s pension.

The next keeper’s wife rose to fame through her heroic efforts that saved the crew of the 168-foot bark Coloma.

As the sun rose on December 7, 1906, after a wicked night of winter gales, Keeper Thomas Patterson spotted a distressed ship offshore. He awakened his wife, Minnie, and together they kept watch through a telescope. As the bark drifted closer, they could see that the decks were awash and the crew was clinging to the stump of the mizzenmast.

During the night, the winds had toppled trees and snapped the station’s telegraph line, making it impossible to get word of the vessel’s predicament to the light tender Quadra, anchored off Bamfield. Thomas could not leave his post, so Minnie donned a jersey, cap, and her husband’s slippers, and set off into the rain forest that had blocked Pearse’s team thirty-four years earlier. After wading through frigid, waist-deep water at the tidal inlet, bushwacking along the mangled trail, crawling over fallen stumps, sinking knee-deep into swampy bogs, sliding on slippery moss, and at times threading the fallen telegraph wire between her fingers as the only mark to the trail, Minnie finally arrived at the head of Bamfield Inlet. She had hoped to find the rowboat that was usually moored there, but it was gone.

Clinging to the water’s edge she continued undaunted, until deep water would force her back into the forest. After zigzagging another 2 1/2 miles up the inlet, Minnie arrived at the home of Annie Cox McKay, to find that Annie’s husband, John, was away repairing the telegraph line. Without hesitation, the two women launched a skiff and rowed through the rain to the Quadra.

Upon receiving the news, the Quadra weighed anchor and sailed off to help the crew of the Coloma, which was by now, in dire straits. Just after the last of the crew was safely aboard the Quadra’s longboat, the Coloma slammed into a reef and broke up.

Back on shore, Minnie made her way to the telegraph house, where after sipping a cup of hot tea, she announced, “I must get back to my baby.” The two cable operators accompanied her back to the station in their skiff, where along the way, she later said, her legs cramped up so badly, she could hardly move.

Newspapers across the country picked up her story, and she became a bit of a celebrity. When a Seattle Times reporter came to interview her, he brought a check for $315.15 from the women of Vancouver and Victoria, along with personal gifts including a new pair of slippers for Tom. Minnie retrieved the remains of her husband’s old slippers, and holding them up, laughed, and remarked, “I told Tommy that if going over the trail is worth all this money. I had better do it every time it storms so we can retire and get away from here.”

Though her spirit didn’t shatter along the trail, her health did. Minnie never fully recovered and contracted tuberculosis, dying five years later.

By 1958, dry rot had eaten through the original wooden lighthouse, and it was replaced by a thirty-two-foot, steel, skeleton tower topped with an aluminum lantern. An enclosed staircase in the center of the tower provides access to the lantern, where a modern beacon casts forth its light 167 feet above the sea. White slats are mounted on three sides of the tower to serve as a day marker. The old keeper’s dwelling was replaced by three single-family homes, and in 1968 two Airchime fog horns took over the function of the 1908 diaphone.

While Cape Beale still sees an occasional distressed boat, the modern day keepers rarely hike the trail, preferring to radio for help or go inland via boat or helicopter.


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COLOURS AND COLOURS

Concílio dos Deuses no Olimpo

Quando os Deuses no Olimpo luminoso,
Onde o governo está da humana gente,
Se ajuntam em concílio glorioso
Sobre as cousas futuras do Oriente.
Pisando o cristalino Céu formoso,
Vêm pela Via-Láctea juntamente,
Convocados da parte do Tonante,
Pelo neto gentil do velho Atlante.

Photo & Copyright Carl
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 20

AMARRA

A Armada do Gama em Alto Mar

Já no largo Oceano navegavam,
As inquietas ondas apartando;
Os ventos brandamente respiravam,
Das naus as velas côncavas inchando;
Da branca escuma os mares se mostravam
Cobertos, onde as proas vão cortando
As marítimas águas consagradas,
Que do gado de Próteo são cortadas


Photo & Copyright Dan
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 19

CABOS E BOIAS

Mas enquanto este tempo passa lento
De regerdes os povos, que o desejam,
Dai vós favor ao novo atrevimento,
Para que estes meus versos vossos sejam;
E vereis ir cortando o salso argento
Os vossos Argonautas, por que vejam
Que são vistos de vós no mar irado,
E costumai-vos já a ser invocado.


Photo & Copyright Ulrich
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 18

CABO CANSADO

Em vós se vêm da olímpica morada
Dos dois avós as almas cá famosas,
Uma na paz angélica dourada,
Outra pelas batalhas sanguinosas;
Em vós esperam ver-se renovada
Sua memória e obras valerosas;
E lá vos tem lugar, no fim da idade,
No templo da suprema Eternidade.


Photo & Copyright Vachette
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 17

NO RUMO

Em vós os olhos tem o Mouro frio,
Em quem vê seu exício afigurado;
Só com vos ver o bárbaro Gentio
Mostra o pescoço ao jugo já inclinado;
Tethys todo o cerúleo senhorio
Tem para vós por dote aparelhado;
Que afeiçoada ao gesto belo e tenro,
Deseja de comprar-vos para genro.


Photo & Copyright YSB
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 16

PINK SEA

Incitação a Dom Sebastião
para Novos Feitos Gloriosos

E enquanto eu estes canto, e a vós não posso,
Sublime Rei, que não me atrevo a tanto,
Tomai as rédeas vós do Reino vosso:
Dareis matéria a nunca ouvido canto.
Comecem a sentir o peso grosso
(Que pelo mundo todo faça espanto)
De exércitos e feitos singulares,
De África as terras, e do Oriente os marços,

Photo & Copyright Peter
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 15

MANHÃ DE NEVOEIRO

Nem deixarão meus versos esquecidos
Aqueles que nos Reinos lá da Aurora
Fizeram, só por armas tão subidos,
Vossa bandeira sempre vencedora:
Um Pacheco fortíssimo, e os temidos
Almeidas, por quem sempre o Tejo chora;
Albuquerque terríbil, Castro forte,
E outros em quem poder não teve a morte.


Photo & Copyright Ihya
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 14

ÁGUAS VERDES

Pois se a troco de Carlos, Rei de França,
Ou de César, quereis igual memória,
Vede o primeiro Afonso, cuja lança
Escura faz qualquer estranha glória;
E aquele que a seu Reino a segurança
Deixou com a grande e próspera vitória;
Outro Joane, invicto cavaleiro,
O quarto e quinto Afonsos, e o terceiro.


Photo & Copyright Mardochee
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 13

ÁGUAS AZUIS

Os Heróis Portugueses

Por estes vos darei um Nuno fero,
Que fez ao Rei o ao Reino tal serviço,
Um Egas, e um D. Fuas, que de Homero
A cítara para eles só cobiço.
Pois pelos doze Pares dar-vos quero
Os doze de Inglaterra, e o seu Magriço;
Dou-vos também aquele ilustre Gama,
Que para si de Eneias toma a fama.


Photo & Copyright John
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 12

NRP ALBACORA

A classe Albacora é a variante da Marinha Portuguesa da classe de submarinos Daphné de origem francesa.

Em 1964 o Governo Português encomendou a construção de quatro submarinos desta classe aos Estaleiros Dubigeòn, que vieram constituir a 4ª esquadrilha de submarinos da Marinha Portuguesa, sendo operados desde 1967. A nova esquadrilha substituiu a 3ª esquadrilha, que era constituída por submarinos da classe Narval.

Cada submarino foi baptizado com o nome de um animal marinho, cuja inicial (A, B, C ou D) indicava a sua ordem de incorporação.

Com a primeira unidade a entrar ao serviço, a 1 de Outubro de 1967, a Marinha Portuguesa passou a possuir um submarino optimizado para zonas costeiras e oceânicas, para a função de patrulhamento de áreas, especialmente para a Zona Económica Exclusiva.

Está em curso a substituição total da frota desta classe pelos submarinos da classe Tridente.


Data de encomenda 1964
Construção Chantier Dubigeòn
Lançamento 1967
Unidade inicial NRP Albacora (1967)
Unidade final NRP Delfim (1969)
Período de serviço 1967 - atualidade
Tipo Submarino de ataque

Deslocamento 1043 t
Comprimento 57,8 m
Boca 6,8 m
Calado 5,2 m
Propulsão 2 motores diesel SEMT-Pielstick 12 PA4 185 de 1300 cv
2 motores elétricos Jeumont-Schneider de 1,7 MWVelocidade 16 nós
Autonomia 5 000 km a 12 nós
Profundidade 300 m
Armamento 12 tubos de torpedos
Sensores Radar de navegação Kelvin Hughes KH-1007(F)
Sonar de pesquisa ativa e ataque Thomsom-CSF/Thales DSUV-2
Tripulação 54


Text Photo & Copyright Wikipédia

SISTERS ISLETS LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on the most easterly and largest rock of Sisters Islets.
Latitude: 49.48675
Longitude: -124.577778

Photo Text & Copyright www.Lighthousefriends.com

SANDS HEADS LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

The Fraser River, the longest river in British Columbia, empties into the Strait of Georgia just south of Vancouver, after flowing over 1,300 km (870 miles) from the Canadian Rockies. The river is named after Simon Fraser, who in 1808 led an expedition on behalf of the Montreal-based North West Company from the site of present-day Prince George to the mouth of the river.
A small quantity of gold sent to the San Francisco mint in early 1858 by James Douglas, governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, triggered a stampede of 30,000 prospectors to Victoria, which then had a population of just 500, and from there up the Fraser River to the site of the discovery on the Thompson River. Fearing this influx of Americans might challenge British sovereignty in the region, the Colony of British Columbia was hastily formed on August 2, 1858, with New Westminster, situated on the Fraser River, as its capital. The Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands merged with British Columbia in 1863, and Vancouver Island followed suit three years later, in 1866.

In the spring of 1859, petitioners demanded a lightship to mark the Fraser River’s mouth, whose position was ever changing due to the roughly twenty million tons of sediment that emptied into the Strait of Georgia each year. A vessel was finally built in New Minster in 1865, named South Sand Heads, and anchored at the southern side of the entrance to the Fraser River in 1866. A heavy westerly gale in November 1871 severely damaged the vessel, and during the ensuing repairs, its fog bell was removed from the forepart of the ship, to make room for a new windlass, and suspended near the crew cabin. As a result, the keepers were less vigilant in ringing the fog bell, as being so close to the habitable part of the vessel it rendered existence almost insufferable. According to an 1872 report, the lightship was equipped with eight Argand lamps, and its hull was painted red.


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PULTENEY POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on the southwest end of Malcolm Island.
Latitude: 50.630514
Longitude: -127.155257

Photo Text & Copyright www.Lighthousefriends.com

NRP JOÃO BELO

A Classe João Belo foi um modelo de fragatas ao serviço da Marinha Portuguesa entre 1967 e 2008.[1] O seu nome é uma homenagem ao militar e político colonial português, o Comandante João Belo.[2]

A classe era a versão portuguesa da Classe Comandant Rivière, de origem francesa. Os navios da Classe Commandant Rivière tinham sido projetados na década de 1950, como escoltadores oceânicos com caraterísticas de habitabilidade adequadas para climas tropicais, sendo classificados, pela Marine nationale, como avisos-escoltadores.

Em 1964, a Marinha Portuguesa encomendou quatro navios desta classe, a ser construídos num estaleiro de Nantes, a primeira das quais entrou ao serviço em 1967 e a última em 1969. A Marinha Portuguesa classificou os navios como fragatas, apesar de uma das suas missões previstas ser a da presença naval no Ultramar Português, função típica dos antigos avisos.

Os navios da Classe João Belo substituiram, entre 1967 e 1970, as fragatas das classes Diogo Gomes e Álvares Cabral (River e Bay britânicas).

Em Abril de 2008, as duas últimas fragatas desta classe em serviço na Marinha Portuguesa (João Belo e Sacadura Cabral) foram transferidas para a Armada Nacional do Uruguai, que já operava navios semelhantes da Classe Commandant Rivière.

Na Marinha Portuguesa, as duas últimas fragatas João Belo foram substituídas por dois navios da Classe M, adquiridos em 2006, que entrarão em serviço a partir de 2008.


Data de encomenda 1964
Construção AC Nantes (França)
Lançamento 1967
Unidade inicial NRP Comandante João Belo (1967)
Unidade final NRP Comandante Sacadura Cabral (1969)
Período de serviço 1967 - atualidade


Deslocamento 1 750 t
Comprimento 98 m
Boca 11,5 m
Calado 4,3 m
Propulsão Dois motores diesel com 16 000 cv e duas hélices
Velocidade 25 nós
Autonomia 7 500 nm a 16 nós
Armamento Três peças de 100 mm, duas peças AA de 40 mm e seis (2x3) tubos lança-torpedos de 550 mm
Sensores Radar de vigilância DRBV22A, radar de navegação Decca 1226, radar de controlo de tiro DRBC32C, sonalr DUBA3 e sonar SQS17
Aeronaves Pista de pouso para um helicóptero ligeiro
Tripulação 169


Photo Text & Copyright Wikipédia

NRP SÁO TOMÉ E NRP SÃO VICENTE

A Classe Príncipe foi a versão portuguesa de uma classe de navios-patrulha construídos nos Estados Unidos da América entre 1942 e 1944, em plena Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Em 1949, ao abrigo do programa MDAP (Mutual Defense and Assistence Program), a Marinha Portuguesa comprou à Marinha dos Estados Unidos seis navios desta classe, de deslocamento máximo de 357 toneladas para fiscalização dos mares dos Açores, tarefa exercida com as limitações que o mar alteroso do Atlântico Norte impõe.

Mais tarde, encontraram nos mares de Angola, mais especificamente atè à latitude de Moçâmedes, o mar adequado para as suas dimensões e características. Com a construção do estaleiro de Sorefame em Angola, todas as unidades foram enviadas para aquele território. Até aí, a inexistência de um estaleiro capaz obrigava ao seu retorno a Portugal para manutenção.

Seriam abatidas entre 1967 e 1970 com mais de 25 anos de serviço.

Além dos navios fabricados nos EUA a Marinha Portuguesa recebeu três navios do mesmo tipo fabricados em França aos quais chamou Classe Maio. Foram ainda recebidos mais cinco navios dos mesmo tipo, construídos em Portugal nos Estaleiros Navais de Viana do Castelo e do Mondego e no Arsenal do Alfeite, os quais também foram integrados na Classe Maio.

Todos os navios das classes Príncipe e Maio receberam os nomes de ilhas portuguesas dos arquipélagos da Madeira, de Cabo Verde e de S. Tomé e Príncipe.


Construção Vários estaleiros
Lançamento 1942
Unidade inicial NRP Príncipe
Unidade final NRP Santa Luzia
Período de serviço 1944 - 1970
Tipo Navio-patrulha

Deslocamento 357 t
Comprimento 52,9 m
Boca 7,04 m
Calado 3,1 m
Propulsão 2 motores Pielstick em linha para cada veiodiesel com 3500 hp e 2 veios
Velocidade 19 nós
Armamento 1 peça de 40 mm
3 peças de 40 mm
1 ouriço antisubmarino
2 calhas para cargas de profundidade
4 morteiros
Tripulação 62

Text & Copyright Wikipédia

PORT ALBERNI LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

The Port Alberni Lighthouse is part new, part old. The square, pyramidal tower is new, constructed in the 1990s by the Port Alberni Maritime Heritage Society using generic plans. The lantern, however, is over 100 years old and came from Chrome Island on the East Coast of Vancouver Island when the Coast Guard modernized the light there. The Port Alberni Lighthouse is equipped with a beacon, which is turned on during the summer season, though it can't be left on at night because it disturbs the neighbors.

Chrome Island Lighthouse was established in 1891 at the eastern entrance to Baynes Sound, just off the southern tip of Denman Island. The first light there was situated atop the keeper’s dwelling, but a skeletal tower with an enclosed lantern room replaced it in 1922. The present concrete tower on Chrome Island was erected in 2001, and the lantern from the decommissioned skeletal tower was donated to the Port Alberni Maritime Heritage

The Port Alberni Lighthouse contains displays on the lighthouses of British Columbia and their keepers along with a variety of other material relating to the local maritime history.

Photo Text & Copyright www.Lighthousefriends.com

NOOTKA LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on the summit of San Rafael Island, at the southeast tip of Nootka Island.
Latitude: 49.592639
Longitude: -126.615389

Photo Text & Copyright www.Lighthousefriends.com

LUCY ISLANDS LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on the northeastern side of the easternmost island making up Lucy Islands, about 15 km (10 miles) west of Prince Rupert.
Latitude: 54.295722
Longitude: -130.608778

Photo Text & Copyright www.Lighthousefriends.com

NRP AFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE

Deslocamento standard: 1780 Ton
Deslocamento máx. : 2440 Ton.
Tipo de propulsão: Turbina a vapor
Comprimento: 99.6 M
Largura: 13.49M
Calado: 3.81 M.
2 x Caldeiras (oleo) Yarrow (0)
2 x Turbinas acopladas Parsons (8000cv/hp)

Tripulação / Guarnição: 189
Autonomia: 18000Km a 10 nós
Nr. Eixos: 2
Velocidade Máxima: 20 nós


Os dois navios da classe Afonso de Albuquerque, classificados como «Avisos de 1ª classe» foram pensados para operações nas águas ultramarinas, onde era necessário manter uma presença ainda que simbólica nas vastas possessões portuguesas não só em África como também na Ásia. A classificação foi posteriormente alterada para fragata.

Na verdade a designação «Aviso» pode ser enganadora pois quando entraram ao serviço, no inicio dos anos 30, eram os dois navios mais significativos da marinha, embora não tivessem nem de longe a velocidade superior a 36 nós dos contra torpedeiros da classe Vouga.

Inicialmente encomendados a estaleiros italianos eles acabaram por ser encomendados ao Reino Unido. São navios armados com o mesmo tipo de canhões dos contra-torpedeiros da classe Vouga e a sua principal diferença é a motorização. Os dois navios tinham capacidade para transportar um hidroavião mas essa funcionalidade não foi implementada.
Os avisos ou canhoneiras não foram pensados para atingir grandes velocidades mas sim para garantir a soberania nas proximidades da costa, pelo que a velocidade era menos importante que a autonomia dos navios.

Eles estiveram ao serviço durante a II Guerra Mundial, onde foram a principal presença militar portuguesa nos mares do Indico e também em Macau. A seguir ao final da guerra, foram-lhes removidos os quatro canhões anti-aéreos de 40mm que foram subsituidos por oito canhões de 20mm. Além deste equipamento e do armamento principal (quatro peças de 120mm) estavam ainda equipados com duas peças de 76mm.

O Afonso de Albuquerque foi destruido em combate em Dezembro de 1961 por uma força da União Indiana. O seu irmão Bartolomeu Dias foi rebaptizado São Cristovão em 1967 e transformado em navio depósito até ser abatido.

O afundamento do Afonso de Albuquerque :

O navio NRP Afonso de Albuquerque era praticamente a única unidade militar com condições mínimas para oferecer qualquer tipo de resistência perante a invasão do Estado de Goa efectuada por tropas da União Indiana em Dezembro de 1961.

O navio, preparado apenas para combates contra forças em terra, defrontou seis navios de guerra da marinha da União Indiana, conforme os planos previamente estabelecidos.
As ordens determinavam que em caso de clara superioridade das forças indianas o navio deveria ser encalhado num lugar conhecido como «Praia de Dona Paula» com o objectivo de utilizar a sua artilharia.

O desenrolar das operações:

04:00 da manhã do dia 18 o oficial de serviço tomou conhecimento da invasão
06:40 Informação oficial de que a invasão havia começado
06:55 O pessoal ocupa os postos de combate
07:00 Aeronaves indianas bombardeiam o aeroporto de Dabolim e a estação radio-naval de Bambolim que ficou inoperacional.
07:30 O navio consegue comunicação com Lisboa, mantendo essa comunicação aberta durante três horas até às 10:30. Até esse momento o Afonso de Albuquerque é o principal meio de informação em Lisboa sobre o desenrolar das operações
08:30 É reestabelecida a comunicação com o Comando Naval de Goa

09:00 Surgem ao largo, três fragatas indianas a uma distância entre 6 e 14 milhas. São guarnecidos os canhões, mas não há pessoal suficiente para guarnecer simultaneamente as metralhadoras antiaéreas.
11:00 Bombardeiros a jacto indianos bombardeiam o porto de Mormugão a grande altitude e também o aeroporto.
12:00 A toda a velocidade as fragatas indianas aproam em direcção ao porto e começa a disparar com toda a sua artilharia[1]
Ao mesmo tempo, o comandante do Afonso de Albuquerque manda «picar a amarra» e sair do porto para enfrentar os navios indianos [2] transmitindo por rádio para Lisboa a mensagem: « Estamos a ser atacados, Respondemos »
Por entre os disparos os indianos enviam em morse sinais para que o navio se renda.
O comandante dá ordem para que o navio continue a disparar.

12:10 - O Afonso de Albuquerque, atinge uma das fragatas indianas que se retira. O navio é de imediato substituida por um dos contra-torpedeiros indianos.

12:15 - O Afonso de Albuquerque foi atingido e os estilhaços atingem o director de tiro. As armas principais não podem ser apontadas eficientemente.

12:20 O comandante, que na posição em que o navio se encontrava, apenas podia utilizar os dois canhões à proa não tendo ângulo de tiro para utilizar os canhões à ré manda posicionar o navio para poder utilizar todos os quatro canhões.

12:25 - Ao efectuar essa operação, oferece um maior alvo aos navios indianos e o navio é novamente atingido, desta vez no próprio director de tiro tendo a explosão resultado num morto e num ferido grave, o próprio comandante do navio. Manda que o iomediato assuma o comando e dá ordens para que o navio não se renda.

O imediato dá ordem para encalhar o navio. Uma vez que as caldeiras e as máquinas tinham sido atingidas, não seria possível encalha-lo no local previamente previsto.

12:35 O Afonso de Albuquerque é encalhado frente à praia de Bambolim ficando a 150 metros da margem direita do rio Zuari.

Entretanto o Sargento de sinais terá dado ordem para que fosse içada uma bandeira branca, o que foi feito. Mas como na realidade ninguém tinha dado ordem de rendição, a bandeira voltou a ser arriada. A bandeira não foi de qualquer das formas avistada pelos indianos por causa das condições de vento e fumo.

O navio disparou entre 350 e 400 tiros, segundo os cálculos feitos na altura. Ocorreram cinco mortes e treze homens ficaram feridos.

12:50 - É dada ordem ao pessoal fogueiro para abandonar o navio, o que é feito em baleeiras ou a nado.

13:10 - A maioria do pessoal cumpre a ordem de abandonar o navio, enquanto o fogo dos navios indianos continua, a atingir o navio e a área circundante, no claro propósito de atingir os homens que já se encontravam na margem.

O navio foi rebaptizado Saravastri pelos indianos e posteriormente rebocado para Bombaim. Foi mais tarde vendido para sucata e algumas das suas armas encontram-se hoje em exposição em Bombaim, actual Mumbai.

[1] A cadência de tiro dos navios indianos era bastante superior à do navio português, que no máximo poderia atingir uma cadência de 5 disparos por minuto.
[2] Além das duas fragatas referidas, estavam na zona mais dois contratorpedeiros e o cruzador Mysore, um navio da classe Fiji, construido durante a II guerra mundial.


Text & Copyright Área Militar

NRP AFONSO CERQUEIRA

NRP "Afonso Cerqueira" (F488) é uma corveta, classe "Baptista de Andrade", da Marinha Portuguesa.

Com base em Lisboa, tem como função desempenhar missões de vigilância e de salvamento nos Açores, Madeira e na Zona Económica Exclusiva. Tal como tem desempenhado exercícios de treino nacionais tal como internacionais com outras forças navais.

1 peça de 100mm Creusot-Loire
2 peças Boffors de 40mm/70
1 radar de navegação KH5000 Nucleus
1 radar de navegação Racal Decca RM 316P

Construtor Estaleiros Navais de Cartagena
Lançamento 16 de Março de 1973
Patrono Afonso Júlio de Cerqueira
Período de serviço 28 de Junho de 1975

Deslocamento 1380t
Comprimento 85m
Calado 22m
Propulsão 12.000hp
2 Motores OEW Pielstick 12 Pc2.2 V 400 Diesel
Velocidade 22 nós
Tripulação 7 oficiais, 14 sargentos, 51 praças


Photo Text & Copyright Wikipédia

ESTEVAN POINT LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located on Estevan Point, roughly 24km (15 miles) south of Nootka.
Latitude: 49.382972
Longitude: -126.544028

Photo Text & Copyright www.Lighthousefriends.com

EAST POINT LIGHTHOUSE (SATURNA ISLAND) BRITISH COLUMBIA

Large ships bound from the Pacific to Vancouver, travel east through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, then turn north and follow Haro Strait, passing San Juan Island on their starboard side, before turning east again at Turn Point on Stuart Island and passing through Boundary Pass, which follows the U.S./Canadian border for 23 kilometers (14 miles). From Boundary Pass, vessels then turn north into the Strait of Georgia to reach Vancouver.


Photo Text & Copyright www.Lighthousefriends.com

CHROME ISLANDS LIGHTHOUSE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Located just off Boyle Point, the southern point of Denman Island.
Latitude: 49.472194
Longitude: -124.685194


Photo Text & Copyright www.Lighthousefriends.com

PEQUENO CARDUME

Os Grandes Feitos dos Portugueses

Ouvi, que não vereis com vãs façanhas,
Fantásticas, fingidas, mentirosas,
Louvar os vossos, como nas estranhas
Musas, de engrandecer-se desejosas:
As verdadeiras vossas são tamanhas,
Que excedem as sonhadas, fabulosas;
Que excedem Rodamonte, e o vão Rugeiro,
E Orlando, inda que fora verdadeiro,


Photo & Copyright Todd
Poema Luis de Camoes, Os Lusiadas, Canto I, 11