Flying Dutchman, 1860-1865
The Flying Dutchman was a steamship built in Victoria in 1860; it was 28 m long and 5.5 m wide.1
Captain William Moore, born in Hanover, sailed to Haida Gwaii in 1852 aboard a known opium-smuggler, the Tepic.2 Moore sailed the coast for a time and, eventually, built the Flying Dutchman, which he used to make the first steamer-trip on the Stikine River in 1862, with a barge in tow and 125 people aboard.3
In this despatch from September of 1862, Douglas reports on the ship's historic voyage: Steamer Flying Dutchman, lately employed in Fraser River, is now plying on the Stickeen, and has successfully accomplished its ascent to the distance of 140 miles from the sea. Douglas adds that her enterprising owner intends to push on to about 160 miles, to reach the Upper Narrows.
In August of 1863, the ship carried Crease, as part of a party of 30, to visit the Pioneer Mills located inside the First Narrows on Burrard Inlet.4 The captain at the time, Captain Deighton, would become the famous figure “Gassy Jack”, of Vancouver's Gastown district.5
The Flying Dutchman was broken up in 1865.6
  • 1. John M. Mills, Canadian Coastal and Inland Steam Vessels (Providence, Rhode Island: The Steamship Historical Society of America, Inc., 1979), 43.
  • 2. E. W. Wright, ed., Lewis & Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest (Portland: The Lewis & Dryden Printing Company, 1895), 82. http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0222484
  • 3. Ibid.
  • 4. G. P. V. Akrigg and H. B. Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle, 1847-1871 (Victoria: Discovery Press, 1977), 288.
  • 5. Ibid.
  • 6. Mills, Canadian Coastal and Inland Steam Vessels, 43.
Mentions of this vessel in the documents