Labouchere, 1858
This 1858 despatch reports that the HBC steamer
Labouchere will
start from the port of London on Thursday morning the 2nd [September]
for
Vancouver Island. By 1859, it had arrived on the coast and began work as a trade vessel,
and it
was a skookum craft, indeed, built of Baltic oak and teak, and, no doubt, imposing
at over 61 m in
length.
Labouchere was driven by a large paddle wheel, the engine for which could generate a respectable
180
horse power.
Greater drama precluded the Labouchere's demise. It was refit in 1856, at considerable cost, for mail
service between Vancouver Island and San Francisco,
but on its first run it ran onto a reef in a fog near
San Francisco.
It reversed off the reef but soon flooded beyond hope, and in the scramble for the
lifeboats Captain Mouatt was forced to shoot a man who had attempted
to board a lifeboat before the women.
Victoria's Daily British Colonist newspaper reported that
Eliza brought news of the total loss
of the Labouchere
in April of 1866, which, the paper adds, is an announcement not so melancholy in its nature or so important to the interests of mankind
as this
same ship's news that President Lincoln had been assassinated.