Cow Bay

Cow Bay was the boat-building headquarters for Prince Rupert. The tidal nature of the bay made it easy to beach a boat on a simple structure without a complicated ways. In its original state it was an unpretentious little cove with steep banks and a small creek which drained the muskeg from the hilltops above. At low tide the bay emptied, exposing its muddy bottom. Marine industries built up along the shores of the mouth of Cow Bay.

Boat-builders saw the advantage of using the tidal shores of the bay for boat yards. One of the earliest was Hugo Johnson who set up shop at what was called 'Cow Creek' in May, 1911. One of the first boats he built was for well-known Skeena River storyteller Wiggs O'Neill. Johnson built the tunnel boat Kit-ex-Chen in the summer of 1911. O'Neill used it for a ferry on the Skeena around Hazelton.

The Boneyard

Cow Creek referred to the upper reaches of the bay, but more commonly it was known as the Boneyard. These muddy tidal flats were used for many years for building boats and for dumping then when they were no longer useful. When the road connecting Third Avenue East was put through in 1922, they made sure to build a bridge so that boats could still get into the Boneyard. With all the old and rotting boats and garbage that collects over time, the Boneyard became an eyesore and nuisance, as the Daily News described:

BONEYARD CREEK

"The city parks board has actually ventured to stir up Prince Rupert's long standing waterfront fester, namely Boneyard Creek, the safe and sacred repository these long years of our marine outcasts, veterans and reprobates. Funny nobody ever thought of it before but the waterfront, too, it seems, must fall to this here civic beautification with which we have become afflicted. It isn't a bad idea to be sure but it is sometimes easier to get ideas than it is to carry them out. And the carrying out of this latest brain wave is going to present some problem, to be sure. It is a fact that Prince Rupert's Boneyard creek is nothing to feel so very proud about but just how we are going to go about it to rid the otherwise edifying landscape of that mass of junk is something else. It has become somewhat of an institution to have the heap of old derelicts there and home will never seem as sweet after they go if, indeed, they do go. Whether the galleons are taken out to sea and sunk, whether the effective offices of a few powerful sticks of stumping powder are to be used or whether at low tide one grand bonfire is to be kindled, there will no doubt be a lot of loud and boisterous squawking before anything is done of this kind." (Prince Rupert Daily News, March 17, 1928)

Probably the most infamous character to inhabit the Boneyard was Harry Kohrt, a troller who lived on a scow and built a series of trollers there, all named Just It. The launching party for his fourth boat was described humorously by the Whiffs man:

"Captain Khort [sic] launched his new craft the fourth 'Just It' on Thursday, in Cameron Cover alias Bone Yard Creek, amid much excitement. Mrs. Dono Drinkwater performed the launching ceremony, while the Cow Bay orchestra struck up 'A Life on the Ocean Wave.' The dimensions of the new Khort boat are 32 ft. long x 9 ft. beam. She will be fitted with a 6 h.p. Clay engine. Cap is contemplating extensions to his ways, in view of which he is undergoing a course in bookkeeping and rye-keeping, and says that it [is] much easier to keep books than it is to keep rye." (Prince Rupert Daily News, April 15, 1922)

Cow Bay Boat Yards

The main area used for boatbuilding was the central part of the bay, between the railway bridge crossing the mouth, and the Boneyard. Japanese-Canadian boat builders located their shops there. The earliest were the Sugas, father and son. Their shop was taken over by the Matsumotos in the mid-thirties. At the head of the bay was the Suehiro yard and on the east side, the Kiy Boat Works run by Kume Tsumura.

All these yards produced a large number of boats, mostly fishing boats. As the fishing industry changed, so did the demand for boats. At first the halibut boats and salmon trollers were the principal product. Salmon seine boats were relatively few until the late 1920s when there was a growing demand. Of course, it was the need for new gillnetters in the mid 1920s that really spurred the growth of boatbuilding in Cow Bay.

Boats built inside the bay, or slough, had to be built with an eye to the railway bridge. Sometimes the rocks and mud beneath the bridge had to be dug out to get a vessel under. Masts and poles, sometimes even the wheelhouse, had to wait until the boat was outside. Taking a boat under the bridge was always an event. It had to be done at just the right tide.

Norman McLean avoided this problem when he began Rupert's longest-lived shipbuilding outfit along the west shore of the bay's mouth. He began there during World War I and built boats until 1927 when he moved to the company's present location in Seal Cove.

Many pleasure boats came out of Cow Bay in addition to the fishing boats. In the 1920s W. Pilling had a shop in inner Cow Bay where he built a line of V-bottom pleasure boats, including the Claire for W. E. Williams in 1924. In 1941, Suehiro built a 50 foot cruiser for Dr. R.G. Large, well-known doctor and historian. Powered with a 175 hp Hall-Scott gas engine, in the words of the Waterfront Whiffs scribe, 'it would indicate that the doctor may have aspirations of showing his marine heels to some of his other yachting confreres.' Dr. Large kept his boat at the Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club.

That same year the Matsumotos built a 'flying bridge streamlined cruiser' for their own use. Measuring 28 by 8 feet it had a 78 hp Chrysler Ace engine. But they weren't to enjoy it for long. In December, all Japanese-Canadian owned boats were confiscated and then, in March 1942, all Japanese-Canadians were deported from the coast. The Matsumotos had to leave the Universe, a 60 foot seiner, one of the largest to be built inside the slough. It had to be completed by other boatbuilders.

After the war the Cow Bay boat shops were bought by new owners. Cow Bay Boatworks was run by Crowley & Didricken. Kaien Industries operated by Bill Allaire and Howard Walker combined boatbuilding with general construction. Ole Wick who had moved in from Oona River in the 1940s continued building boats there into the 1960s.

Gradually, the shipyards became run-down and disused. Some burned down, others were torn down. In Cow Bay today there is little evidence that this was once a bustling corner of wooden boatbuilding activity. But boatbuilding hasn't completely vanished in Cow Bay however, as aluminum vessels are still manufactured there.

Cow Bay Shipyard Gallery

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