QUEEN OF SIDNEY - Photos & Discussion

[Deleted]

I saw that some people had a tour of the boat. Will there be another tour in the future?

[Curtis]

I believe they've said there would be another tour but there hasn't been any news of one.

[Deleted]

I would love to see this thing in person before its too late.

[Ferryman]

Hey Keirnan, (I'm the one who gave you the address to the forum via youtube)

I'm hoping we'll be able to get another tour of the Queen of Sidney sometime soon. I was talking to another member on the forum (Retro) on MSN a few nights ago, and he had been talking with one of the part owners of the ship. He told me he was informed that she was not going anywhere anytime soon now.

[Deleted]

Cool. Thanks for the info.

Lets hope they allow another tour.

[Mill Bay]

I've been thinking about when we would do a Sidney tour.

I'm just not sure whether I'd be able to contain my grief at seeing her so neglected, or (alternately) my outrage at our beloved society and former government for being so ignorant of preserving an imporant piece of our history, or at least for not giving her more of the credit that is due.

Interestingly, I just read a news article about a push to redevelop that same general area in Silverdale along the Fraser, as a river port. I was wondering if the current owners of the old lady might be somehow involved in this, and whether there might be something in the plans that affects the Queen of Sidney as well.

[Mill Bay]

Just Found: An article that was passed around on the recent Queen of Tsawwassen trip. (I believe by Airchime)

God Save the Queen

By By ROSS CROCKFORD

Nov 21 2007

What happened to the first of the BC Ferries?

I turned off the Lougheed Highway just west of Mission and drove out to the riverbank. Ahead of me, a ship’s funnel—painted with the old dogwood flower logo—rose into view over the tall grass, like the tower of a lost city. Hard to believe, and yet there it was. The Queen of Sidney, once the pride of modern Victoria shipbuilding, rusting amid a shantytown of cast-off boats.

At the gangway I met Bill, a friend of the Sidney’s current (and rather secretive) owner. “It’s sad,” said Bill as he unlocked the gate, topped with razor wire. “Initially we had no desire to scrap her, but now we don’t have a choice. Ultimately we’re going to watch this thing disintegrate on the Fraser River.”

We stepped onto the car deck, and Bill switched on the lights. “Once you’ve got power, it’s like a magnet,” he said, explaining the raft of other vessels tied up nearby. One was the San Mateo, a wooden ferry built in 1922 that travelled back and forth across San Francisco Bay until a bridge was built to Oakland. Another was a giant barge with a crane that had been used during WWII to retrieve training planes that crashed in the water around Lulu Island (today’s Vancouver airport). A bearded guy darted across the barge and into an old tugboat. Bill said the guy had been squatting on the Sidney until the tugboat owner got drunk and fell overboard and drowned, and now the guy was squatting on the tug.

We went upstairs. The ceiling had been torn out of the cafeteria. A swallow flitted through the forward lounge, the carpet littered with pellets left by BB-gun gamers; Bill said he’d also rented the ship to a horror movie director. The brass portholes and railings had been removed, and a torn-up couch sat on the promenade deck. All in all, a tragic sight, considering the Sidney’s place in history.

It was the first ship in the fleet of BC Ferries. To prevent Vancouver Island’s economy from being held hostage by private ferry companies (and their striking workers), in 1958 premier W.A.C. Bennett announced the province would construct car ferries of its own. Using an improved design of the Coho, the Victoria Machinery Depot yards built the Sidney at Ogden Point, where it was launched on October 6, 1959, with great fanfare. (Its sister ship, Tsawwassen, was launched in Vancouver on November 28 of the same year.) The Sidney began service on the Swartz Bay-Tsawwassen route on June 15, 1960, and quickly won such a large share of cross-water traffic that Air Canada cut its number of Victoria-Vancouver flights by two-thirds.

The Sidney’s maiden voyage was historic in more ways than one. A few weeks before, Bennett had been in England and discovered that British Columbia had its own flag—the now-familiar sun and wavy stripes—assigned to the province by King Edward VII in 1906. (Before 1960, B.C. used the Union Jack.) Andy Stephen, a reporter who was on the Sidney with the premier that day, told me the rest of the story: “When we got halfway across the Strait of Georgia, he stopped the ferry and said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ His secretary brought out a suitcase, and Bennett opened it and pulled out a flag. The premier ran it up the mast and said, ‘That, ladies and gentlemen, is the first unveiling of our new provincial flag.’” The government officially adopted it a few days later.

The Sidney served nobly for more than three decades. But by the late 1990s, its engines and generators were leaking oil and exhaust so badly that the ship’s engineers had to wear respirators. The company sold it in 2001 to a buyer who said he’d use it as a floating logging camp. Instead, it sat on the Fraser, and was continually raided by thieves.

“Wiring, copper pipe, tools—they’d take anything and sail away,” said Bill. His friend bought the ship in 2002, and for a while they lived aboard, turning the bridge into a bar and the officers’ cabins into apartments. There was some interest in the ship: a British company offered to refurbish it and put it on the Sidney waterfront in exchange for the right to operate the town’s port. “We had hundreds of ideas thrown at us,” Bill said. “Fix it for the Olympics, turn it into a floating hotel. But talk is cheap, and as time goes on it costs and costs.” So they started removing its remaining heritage parts—including Bennett’s flagpole—putting some into storage and selling the rest.

Certainly BC Ferries was aware of the Sidney’s historic value when it sold the ship, but that wasn’t worth much. “For us, there came a point that it wasn’t worth upgrading to meet Transport Canada standards,” Deborah Marshall, the company’s director of communications, told me—even though the operators of the well-maintained Coho say their ship can run for another 30 years. The Tsawwassen won’t be saved either: after it’s retired from service next year, it will be sent to shipbreakers in Turkey.

The fate of these vessels is ironically appropriate, because in many ways BC Ferries has always represented our province’s ship of state. If British Columbians look upon our ferries with pride, it’s partly because they were built here. They once embodied a government’s bold investment in the talent of its citizens—and today that faith lies rusting on the shore.

Undoubtedly the new Coastal Renaissance, which arrives here next month from its German shipyard, will be a sleek, well-designed ship. But I suspect that, at best, we’ll only regard it with cool, consumerist admiration—a feeling that isn’t much like pride at all.

unknownvictoria.blogspot.com

[Neil]

Did British Columbians ever take pride in their home built ferries? If so, I don't think they do now. The 'Sidney gradually rusts away to nothing, the 'Tsawwassen will be sent away for scrap with nary a whimper from anyone outside the ranks of shipping enthusiasts, and everyone worships at the shrine of Flensburger.

If ever there was pride, it's been replaced by the false expediency of the bottom line.

[Curtis]

I Agree, Neil. It isn't right that we don't take pride in the Ships that were built here in British Columbia. I'm sure there was pride with vessels such as the Sidney and Tsawwassen in their heyday in the 60s and 70s but as vessels got bigger and better their pride was moved on and the attention they had has now changed and the money going into maintaining the vessel reduces to minor work if it's really needed, the maintainence gets so low that big problems show up and get so bad that it can't be fixed, such as with the Sidney's engine room. With that it forces them to retire. It seems to be the same for every BC Ferries vessel as a new vessel, you're on top of the world but 50 years down the road you're reduced to nothing but a useless pile of Scrap Metal. Back when the Government ran the Ferries It seemed after the 80s that the ships were being built in BC, but the rest were Maintained to a minimum, and when a vessel was retrofitted, it would happen to only one ship if the ship being refitted had a sister ship, same type of thing with a new vessel, except they would only build one if there was supposed to be more than one or just never be built. But now with the Privitized BC Ferries were seeing new vessels being built outside of BC but seeing our older vessels being maintained better. Even our new vessel, the Coastal Renaissance it's the pride of the fleet now but down the road, that's going to change, with the private BC Ferries she might run longer but be sent to ship breakers when she becomes useless to BCFS, but if the government took over again she could suffer the same fate as the Queen of Sidney. Don't be surprised if 50 Years down the road she's rotting on the Fraser River or off to Turkey.
That's Enough of My Rant then.

[WettCoast]

prqueenkid16 said:

But now with the Privitized BC Ferries we're seeing our older vessels being maintained better.

What evidence do you have to support this statement?

[Mill Bay]

wetcoastkidjst said:

prqueenkid16 said:

But now with the Privitized BC Ferries we're seeing our older vessels being maintained better.

What evidence do you have to support this statement?

If a private company is maintaining the ships better, you would never be able to tell that from, oh, say... the Queen of Esquimalt.

Somehow, the Tsawwassen has managed to hold on a lot longer than the Sidney, but maybe that's just pure luck. I think the comparison between the fine operating state of the Coho and the Tsawwassen's rather rough and occasionally tumultuous operating state is especially telling. Or compare it with the fact that WSF actually holds on to ferries long enough to paint gold bands on them, so how have those ferries managed to last so long.

It seems that the comment about trying to save B.C. from being held hostage by a private ferry company has almost come full circle. Certainly in the first decade and a half of the ferry service, the pride was there and the maintenance of ships was generally kept up. Then when we got stuck with successive NDP governments and now the Liberals who seem to believe that public money is more theirs personally than ours corporately, and they are going to scream and fuss about spending money in any way that benefits the public.

New chairs for the MLAs, and they get a raise, sure. But not routine maintenance on the ferries. The key word here is routine, as in something that should be done everyday, as a matter of course, without stopping to count the cost. But that sort of small outlay is far too expensive for the government, and even more so for a private company, it seems now. But the cost of a new ferry to replace one that you've ruined, now that's quite all right, and the public still has to pay for it. Misuse of our property to be sure.

Also the comment about our faith in government rusting away. How have wages in general grown so small, yet the cost of everything else, especially ferry fares, become so outrageously disproportionate. Sure if you have enough economists preach the values of free-market economies, the governments seem to believe them, but how free is that market for those who are actually paying for goods and services these days.

We were only being held hostage by ferry operators in the 60s. Now we are being held hostage across the spectrum, and governments seem to think the revenue they get from taxes becomes their personal business account, and B.C. is their personal business, and they start selling off the public's assets one by one. It definitely seems like a conflict of interest or a get rich quick scheme for some, so who can blame us for not trusting a government with our money when they give so little of it back to us in the form of affordable goods and services, or using it to build up our industries so we can build ferries in B.C.

All this is too late for the Sidney, and most likely the Tsawwassen as well, but the first time a five dollar part needs to be replaced on the Renaissance, will they actually just spend five dollars to replace it, or leave it in place for 40 years until it requires another 500 million dollars of brand new ferry to fix all the five dollar problems that could've been easily fixed at little cost but were consistently ignored and eventually ruined the ferry through sheer lack of proper maintenance because all the mattered at the time was the bottom line of the day, not the bottom line 40 years from now.

[Hardy]

millbay said:

but the first time a five dollar part needs to be replaced on the Renaissance, will they actually just spend five dollars to replace it, or leave it in place for 40 years until it requires another 500 million dollars of brand new ferry to fix all the five dollar problems that could've been easily fixed at little cost but were consistently ignored and eventually ruined the ferry through sheer lack of proper maintenance because all the mattered at the time was the bottom line of the day, not the bottom line 40 years from now.

Moreover, Mill Bay, the deeper question is not the FIRST $5 part, but subsequent ones. To be sure, BCFS and the crew, indeed everyone, will be proud as new parents of the CR for the first little while. This is a given. Something new is always something cool.

FSG has a warranty in place, and I strongly beleive that the employees that work on board a ship each day try their very best to do all the required routine maintenace.

Where are we going to be 5 years down the road, when the warranty is over and the ship has been running full time? Will we still replace the $2000 part as soon as possible when it fatigues, or will we cobble it together with a $100 quick-fix and leave it, as you say for 40 years, until it costs $125000 and 3 months in drydock to fix it?

This will be interesting to see how this plays out, to be sure.

[Barnacle]

Moreover, referring to BC Ferries as a private company is like referring to Washington State Liquor Stores as private companies. (They're all run by the state of Washington.) Given that the government owns all the "shares," it's hardly a private company. It's just a Reaganesque layer of protection and distance, like offshore holding companies.

[Curtis]

millbay said:

wetcoastkidjst said:

prqueenkid16 said:

What evidence do you have to support this statement?

If a private company is maintaining the ships better, you would never be able to tell that from, oh, say... the Queen of Esquimalt.

I meant the vessels that weren't marked for retirement when the company was turned private, such as the "B" Class or the "C" Class.

[WettCoast]

prqueenkid16 said:

millbay said:

wetcoastkidjst said:

If a private company is maintaining the ships better, you would never be able to tell that from, oh, say... the Queen of Esquimalt.

I meant the vessels that weren't marked for retirement when the company was turned private, such as the "B" Class or the "C" Class.

So you are saying that newer vessels like the Spirits are better maintained now than they were in 1999. Again, what evidence do you have in support of this assertion?

[kylefossett]

Yes, most of these vessels have gone through the coastalization refits, but if you were to ask one of the engineers from these vessels about the refits they would not have anything to nice to say as the budget split for these refits had more money going to where the passengers will see it then where it is needed.

[Ferryman]

Here's a photo gallery that is hosted by someone from the Airsoft group who uses the 'Sidney as a "field" for their games. It's dated for January 2006, so nothing too much would have been different inside when compared to photos taken by members like myself when we had the opporutnity to tour the vessel in November 2005.

www.pbase.com/optix84/jan_1st_2006__mission_ferry&page=all

[balto]

Last weekend I was down at the Queen of Sidney taking some pictures for school and I thought I could hear the scrappers tourches going inside. Their was alot of banging, very loud voices all coming from the Sidney and their were a few cars in the scrapyard. Does anyone else know if they have indeed started the scrapping process?

[langleydude]

I just returned from a photoshoot on the Queen of Sidney and it makes me kinda sad to see heritage of BC and of BC Ferries sitting there and slowly rotting into the Fraser River.
Does anyone know or can give me some information if any efforts have been to preserve this wonderful ship?
I my opinion I think BC Ferries should pick up the tab and restore their original baby. It would be such a nice showcase for tourist and especially the olympics. Maybe a nice restaurant?

Please help me out.

Thanks

Peter

[kylefossett]

Oh buddy wait til the moderators get to you. They don't care if you are new on the board or not they are gonna give you supreme poopoo for starting a new queen of sidney thread.

now on a serious topic, what you mentioned above. BC Ferries doesn't seem to give a crap abut the old girl.

[Scott (Former Account)]

*Moderator Note* -

Please direct all discussion regarding the Sidney to the current Queen of Sidney thread.

Thank you.

[Low Light Mike]

kylefossett said:

Oh buddy wait til the moderators get to you. They don't care if you are new on the board or not they are gonna give you supreme peanuts for starting a new queen of sidney thread.

That's right, we don't care. We are the worst form of evil imaginable. We are miserable and wish to spread that misery to all who we encounter. We are the psychopaths of the internet.... ;D

[Scott]

Welcome to the forum, langleydude. We've been around for quite a while, so if there's a topic you'd like to discuss, there is probably already a thread on the issue. Now, we don't expect you to go back to February 2007 looking for a suitable thread, but at least keep an eye out for recent topics before starting a new thread.

For example, there is a thread called "Queen of Sidney" (Scott provided a link) listed 3 spaces below yours in the "BC Historic Ships" section. You'll understand that having two topics so close together with identical titles will lead to confusion.

And meet kyle. He provides a running color(ful) commentary on the activities of the forum. If you ever see him on the Queen of Nanaimo, tell him we say "hello"

BTW, this thread is now locked. Please continue the Queen of Sidney discussion in the original thread.

[Mill Bay]

Bonus Photos

"Queen of Sidney at Sunset: One last moment of beauty"
s241.photobucket.com/albums/ff290/Mill-Bay/Queen%20of%20Sidney/

[Scott]

Wow, beautiful photos ... the sun at that time of the day makes everything look great, even with rust stains:)