Capt. John T. Walbran, Coastal Names Storyteller Par Excellence
Until I embraced the digital age and all that it offers, including finger-touch research capabilities, my most thumbed reference books were the Oxford Dictionary, the B.C. Department of Mines’ Annual Reports, the British Columbia Gazetteer and Capt. John T. Walbran’s British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906.
(Not necessarily in that order when I think about it...)
First published by the Geographic Board of Canada in 1909, Walbran’s mini-histories of how many of our place names, in particular our coastal features, were named (or renamed from their original Indigenous appellations) was reprinted in 1971 for the Vancouver Public Library by B.C.’s J.J. Douglas Ltd.
That’s the copy I work from as the original, which originally sold for 2.00, was (is) way too expensive for this struggling scribe. Even $45 for the reprint was serious change to me in those days!
Capt. John Thomas Walbran, longtime master of the Canadian Coast Guard who commanded his ship Quadra.like a ship of the line, in full uniform and, for divine services on Sunday, wearing a sword. His classic book about B.C. coastal place names is all of 546 pages! —ABC Bookworld
Since the advent of Truth and Reconciliation some of our landmark names that date from the colonial period are being replaced with their original Indigenous names.
One more reason to learn about the man who spent eight years of his retirement, researching and writing about how our inlets, bays and other coastal geographical features got their names.
When you think that Capt. Walbran didn’t have the luxury of the internet at his fingertips, his achievement is all that more impressive. He’d have had to do much of his research far afield via the post office as most of the records he’d have needed to access would have been (still are) in British and other European repositories.
And I’m willing to bet that he wrote all of his letters of inquiry, and even the first drafts of his manuscript, longhand. His truly was a labour of love.
There have been several books written since on B.C. place names but none surpasses Walbran’s Coast Names. His is a legacy that’s still on the job, informing historical researchers and the plain curious how this and that geographical feature got its name.
Not just their names but the stories behind them. I salute you, Capt. Walbran!
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My intent isn’t to tell you as much about the man, details of his personal and private life being, unfortunately, sketchy although there’s much on record about his career as the captain of a lighthouse tender, but to tell you about his gift to posterity as an historical researcher: British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906.
Google Capt. John Thomas Walbran and you’ll find that the accepted biography, brief though it is, is that written by Thomas E. Appleton for B.C. Studies in 1970. Another easy to digest source is the Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry written by the late toponymist G.P.V. Akrigg.
Then there are the many accounts in newspapers such as the Victoria Colonist which recorded the career and nautical adventures of the Dominion lighthouse tender Quadra, one of the most interesting ships ever to ply B.C. waters, with a remarkable story of her own.
The Dominion lighthouse tender Quadra in Victoria’s Inner Harbour, for years commanded by Capt. Walbran. —Fisheries and Oceans Canada Image published, https://www.clydeships.co.uk/view.php?ref=7677&vessel=QUADRA#v
Born in 1848, the son of a Ripon, Eng. iron merchant, but raised by his mother, Walbran attended grammar school until, age 14, he entered the British mercantile marine as a cadet on the school frigate Conway. Upon graduating in 1864 he served three years as an apprentice under sail which culminated with his earning a second mate’s certificate in 1867.
It then took him 14 years to achieve his master’s ticket in 1881, all of which adds up to a full resume by age 31. Over the next 21 years he sailed most of the seven seas on sailing ships before switching to steam.
His 1888 introduction to British Columbia came as a result of his being appointed chief officer of a new passenger ship under construction in Scotland for the Canadian Pacific Navigation Co., Victoria. Like his future command, the Quadra, the S.S. Islander had a colourful career, albeit a short one. (Did a Sea Monster Guard the S.S. Islander’s Gold?) Just 13 years later, she struck an iceberg in Lynn Canal, Alaska, and foundered with considerable loss of life.
Luckily for Capt. Walbran he wasn’t on board the coastal liner Islander when she sank within minutes of striking an iceberg in Alaskan waters. —commons.wikipedia.org
Once settled in Victoria he married, had children and, for two years, he commanded an older CPN steamship, the Danube—yet another seagoing lady with a story—before joining the Department of Marine and Fisheries. In 1891 it was back to Scotland for another ship delivery, this time the Dominion government’s new hybrid sail and steam lighthouse tender, Quadra, which he was to command for the next 13 years.
Lighthouse support was her main duty but Quadra also attended to placing and maintaining other navigational aids and assisting with fisheries management and hydrographic research along the B.C. coastline. As a stand-in coast guard vessel, she was also called upon to assist in police work (Walbran serving as magistrate) and sometimes she rescued mariners at a time when much of Vancouver island’s western coast was known world-wide as the ‘Graveyard of the Pacific.’
A prime example of this is her rescue of the crew of the foundering American barkentine Coloma during a storm off Cape Beale in December 1906. Capt. Walbran was sheltering the Quadra six miles distant in Bamfield Inlet when he was alerted to the Coloma’s peril by Mrs. Minnie Paterson (British Columbia’s own Grace Darling and one of my two illustrious namesakes—TWP), wife of the Cape Beale lighthouse.
She’d bravely hiked through dense bush at nighttime then rowed out to the Quadra to give the alarm about the Coloma’s danger. The ordeal cost her her health but, with Capt. Walbran’s help, saved the seamen from sure shipwreck and death.
Another highlight of the Quadra’s career was the transporting of Governors General Aberdeen and Lord Minto.
As early as 1896 Capt. Walbran had become interested in the origins of coastal geographic names and begun researching them. With retirement in 1904 researching and writing his book, it would seem, became a full time job. As for his incredible research, Prof. Akrigg notes that he sourced early manuscripts and printed texts going back to the previous century.
He was blessed with having access to what must have been an incredible library owned by his friend, Mr. Justice Archer E.S. Martin and, through voluminous correspondence, the contacts he’d made throughout his maritime career on both sides of the Atlantic.
Above all, Walbran had personally interviewed many of the pioneer settlers, missionaries and mariners whom he’d met and dealt with during his years as master of the Quadra.
(Speaking as a latter-day author/historian I’m keenly aware of the value of firsthand sources. No latter-day researcher can hope to match anecdotes and other historical nuggets that can only come from the horse’s mouth.)
So how does all of this fit in B.C. historical context? And how does British Columbia Place Names compare with later books on geographical name origins? Prof. Akrigg, himself the author, with wife Helen, of what’s considered to be a classic work on the subject, notes that the Walbran epic “bears little semblance to modern directories of topyonyms with their concise, even desiccated, entries.
“Rather, it belongs with the tradition of 18th-century antiquarian writing, with its rich mass of anecdotes and digressions.”
As an example of Walbran’s approach to the subject, as much that of a storyteller as an historian, Akrigg notes that the entry on the notorious “pirate” Capt. Jemmy Jones: (Jolly Jemmy Jones Our most Outrageous Mariner) (Jemmy Jones Island, Baynes Sound) is almost twice as long as that of the naming of Victoria—our provincial capital.
Capt. Walbran was a man after my own heart, obviously.—TW.
Although his entry about Victoria may be shorter than that for Jemmy Jones, he didn’t skimp on his research of Victoria’s naming, having traced down the last living survivor of those who, with Hudson’s Bay Co. Chief Factor James Douglas founded the future provincial capital as a fort in 1843. There are other “digressions,” too, as Prof. Akrigg took obvious delight in pointing out.
Particularly where coastal features being named for the Royal Navy’s ships, officers and seamen were concerned.
(Many of whom named 1000’s of the coastal geographical features Walbran wrote about, by the way; names that are still wish us today.) Although a merchant mariner himself, Walbran’s training as a cadet was almost pure “pusser”—RN—and he was considered by his contemporaries in the maritime fraternity to be somewhat eccentric in his way of treating the Quadra and its crew as if it were a ship of the line.
All said and done, is his opus readable by today’s standards? Akrigg: “Walbran’s style can at times attain a sonority worthy of Gibbons, and always it is lucid, energetic, and trenchant.”
He saved his highest praise for British Columbia Coast Names’ value as a trusted reference book: “The good captain’s book is the foundation work on the origins of British Columbia’s coastal place-names. More than that, it is an amazing grab-bag of history, biography, and anecdote. On both scores it belongs in any library of British Columbiana.”
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Readers who wish to find out for themselves can try the library or order their own 1971 J.J. Douglas “first” edition online. One vendor is offering a paperback edition in good condition for $27.48 US plus shipping. That adds up to not much more than I paid for my hardcover edition in the 1960s.
I’ll promote this wonderful even more by quoting from the dust jacket of the J.J. Douglas: “In the last years of the 19th century Captain John T. Walbran...began to record everything that he could learn about the names of the British Columbia coast.
“For 10 years he recorded every anecdote, every story and every conversation that cast light on its history. He combed provincial and city libraries, delved into private collections of papers and listened to the recollections of Indians, settlers and sailors.
Out of all this original research came British Columbia Coast Names, a magnificent source book full of interesting stories, colourful characters and authentic history....”
Noted B.C. historian Margaret A. Ormsby complimented the book’s reprinting by D&M in 1991 as “an event to be hailed with enthusiasm... His book has never been displaced.”
Ironically, the government’s initial edition quickly sold out—and wasn’t reprinted. Another irony is that this highly collectible and now expensive antiquarian treasure was printed with so many typographical errors that an Errata had to be issued. How this must have embarrassed Walbran, the impeccable historian.
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Sadly, too, John T. Walbran, who’d chosen not to accept command of a newer, larger ship, didn’t get to enjoy much of his well earned retirement. He died in 1913, aged 65, having suffered for years from a shipboard accident that was exacerbated by injuries sustained when he was thrown from an automobile.
But his wonderful book is still alive and well, no thanks to Walbran’s daughters who destroyed his papers. Fortunately, some of his letters to others have survived.
He’s also remembered on our maps, as indeed he should be, with Walbran Point and Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park.
I urge readers who love British Columbia history or who are simply intrigued by the origins, in particular the stories behind, our coastal place names, to read British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906.
It is one of the most valuable (and I don’t mean just monetarily) books in my extensive library.