Steamboats of the Lower Fraser River and Harrison Lake

It was only the Fraser River Gold Rush and the Cariboo Gold Rush of 1862 which drew more steamers from the Columbia River in Oregon to Puget Sound and the Fraser River. Ships that called in were the Suprize, Enterprise, and the Wilson G. Hunt.

At the onset of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and the accompanying declaration of the Colony of British Columbia, British colonial Governor James Douglas, was worried about an American monopoly on British trade and thus declared a law preventing steamboat traffic operating under the American flag from conducting trade in the colony. This did two things, it enabled a local shipbuilding industry and, in as a result in some cases, ship owners changed flags and registry to British shipping.

Two dominant shipping players came to the fore – William Irving, an American from Portland, and William Moore, a German, who now resided in the New World. Both would dominate the shipping industry on the coast and would embark on schemes of monopoly and rate wars.

The boats, steam powered sternwheelers, churned their way 120 miles (190 km) up the river to Yale and Hope. The Fraser River was navigable to Yale, above which a fearsome torrent inhibited regular navigation. Gold seekers were travelling to the area and to the British Columbia Interior and thus wanted to move from Victoria, the deep sea port, by shallow draft steamer. A Hudson's Bay fort at Fort Langley, sat some thirty miles (48 km) inland from tidewater. Regular steamer service ran on the Fraser River as far as Yale and also shortly afterwards via the Harrison River up to the head of Harrison Lake, where a townsite named Port Douglas became the port of disembarkation for the Douglas Road, also known as the Lakes Route or Lillooet Trail, which ran via a series of lakes and wagon-road portages to Cayoosh Flat, the other major boomtown of the early gold rush alongside Yale and Port Douglas.

One Cariboo Gold Rush diarist noted

• "tues, Feb 17, 1862 Left Southampton per steamer Shannon.
• April 26, Arrived San Francisco [via Panama Isthmus]
• May 7, Arrived at Asquamalt, walk to Victoria.
• May 12 Left Victoria on the Enterprise, arrived at New Westminster on the Fraser River.
• May 16 Left Westminster by Flying Dutchman, a small steamer on the river.
• May 17 Arrived Harrison River at 8 am. Left by Union, another small steamer.
• Got to [Port] Douglas at 7 pm.
• May 19 Left Douglas 7 am, 70-pound (32 kg) pack, steep hills and very hot.
• Crossed Seaton Lake in Chapman
• Mon 20 Walked about 20 miles (32 km).
• June 8, Arrived at Quesnelle Forks."

In 1881 the Canadian Pacific Railway embarked on building a 3,000-mile (4,800 km) long railway from Montreal to Port Moody. To assist this massive project steamers were built. The Skuzzy was built by Andrew Onderdonk to move supplies and became the only steamer to transit the Fraser Canyon.

Once the railway was opened in 1886 traffic up the valley became easier. Other railways came in to break the CPR monopoly—the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern, both of which built steamers. Competing railways had steamers on the river to move rail barges. The CN had the SS Canora which moved boxcars from Port Mann to Victoria; the Great Northern Railway of Canada had barge service from Port Guichon near Ladner to Sidney for its line. In the early years the steam ferry Surrey ran across the river to serve the farmers from Liverpool to New Westminster.

Steamers provided regular service on the river from 1858 to 1981 when the last paddler was retired. Small farms and outports relied on the service for mail, delivering produce and milk, and connection across a very large river where there were few bridges. Communities up and down the river depended upon the steamers—Ladner, Anniedale, Liverpool, BC Penitentiary, Port Coquitlam, Hammond, Haney, Whonnock, Errock, Kilby, Pitt Late, Stave Lake, Hayward Lake, Agassiz, Hope, Lulu Island, Queensborough, Barston Island, Deas Island and Eburne.

The native people of the lower Fraser, a group of Coast Salish peoples today known as the Sto:lo, were employed to cut firewood and act as deckhands, where their years of river experience by canoe was invaluable. Later vessels would burn coal, and later oil. Steamers floated through the centre of Chilliwack in both the 1894 and 1948 floods.

The lower Fraser is navigable by deep sea shipping. Freighters from around the world would tie up at Pacific Coast Terminals or Fraser Surrey docks to load forest products. This is in addition to the hundred or so sawmills that once dotted the river. There were very big sawmills at Fraser Mills, Royal City, Western White Pine and Queensborough, in addition to two pulp mills.

Tug and barge traffic was prolific and was once 100 percent steam powered. Fish products at Steveston, pulp and paper at Annacis Island, plywood, limestone, and gravel, scrap metal and cars were all transferred by barge. This form of steamer is more in the coastal fleet than riverine trade and should be addressed from the individual tug and transport companies.

The SS Samson V is the only Canadian steam-powered sternwheeler that has been preserved afloat. It was built in 1937 by the Canadian Federal Department of Public Works as a snagboat for clearing logs and debris out of the lower reaches of the Fraser River and for maintaining docks and aids to navigation. The fifth in a line of Fraser River snagpullers, the Samson V has engines, paddlewheel and other components that were passed down from the Samson II of 1914. It is now moored on the Fraser River as a floating museum in its home port of New Westminster, near Vancouver, B.C.

Many other steamers worked on the river—these were dredges, derricks and cranes. In the early years, dikes, docks, and jetties needed to be built and so barge based steamers were put to work. Later many bridges, airports and factories were built and thus needed cranes and dredges. Fraser River Pile and Dredge was one company as was Dinsmore Dredge. Derricks and snagboats also worked the river.

John Irving's Reliance at Yale (1880)

R.P. Rithet

Panorama of New Westminster 1868, canoe, stumps and steamer on upper left

• Alexandra
• Annacis
• Beaver
• Bailey Gatzert
• Blonde
• Brunette
• Colonel Moody
• Dauntless
• Elizabeth A. Irving
• Enterprise
• Essington
• Fearless
• Firefly
• Fort Hope
• Fort Yale
• Fullness
• Gertrude
• Gleeful
• Governor Douglas
• Gypsy
• Henrietta
• Hodder Tug
• Mighty Mite
• Onward
• Pacific Slope
• Peerless
• Queen
• Reliance
• R. P. Rithet
• Samson
• San Mateo
• Sea Bird
• Shuswap
• Skeena
• Skowlitz
• Surrey
• Swan
• Teaser
• Umatilla
• Western Slope
• William Irving
• Yale
• lilooet
• Hope

• Vessels of the Lakes Route
• List of historical ships in British Columbia
• Steamboats of the Upper Fraser River
• Steamboats of the Arrow Lakes

• Francis (ed), Daniel (2000) [1999], Francis, Daniel (ed.), Encyclopedia of British Columbia, Harbour Publishing, p. 183, ISBN 1-55017-200-XCS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
• Ormsby, Margaret A. (1958), British Columbia: A History, Vancouver: Macmillans in Canada, pp. 180–187, ISBN 0-7748-0039-9
• Short Portage to Lillooet, Irene Edwards, self-published, Lillooet, various editions, out of print.
• Halfway to the Goldfields, Lorraine Harris, Sunfire Books, one edition, out of print.

• Downs, Art, Paddlewheels on the Frontier, Volume One, ISBN 0-88826-033-4
• Hacking, Norman, Captain William Moore, BC's Amazing Frontiersman, ISBN 1-895811-02-3.
• Downs, Art (1992). Sternwheel days : British Columbia-Yukon. Surrey, B.C.: Heritage House Pub. ISBN 978-0919214637.