PILOT tows ROBERT KERR into Burrard Inlet.
Sept.7, 1885

Watercolor 14” x 21”


In the background of many early Vancouver Harbour photographs, anchored in mid stream, there appears a barque with her sails removed, apparently abandoned. She is the ROBERT KERR, and she has a long association with the city. Launched in Quebec City in 1866, and registered in Liverpool, she spent from 1867 to 1876 in the Britain to India trade. She had several owners until 1881, when under Captain Edward Edwards she began to sail between Britain and the Americas.

Her final voyage under Captain Edwards commenced from Liverpool on October 2nd. 1884, bound for Vancouver around the Horn. It was not an easy voyage. They were battered by storms and becalmed at the equator, there were troublemakers in the crew, and the captain took ill and died off the coast of Washington. When they picked up a tow into Victoria on August 24th., 1885, they had been almost eleven months on the passage.

On September 6, the PILOT took them under tow for the rest of the trip to Vancouver. Two hours later, in thick fog, the ROBERT KERR grounded on San Juan Island. They were able to get off and complete the tow, and she anchored off Hastings Mill the next day in 18 fathoms. When they surveyed her four days later, she was found to have a damaged forefoot and was declared unseaworthy. On October 17th. she was towed to a new anchorage off Gastown and a windmill pump set up on deck to keep her dry, and she was stripped of her sails and stores. Her last log entry is dated October 20, 1885.

Captain William Henry Soule, a pioneer shipping master and a superintendent at Hastings Mill, purchased her and installed a Captain Dyer aboard as watchman. The next year, on April 6th., still swinging at anchor and dressed with flags and bunting, she was part of the celebrations at the official incorporation of the City of Vancouver. Her moment of glory came two months later. On June 13th. the new little city burned to the ground. The fire was so fast and catastrophic that survivors could only escape by taking to the water. Using anything that would float, as many as two hundred persons took sanctuary on the ROBERT KERR, endearing her forever in the hearts of the survivors.

Among the buildings burned was the home of the Soules’. The family reconditioned, furnished and lived aboard the ROBERT KERR until September 1887 when their house ashore was finished. The CPR, in need of coal barges to bring fuel from the mines on Vancouver Island, purchased her on October 3rd. 1888, and she continued to appear in photographs well into the nineteenth century, stripped of her bowsprit and upper masts, discharging coal into one of the Empresses. Her end came on the night of March 4th. 1911 when she was wrecked while under tow on Danger Reef in Trincomali Channel.