Mailboat - CPR warf, Vancouver
1887

Watercolor 21" x 29"


By the end of 1886 the fire that erased Granville was barely a memory, and the newly incorporated city of Vancouver boasted fourteen offices, twenty-three hotels, fifty-one stores, nine saloons, a church, a roller skating rink, over eight thousand people, and the railroad tracks were already being laid along the shore.

The Canadian Pacific Railway’s transcontinental line reached tidewater at Port Moody, at the eastern end of Burrard Inlet, then continued along the south shore to their terminus at Coal Harbour, where a newly constructed passenger platform marked the end of the line. On May 23, 1887, Vancouver celebrated the arrival of the first through passenger train from eastern Canada. The mail contracts and passenger services were important to the railroad, but freight was also an important source of revenue. The CPR had delivered seven shipments of tea to eastern Canada and the United States in 1886, from sailing vessels unloaded at Port Moody. In February 1887, when the first train arrived in Vancouver, a rail spur on pilings had already been constructed over tidewater to accommodate deep sea vessels. The Canadian Pacific Navigation Company obtained the contract to carry mail from Vancouver to Victoria, and the schedule was timed to the arrival of the daily trains from the east. The ISLANDER was ordered for the Vancouver - Victoria run, and when she went into service in December, 1888, she was the finest vessel on the coast.

The CPR chartered three iron steamers from Cunard; the PARTHIA, ABYSSINIA and BATAVIA, and placed them on the Vancouver to Yokohama run. On June 13th. 1887 the ABYSSINIA docked at the CPR wharf, inaugurating the regular transpacific service. These three old ships were replaced in 1891 with the first of the three beautiful Empresses ordered by the CPR for the North Pacific Service.

The painting shows ISLANDER approaching the CPR wharf, where she will berth ahead of ABYSSINIA. The freight train has been opened to allow access to the passenger station at the end of the jetty.