An intriguing seafarer’s album is entering the Maritime Museum of BC Collection on October 21. The public is invited to join Margot Dixon at 3:30 PM in the gallery at 744 Douglas Street when she visits to drop off the scrapbook of her 19th-century relative, Captain Samuel Frederick Scott.
“Amongst the family albums [my] mother had kept, [I] found something very curious—Captain Samuel F. Scott’s old scrapbook. Who was this man? And why did [my] family have his scrapbook?” said Dixon. As she read through the book, full of one-of-a-kind documents, she “realized this intriguing scrapbook was much more than a family curiosity.”
The scrapbook contains it all, said Dixon: “a life on the high seas in the late nineteenth century, sailing across some of the most dangerous waters, facing storms, shipwrecks, illness, war, mutiny, and tragedy.”
“There’s a wonderful BC maritime connection,” said Rosemary Kemp, Curator, who is ready to accept the scrapbook into the museum’s permanent collection.
Captain Samuel Frederick Scott was born in New Brunswick, but during his seafaring life he crossed the Pacific and Atlantic multiple times, and engaged in gold mining in British Columbia. With later business ventures along the West Coast, Captain Scott’s personal narrative, replete with tragedies and incredible adventures, intertwines with contemporary events along the coast. To Kemp, the scrapbook, “captures a pretty extensive time period of marine interests between 1847 and 1905, and acts as a snapshot of life at sea and in BC. We’re delighted that Margot sees the Maritime Museum of BC as the scrapbook’s permanent home.”