On September 9, the Maritime Museum of British Columbia held a ceremony announcing the largest gift in the museum’s 70-year history: Nauticapedia, the largest online documention of BC’s maritime heritage.
The website was created by John MacFarlane who spent 52 years building the database covering all kinds of historic vessels, mariners, boat designers, boat builders, naval officers, merchant mariners, shipwrecks and hundreds of maritime stories.
“This is an accidental project,” MacFarlane said via video call during the ceremony. “It just seemed to have happened. And anyway, years ago, everyone around me told me that creating something like this would be impossible.” He calls it his “magnificent obsession.”
Serving as the Museum’s executive director from 1989 to 1994, MacFarlane was frustrated by the difficulty of finding solid information about BC’s floating heritage. The data available was often anecdotal and one needed to go through countless documents and books to find verifiable information.
“It became my personal goal to create a tool that would economize on the effort required to research vessel histories and the biographies of the people and companies who owned them, built and maintained them,” he said.
MacFarlane began amassing data, photos and stories and by the year 2000, he was experimenting with an elementary website. He gave it the clever name “Nauticapedia” in 2011 and went online. He says thousands of people have sent him information, photographs and stories over the years. Other volunteers helped with improving the website’s technical aspects, fact-checking new data received, editing and updating.
As of October 30, Nauticapedia has listed 96,429 vessels, records of 15,564 shipwrecks and disasters, and biographies of 58,617 mariners and naval personnel. It also includes 17,155 archival photos and 35,000 ship plans. The website receives about four million hits a year from 130 countries. If you check the site next week, these numbers will have increased as MacFarlane is continuing his work.
“It’s a great day for nautical heritage,” said MacFarlane. “I chose this museum to offer this donation because the chair and the board of directors have developed a vision for the museum that sets a very high standard and long-term goal.” Nauticapedia will serve in complement to the museum’s archives as it is in the process of digitizing its vast collection of maritime artifacts, books and ship’s plans.
Two marine companies are sponsoring the ongoing costs of maintaining Nauticapedia: Robert Allan Ltd., the Vancouver-based naval-architect and marine-engineering firm, and Sidney’s Philbrook’s Boatyard. Robert Allan and Drew Irving attended the ceremony and spoke of their dedication to support this important enterprise.
“I have a network through Nauticapedia,” MacFarlane told PY. “Sometimes I meet readers in person, sometimes online. Some people comment on every new story. I will continue to build the website. I have this need to convince people of the tapestry of BC’s coastal heritage, its builders, fishermen, ships, boat owners, sailors, writers. It is so rich.”