“The most shameful incident in Canadian Maritime history” occurred in January 1906 when the steamer Valencia hit rocks off the treacherous west coast of Vancouver Island, only 100 feet from shore. Over the next 40 hours the vessel was pounded to pieces. More than 80 people, many of them women and children, drowned. Men watching from the shore offered no assistance, and three potential rescue vessels sailed away. The tragedy is considered the most appalling display of bad luck, incompetence, negligence and lack of compassion in recorded Canadian maritime history.
