none: The Removal of Dangerous Ripple Rock in British Columbia

This blog entry is not about a lighthouse, but it is of interest to lighthouse fanciers. It details the removal of a dangerous navigational hazard on the watery route of the Inside Passage, British Columbia. The area is marked by several lighthouses, but until Ripple Rock was destroyed the lights were sometimes of little use. Buoys too.

The Taming of the Rock

By JEREMY LEETE

For years, I had been told stories of how Seymour Narrows, just north of Campbell River, was the most treacherous area for ocean navigation in North America. My dad used to tell me that it wasn't uncommon to see gaping whirlpools suddenly appear and swallow you up, boat and all. So naturally, I felt great swarms of butterflies take flight in my stomach as we rounded the corner at Race Point in our modest 15-foot whaler.

Without warning, the idle water beneath us changed to a fast-moving torrent. The tidal flow began bullying the boat as we approached Seymour Narrows. The continuous pitch of the outboard was now being interrupted as the propeller cavitated in the frequent air pockets created by the strong current. Sideways, up and down, in random chaos, the ocean river played with us much like a kitten with a string.

I was walking a fine line between excitement and total terror. This was a lot for a 13-year-old kid from Ontario (Canada) to deal with, considering my landlocked past. But yet here I was, voluntarily approaching the mouth of the Narrows - the place where the twin peaks of Ripple Rock once lurked just under the surface. Finally, I was to bear witness to what Captain George Vancouver described in the late 1700s as "one of the vilest stretches of water in the world."
From 1875 until 1958, Ripple Rock claimed many lives and pierced the hulls of numerous vessels with its pair of sharp canine-like peaks, sending them to the bottom of the turbulent channel.

'Old Rip' as it became known, bit into its first victim in 1875. The sidewheel steamer U.S.S. Saranac was heading north to Alaska and was approaching Seymour Narrows at low tide. Charles Sadilek, a seaman on board at the time, later wrote, "The pilot had, on many former occasions, guided steamers through in safety, but always at flood tide. If reports are true, he attempted to persuade the captain of the Saranac not to venture through at low tide, but the captain answered, 'I'll risk it.'"

The captain should have heeded the pilot's warning as Sadilek recalls, ". . . when in the midst of a whirlpool, the ship refused to answer her helm and was for a moment beaten about by the angry water, when all of the sudden there came a crash that shook the ship as if it had been fired into a battery of guns. . . . The fearful rush of water as it closed over her was so powerful that it would have killed any living being who might have been aboard."

Amazingly, no lives were lost as the steamer went down, but Seymour Narrows put a scare into the Saranac's crew that would not soon be forgotten. "I have never seen an inland body of water more threatening than Seymour Narrows," wrote Sadilek. "Even the ocean in a temper has no such ravening aspect."

In the coming years, Ripple Rock would sink another 119 vessels and take 114 lives. It earned a reputation as the fiercest, and arguably, the most dangerous area for nautical navigation in North America.

After years of debate, lobbying and petitions, the Canadian government finally agreed that something had to be done to make Seymour Narrows safe for navigation. It was decided through means of explosives, that the peaks of Ripple Rock could be lowered enough so that any vessel, no matter the size, could pass over safely. But this news was not met with cheers and ovations by everyone. There were still those who had visions of a rail bridge stretching from Maud Island to Vancouver Island with Ripple Rock acting as the natural foundation for the middle support.

Their protests went unheard and in 1943, a huge barge, with a drilling rig, was brought in and secured over Ripple Rock with several anchors. The idea was to drill many holes into both peaks and pack them full of explosives. But the resilient rock would not relent so easily.
The strong tidal currents proved too much for the anchor cables to withstand. Under the immense tension created by the powerful flow, the first cable snapped less than 24 hours after the operation began. Subsequent cable snappings occurred, on average every 48 hours, and the project was eventually abandoned. Another attempt was made by barge in 1945, but this time the barge was secured to both shores with heavy overhead cables. Again the turbulent tides around Ripple Rock were underestimated and the attempt failed.

Perhaps blowing up Ripple Rock was not the answer. One alternative that was proposed was to bypass Ripple Rock altogether by building a channel through Quadra Island, via Plumper Bay to Saltwater Lagoon. This idea too was abandoned because the costs were too high.
In 1953, the National Research Council did a study on the feasibility of tunneling under Seymour Narrows and up into the peaks of Ripple Rock through Maud Island. The idea of performing a root canal, so to speak, on 'Old Rip's' jagged canines got the go-ahead, thus beginning the biggest project ever undertaken by the Department of Public Works.
After careful planning by engineers, around-the-clock work began in November 1955. Progress was slow but steady as the 75-man crew, working in three shifts, gained an average of about six feet per day of new tunnel. The operation took 27 months to complete and cost in excess of $3.1 million. The result was a 570-foot vertical shaft at Maud Island, a 2,500-foot stretch of tunnel under the ocean floor and two 300-foot vertical raises into each tooth of Ripple Rock.
With 1,375 tons of explosives packed into the peaks, April 5, 1958 was the date set for detonation . On that day, at 9:31 a.m., Dr. Victor Dolmage, consulting engineer for the Ministry of Public Works, pushed the plunger that set off the largest non-nuclear explosion ever. The blast pulverized 370,000 tons of rock and displaced 320,000 tons of water. Rock and debris rocketed 1,000 feet into the air. The explosion also created a 25-foot tidal wave which quickly dissipated and caused no damage.

When the dust settled, instead of being just nine feet under the surface at low tide, the highest pinnacle of Ripple Rock was now 47 feet deep. The demolition operation said Dolmage, "was a complete success." The undersea menace had finally been subdued.
And there were few, if any, adverse effects stemming from the blast. Norman Hacking, Vancouver Province marine editor during that time, witnessed the explosion and wrote, "We saw a few bug-eyed snapper but that was all." And in fact, there was a very small number of fish casualties. Planners intentionally scheduled the explosion for April when there were few salmon in the area. There were no documented cases of any dead salmon or herring from the Ripple Rock explosion.

For residents of Campbell River, the nearest town to Seymour Narrows, the explosion was anti-climactic. As a precaution, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) evacuated everyone within a three-mile radius of the demolition site and many residents were feeling anxious about their safety. Rumors of earthquakes and flying boulders triggered by the explosion, ran rampant.

"I was assistant manager of Painter's Lodge at the time," recalled Campbell River resident Les MacDonald. "We had engineers staying with us. . . telling us about this massive explosion that was coming, telling us that it might trigger an earthquake. The insurance company made us take everything off the walls - everything; we had to put everything on the floor. We really had no idea what was going to happen when the blast went off. Nothing. That's what happened. We didn't hear or feel a thing."

Tom Hall, 96, was a commercial fisherman in the waters around Campbell River during the years before the Ripple Rock explosion. A veteran navigator, he always maintained a healthy respect for the Narrows. "I went through (Seymour Narrows) almost every day of the year," remembers Hall. "You had to know exactly where to go. It would be dangerous alright, for a stranger. You had to be going with the tide. You couldn't buck it; it was too strong."
When the Prince Rupert ran aground on Ripple Rock in the early part of this century, Hall was there. A thick fog hung over the area, he recalls, and visibility was at a minimum. "I knew they were going to hit," he says. "They were bucking the tide and heading straight for the rock. They drove the rudder right up through the bottom of the deck."
Hearing of the demolition project, Hall decided to witness the event from a hill top near Quathiaski Cove on Quadra island. "It started to rain," he recollects while playing back the distant memory. "I didn't see anything; I didn't feel anything; I didn't hear anything." But, he says, "I would have had a good view if it didn't start raining."
The best view of the explosion was from the specially built bunker overlooking the Narrows. Hunkered safely in the bunker, witnesses were privy to the entire explosion that was accompanied by a thunderous boom.
Since the taming of 'Old Rip,' vessels, large and small, have traveled through Seymour Narrows without danger of hanging up on the twin peaks. But the Narrows is still a difficult, and sometimes treacherous, place to navigate, as I can attest. While I did manage to get through Seymour Narrows successfully that first time so many years ago, it is only with great caution that I venture into the mouth of the Narrows where Ripple Rock is just a memory.
Yet, even with all the carnage caused by the shallow menace, I somehow wish I could have seen it churning the water into a white froth in the peak of a strong tide. But today, I can only imagine Ripple Rock's performance before its deadly teeth were yanked.

Explosion photos provided by the Campbell River Museum for research purposes only.

TAMING RIPPLE ROCK
By DAVE KIFFER

September 23, 2005
Friday PM

Half a century ago, sailing the Inside Passage from Seattle to Alaska wasn't as safe as it is today. A pair of dangerous underwater peaks jointly called Ripple Rock created severe whirlpools in the waters near Vancouver Island, sinking numerous ships and claiming more than 100 lives. It took the largest non-nuclear explosion in history to finally end the threat.
Seymour Narrows, the location of Ripple Rock, was a hazard to navigation from the time the first sailing ships began charting the area.

In his diary of his 1792 voyage to Alaska, English Captain George Vancouver called the narrows one of vilest stretches of water in the world.
Over the next two centuries, more than 20 large vessels and 100 smaller craft foundered over the tides rushing across the twin underwater peaks of Ripple Rock near the Vancouver Island community of Campbell River.
Former Ketchikan resident Esther Foord Miller had a hair-raising experience when her family tried to negotiate the passage in 1910. She noted that without warning a large whirlpool began to spin the family's 20 foot boat in circles.

We were really in trouble, Miller told the Tacoma News Tribune in 1975. Dad had hurt his hand, Mom had scalded her foot and a halibut fisherman who was with us hurt his back, I was the only healthy one.

Miller - a nine year old in 1910 - said that she had to try to keep floating logs away from the boat in the maelstrom.

Dad held me by the seat of my britches while I hung over the side and pushed the logs with a pole, Miller told the Tribune. Then boat began to sink lower into the whirlpool. Dad started yelling instructions. He told me to move some heavy gas cans from one side of the boat to the other. I don't know exactly what effect my work had, but we pulled free.

In a website devoted to Vancouver Island history and events, Jeremy Leete writes that the first official victim of Ripple Rock was the side-wheel steamer USS Saranac in 1875. The ship approached the rocks at low tide and the coast pilot recommended waiting until high tide to traverse them but the ship captain overruled him.

Joe Sadilek was a crewman on the ship and later offered his observations, according to Leete.
". . . when in the midst of a whirlpool, the ship refused to answer her helm and was for a moment beaten about by the angry water, when all of the sudden there came a crash that shook the ship as if it had been fired into a battery of guns. . . . The fearful rush of water as it closed over her was so powerful that it would have killed any living being who might have been aboard, Sadilek wrote.

The steamer sank, but remarkably no lives were lost. Later vessels would not be so lucky and by 1958, more than 110 people had drowned on "Old Rip".

Over the years, Canadian officials debated how best to deal with the problem. Finally in 1931 a Marine Commission's findings brought a recommendation to remove Ripple Rock, but it was 1942 before an attempt was finally authorized.

Surprising enough, according to the website of the Campbell River Museum, removing the obstacles was not a universally accepted idea.

Despite the extreme hazard the rock created, its removal was bitterly opposed by some, who saw it as a bridge support for a railroad connecting Vancouver Island to the mainland, the museum website noted in a 2001 story on Ripple Rock.

In 1943 a drilling barge was floated over the rock, held in place by one and half inch steel cables attached to 1000 tons worth of concrete anchors. The idea was drill holes in the rock, fill them with explosives and incrementally blast the rock with several small explosions. But the currents in the narrows played havoc with the 150-foot barge and the anchor lines broke over and over again. The attempt was abandoned.
Two years later, a second attempt was made. This time the plan was to attach the barge to two 11-ton overhead steel lines on a 3,500 foot cable. But that failed to hold the barge in place for very long as well. It had been estimated that 1,500 drill holes were needed, but only 139 were drilled before that attempt was terminated. Nine workers died in the two attempts.
A decade passed before the National Research Council came up with a plan to tunnel under the rocks from nearby Maud Island.

It may take one of history's greatest underwater explosions to do the job, the Associated Press reported in November of 1955. The public works ministry estimated the cost might run to $2 million. Specifications for the removal project call for sinking a 500-foot vertical shaft at Maud Island, tunneling 2,100 feet under the narrows and running 300 foot shafts upwards into (each) rock.

The AP noted that - if the blast was successful - the depth would be increased to 40 feet at low tide.

The work began in November of 1955 and took nearly 27 months., according the Campbell River Museum.

An average of 75 men lived at the base camp (on Quadra Island), the report on the museum website said. Three shifts of hard rock miners advanced six feet a day on the shaft sunk from Maud Island.

When the digging was complete nearly 1,400 tons of Nitramex 2H explosives were put in the "coyote" tunnels inside the two pinnacles.

"With 1,375 tons of explosives packed into the peaks, April 5, 1958 was the date set for detonation," Leete wrote. On that day, at 9:31 a.m., Dr. Victor Dolmage, consulting engineer for the Ministry of Public Works, pushed the plunger that set off the largest non-nuclear explosion ever. The blast pulverized 370,000 tons of rock and displaced 320,000 tons of water. Rock and debris rocketed 1,000 feet into the air. The explosion also created a 25-foot tidal wave which quickly dissipated and caused no damage.
There was also little apparent damage to area sea life, according to Leete.

Norman Hacking, Vancouver Province marine editor during that time, witnessed the explosion and wrote, "We saw a few bug-eyed snapper but that was all." And in fact, there was a very small number of fish casualties, Leete wrote. Planners intentionally scheduled the explosion for April when there were few salmon in the area. There were no documented cases of any dead salmon or herring from the Ripple Rock explosion.

The Campbell River Museum website concurred.

No damage was sustained, the website reported. Careful monitoring by the Fisheries Department found that five orca, a school of porpoises, two sea lions and one fur seal seen near the area before the explosion were all seen again afterward, although understandably somewhat perturbed.

The explosion was more than a local spectacle. The event was broadcast live across the country and in the US and has been broadcast numerous time since then. For Campbell River, the explosion was somewhat anti-climactic. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had evacuated everyone within a three mile radius of the site. Leete says that many residents were anxious about earthquakes and flying boulders.

"I was assistant manager of Painter's Lodge at the time," Campbell River resident Les MacDonald told Leete. "We had engineers staying with us. . . telling us about this massive explosion that was coming, telling us that it might trigger an earthquake. The insurance company made us take everything off the walls - everything; we had to put everything on the floor. We really had no idea what was going to happen when the blast went off. Nothing. That's what happened. We didn't hear or feel a thing."

Like the rest of the country, most Campbell River residents watched the explosion on television. Cushioned by the water, the sound was heard only near the explosion and the tidal wave dissipated without causing damage. The Associated Press reported that the only official damage was to a wall clock at the mining camp on Quadra Island.

With the top of the rock sheered off, the south pinnacle's depth was increased from 9 feet to 45 feet at low tide and the north pinnacle's depth was increased to 70 feet. But - as Leete found when he tried to navigate the narrows in a 15 foot boat a few years after the blast - Ripple Rock wasn't completely tamed.

"Without warning, the idle water beneath us changed to a fast-moving torrent. The tidal flow began bullying the boat as we approached Seymour Narrows," Leete wrote. "The continuous pitch of the outboard was now being interrupted as the propeller cavitated in the frequent air pockets created by the strong current. Sideways, up and down, in random chaos, the ocean river played with us much like a kitten with a string."

Dave Kiffer is a freelance writer living in Ketchikan, Alaska.