This is the final piece in a series of articles celebrating the SV Maple Leaf’s 110th birthday, in 2014.
Strong, fast, and up for adventure: the SV Maple Leaf shares these three traits with William Watts, the man that made her.
While Alex Maclaren was the businessman that had her built, William Watts was the businessman that built her. He also built one of the most important entities in Vancouver, BC, one that still operates to this day: Vancouver Shipyard (now Vancouver Shipyards).
Here is a thumbnail sketch in tribute to William Watts, his vision, and his craftsmanship in constructing the famous Maple Leaf.
It is fair to say that boats were in William Watts’ blood. His father, also William Watts, arrived at Collingwood Ontario and began that town’s well-known tradition of boatbuilding in 1850.
William the younger moved to British Columbia in 1887. After ferrying miners up Harrison Lake for a couple of years, Capt. Watts and business partner Edward Trott opened a boat building business in 1889.
In 1902 this business became Vancouver Shipyard. It was located at Coal Harbour in downtown Vancouver, and this is where the Maple Leaf was built. Now, Coal Harbour is one of the city’s upscale neighbourhoods, filled with high-rise condominiums, parkland, marinas, rowing clubs, and restaurants between downtown and Stanley Park.
It’s fitting that rowing clubs are a part of the scene in this part of Burrard Inlet, because one of Capt. Watt’s notable achievements involved rowing. He broke records for speed and, in 1890, he won the BC rowing championships in a rowing shell he designed and built himself! Not a bad choice to design the fastest racing yacht on the coast in 1904.
(Coincidentally, Capt. Kevin Smith, who now runs Maple Leaf Adventures that owns the Maple Leaf, was also a BC single scull rowing champion, almost exactly 100 years later!)
Capt. Watts remained adventurous all of his life.
In addition to rowing and driving, Capt. Watts was also an avid sailor and sports fisher. And, according to his family, he liked a bit of fun. He loved to visit Hawaii and while there he actually learned to hula the right way, in a grass skirt. One historian refers to Watts as “one of BC’s most colourful personalities since the turn of the [20th] century.”
In 2004, the year of the SV Maple Leaf’s centennial, descendants of William Watts sailed aboard the ship on one of our Gulf Islands National Park Reserve trips.
They brought with them a treasured album, with photos and history of Capt. Watts. It’s kept aboard the Maple Leaf for our guests to peruse and get to know the man whose drive and vision created two of the most enduring pieces of boating history on the BC coast: Vancouver shipyard, and the schooner Maple Leaf.
