Travel Story

A mini-cruise aboard the Malibu Princess retraces history into a spectacular corner of the B.C. Coast

On June 14, at precisely 1 p.m., the Malibu Princess pulled away from the Egmont dock and headed for Jervis Inlet on her first scheduled sightseeing cruise of the 2005 season. Exactly 213 years earlier, on the 14th of June 1792, Captain George Vancouver and a few men from HMS Discovery were on their way to that same inlet in a small open sailboat – searching uncharted waters for the fabled northwest passage.

I filled my cup with complimentary coffee and climbed up to the wheelhouse for a chat with captain Ed Roach and the crew. Surrounded by the latest navigational aids, GPS, side-scan radar, depth sounder, and precise marine charts we talked about those early explorers who had no idea what lay ahead. Yet powered by sail and ore, guided by the sun and stars, and equipped with nothing more than a compass, sextant, and vague rumors of a seaway through the mountains, they blazed the way for those who followed.

In 1792 Captain Vancouver was in command of the three-masted sailing sloop HMS Discovery. His orders were to survey the Pacific Northwest, enforce British territorial claims, and locate the northwest passage. Because the 340-ton Discovery was too large to navigate the myriad passages and channels she was left at anchor in what is now Birch Bay while Vancouver and a few crewmen set out in her small Pinnace to explore the coast. With provisions on board their open craft for a week, they sailed north into the unknown and discovered the entrance to the mighty fjord he would later name Jervis Inlet. Convinced he had found the Northwest Passage he and his small group of explorers toiled up the channel for three days, bucking foul weather and adverse winds only to end up on a muddy flat where the Squawaka River empties into the head of the Inlet.

Standing on the deck of the Malibu Princess as she swings out of Prince of Wales Reach and steadies on a new course up Princess Royal Reach it's easy to see why George Vancouver mistook this broad channel for the elusive Northwest Passage. Eighty kilometres long and three km wide, Jervis Inlet cuts a zigzag gash through the outer ranges of the Coast Mountains and even at a steady 10 knots in the comfort of the Malibu Princess it seems to go on forever.

The 126-foot Malibu Princess was launched from Vancouver's Allied shipyard in 1966. She has three decks that contain all the amenities of a much larger ship – snack bar with complimentary coffee and tea, large windows, comfortable seating and a spacious observation deck. Although licensed to carry up to 368 passengers the sightseeing tours are limited to 200 so there is ample space to wander about the ship and talk to the friendly, well-informed crew.

Our destination is Princess Lousia Inlet, a small steep-sided fjord that joins Queens Reach about 11 km down from the head of Jervis Inlet. Its narrow entrance, only a few metres wide, becomes a treacherous rapid when the tide is surging in or out of the inlet through Malibu Rapids and there are very few days each month when a vessel the size of the Malibu Princess can safely enter and leave the inlet. This summer only 14 trips are scheduled.

The low finger of land jutting out from Mount Helena into the narrows is one of the few flat places along the precipitous shoreline. Vancouver planned to stop here on his way south but was frustrated by tidal currents and lack of fresh water. He never entered Princess Louisa Inlet and it was not until 70 years after his death that the inlet was charted by Captain Richards and the crew of HMS Plumper. Richards, who described the area as "strikingly grand and magnificent," named most of the geographic features after Queen Victoria and her immediate family. Princess Louisa Inlet is named after her daughter, Princess Louise Caroline Albert.

Following the publication of Captain Richards chart in 1860 Princess Louisa Inlet and the remote upper reaches of Jervis attracted a few recluses, hand loggers and trappers who chose the freedom of their harsh wilderness subsistence to the constraints of society. And there were a few who fell in love with the place and made it their home. There was Herman Casper, a German immigrant who built his squatters cabin at the mouth of the inlet and shared it with a multitude of cats. And there was James F. MacDonald from California, better known as Mac, who built his dream home at the head of the inlet only to see it destroyed by fire. But he returned, spending his summers on a small float-house near the falls he named Chatterbox where he worked tirelessly to ensure that his beloved inlet would not be exploited.

The steady drone of our ship's engines dropped to a whisper as Captain Ed swung the Malibu Princess around and guided her expertly past the islets and low fingers of rock that all but hide the narrow passageway into Princess Louisa Inlet. The cluster of buildings and waving teenagers on the left shoreline seem strangely out of place. But the story of how they came to be there is even stranger.

In 1938 Bill Boeing, of aircraft fame, introduced fellow Seattle industrialist Tom Hamilton to Princess Louisa Inlet while the two families were cruising in their yachts, the Malibu and the Taconite. Tom's wife Ethel was taken with a small island half way up the inlet, and what Ethel liked she got. Two years later Tom bought the island from Mac and promptly named it after himself. He was a man of great wealth, sweeping visions, and short attention span. His initial plan to build a small holiday retreat for family and friends was rapidly abandoned for a grander scheme and for the next 10 years, from 1940 to 1950, he was obsessed with turning Princess Louisa Inlet into a "Mecca for Millionaires."

In 1941 he purchased all of the land surrounding Princess Louisa Inlet except a small parcel at Chatterbox Falls which Mac refused to sell. He gave Casper five hundred dollars for his squatter's cabin on the jut of land at the entrance. The cats were banished, the flea-infested cabin burned down, and Casper was made caretaker of the posh resort that Hamilton built in its place. He spent almost a million dollars creating the Malibu Club, a luxury retreat affiliated with his fleet of charter boats and aircraft. For several years the resort prospered. Then, in 1950, for reasons known only to T.F. Hamilton the place was abandoned – not shut down or closed up, but just abandoned as though everyone had sailed away without doing the dishes. And for the next two years Malibu stood empty, at the mercy of the elements and looters.

In 1952 Jim Rayburn, founder of Young Life, visited the ghost of Hamilton's abandoned dream and came up with a very different vision of its future. Young Life, a non-denominational Christian youth ministry based in Colorado, was searching for a place to build an outreach camp in the Pacific Northwest and the weather-ravaged buildings standing empty at the head of Princess Louisa Inlet were still salvageable. The property was purchased for Young Life and transformed from a millionaire's luxury retreat to a place that offered young people a week-long adventure of new ideas and new activities that many had never experienced before. Young Life's Malibu Camp has now been operating for more than 50 years and currently hosts more than 300 high school kids a week.

We waved back at the camp and continued up to the head of the inlet where Captain Ed let the Princess drift almost up to shore in front of Chatterbox Falls. To our left a mile-high granite monolith rises precipitously out of the ocean. Directly ahead, above the final plunge of the falls, the rivers and creeks cascade over a series of giant steps leading up to a snow-covered divide into the headwaters of the Elaho. To the right of the falls, on the very spot where he build and lost his cabin, there is a memorial to Mac – an octagonal cedar shelter where boaters can escape from the weather. When he died in 1978 Mac deeded his property to the Princess Louisa International Society with a plea that the inlet be protected and remain unspoiled for future generations to enjoy. In collaboration with B.C. Parks and The Nature Conservancy of Canada, the society is still working hard to achieve Mac's dream.

On the way back to Egmont Greg fired up the buffet, a scrumptious hot meal of many choices topped off with a tray of tasty gourmet treats. At eight o'clock, when we arrived back at the Egmont wharf, it was hard to believe we had been gone only half a day. Our mini-cruise aboard the Malibu Princess had all the elements of a much longer holiday – spectacular scenery, historic background, great food and a chance to meet some of the friendly, dedicated people who run the ship and clearly love doing what they do so well.