Brockton Point Lighthouse

William David Jones was assigned a lighthouse here, but no house. In eighteen ninety, he was appointed the first keeper of the light at Brockton Point. Jones had to maintain the light and fog bell and go out on the water in an emergency. For vessels leaving the harbour, trees in Stanley Park hid the lighthouse at Prospect Point. Red and white lanterns on Jones's mast marked the place where captains were to turn toward the narrow exit from the bay.

No accommodation was provided for the keeper, so he built a cabin beside the tower from logs washed ashore. The pay was small. Jones grew flowers here and sold them; this trade brought him more than his lighthouse service did. Yet he could not leave the site: the light, bell, and rescue boat required someone to be on hand.

On July twenty-first, nineteen oh six, the wooden tug Chehalis was passing the point on its way out. Opposite the lighthouse, the large steamship Princess Victoria rammed it. The tug capsized and went under almost at once. Jones rushed to the boat. The Chehalis's engineer was near the steamship's propellers; the keeper managed to pull him out. Eight people died, and their comrades and friends erected the stone Chehalis Cross west of the lighthouse that same year. The tug's wreckage remained underwater several hundred meters from the shore.

By nineteen oh seven, Jones was credited with rescuing sixteen people. After the disaster, he was also tasked with regulating ship traffic: from nineteen oh nine, Jones used a semaphore to signal ships out of the harbour, while the keeper at Prospect Point received incoming vessels. Duty was required at any time. Jones spent more on an assistant than he received in additional pay for the new duty. The semaphore at Brockton Point was not abolished until nineteen eighteen.

The current concrete tower was brought into service with Jones as keeper, in nineteen fifteen. The opening at its base was designed as an exit for the rescue boat. But the current and tides at the point proved too strong: lowering a boat from here was almost impossible. The opening was turned over to the lower path of the Stanley Park Seawall. That is why pedestrians and cyclists now pass beneath the lighthouse—where the keeper's boat was intended to be kept.

The point's name appeared before the lighthouse. In eighteen fifty-nine, Francis Brockton, chief engineer of the British hydrographic vessel HMS Plumper, surveyed the peninsula and found coal near present-day Coal Harbour. The samples were burned in the ship's furnace: they burned well and produced little smoke. The vessel's commander, George Henry Richards, reported the discovery to the governor and expected local fuel to help the colony develop. Entrepreneurs hurried to obtain the right to prospect, but no coal deposits of industrial value were found here.

Richards named the bay Coal Harbour and the point after his engineer. There is no mine here, Jones's house and flowerbeds have disappeared, and the federal navigation service abandoned the lighthouse in two thousand five. What remains are the name Brockton, the Chehalis Cross, and the arch through which the waterfront path passes beneath the former navigational light.