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Even as the distant booming of Leipzig’s guns ceased for a short respite, the former Royal Navy sloop Algerine crept ever forwards to its objectives west of Vancouver. While it was obviously a colossal stroke of good fortune to come upon two enemy vessels in such a compromising position and even more so to capture them both with zero casualties, it is also a mark of substantial skill and cunning in regards to the officer at the helm of such an operation. As such, it is outwardly bewildering that Lieutenant Hartkopf, the purveyor of such a flawless operation, was apparently set into a rather foul mood after the fact. The irony of the Algerine being commandeered by the Germans should have brought much chagrin to her crew as sloops such as this had been used by the Royal Navy to enforce their rule to all corners of the Empire, seeing it be turned against them and used in the bombardment of what amounted to the Empires front door was almost poetic justice in a sense. That seems though to have not been the case as the second in command aboard the sloop spoke later in his life about the Lieutenants irritability and somewhat clouded head, although it was never explicitly mentioned the reason why that was. In all likelihood it was due to fact despite the rather young officers triumphs that day, the likely medals in his future and the destruction he would reap upon his enemy, he was ultimately unhappy about his immediate fortunes as a result. He had oversaw an opportunity another nation had not done in hundreds of years, capturing a vessel of the Royal Navy but what had he to show for it? His first command was scuttled and now he had rewarded by being forced to give up that sleek three funneled greyhound for what amounted to a decrepit old carthorse.

Regardless of that fact, Algerine was sailing roughly a few miles off the Valdes and Galiano islands at roughly this time, lining up to thread the channel which separated the two and make her way towards the substantial coal loading facilities of both Ladysmith and Nanaimo. While the general lack of credible shore defenses meant she was largely safe combat casualties outside of rifle and machine gun fire, the treacherous internal waters of British Columbia were another story entirely. Algerine was outfitted with a relatively new set of Royal Navy issue charts which were utilized alongside a predetermined course with assistance from the pilot aboard Leipzig but even so, they had to tread carefully. Accidents happened to local vessels frequently in those waters, let alone foreign sailors operating an unfamiliar ship. Caution was almost forced upon the sloop, one wrong move putting her ashore or in a collision with a rock would prematurely end their mission, further crippling Leipzig and leaving the sailors at the mercy of an enemy power they had just been prepared to bombard. Even if one wished to imbue some kind of haste into their part of the operation, the vessels relatively pedestrian top speed of the 13 knots squarely set the pace going forward. One can easily understand the stresses put on a crew operating in such conditions with the ever-present threat of an unseen torpedo sending them off into the drink at a moment’s notice.

Leipzig arrived at the eastern most section of Burrard Inlet at approximately 0800 hours, a relatively small area known as Port Moody. This dead end stretch of the inlet was somewhat famous for being the initial location of the western terminus for the Canadian transcontinental railway before it was moved to what would eventually become Vancouver. While a large spattering of sawmills and cottages could be found dotted around the area, the main target for the Germans was the pair of oil refineries nestled into the confines of the port. The BC Refining Company had purchased the original Canada Pacific Rail terminal site in 1908 and had converted it into a small but regularly operating oil storage and refinery site with direct sea access. Crude oil arrived by train or by sea and was pumped through the processing cycle by an onsite powerhouse, eventually being stored in steel storage tanks located on the hillside bordering the rear of the site. The facility only produced roughly 25,000 barrels of refined oil monthly, but such things were viewed as perfectly adequate until 1914 had rolled around and the massive factory to their north had begun construction.


The Imperial Oil Limited Company had purchased 85 acres on the northern shore of Port Moody for the basis of an absolutely massive oil refinery which would ideally come into limited operation by the end of 1914. Referred to as Ioco (an abbreviation of the company itself), the property contained a sizable L shaped wharf with an attached rail station which was constructed to facilitate effective movement of refined products and crude oil to and from the arriving tankers, the facility located up the incline to the rear of the property and elsewhere in the province. Hundreds of thousands of feet of piping would feed the oil through the 23 various sized steam stills and associated refining equipment where it would eventually find itself in one of the 270 different storage tanks which would dot the facility grounds. It was planned to house some 200 families in the surrounding town around the facility which would include all of the amenities expected of modern life as well as a ferry service from Vancouver and the surrounding area. The facility itself was projected to process 60,000 barrels of oil per month however when the Germans arrived in August of 1914, the facility grounds were somewhat different compared to the grand plans of Imperial Oil. With the declaration of war earlier in the month, construction had slowed somewhat as workers filtered away to enlist in the military alongside being forced to contend with a lack of certain essential material caused by the threat of German raiders locking down the sea lanes. The workers that did stay coalesced into a rather miserable grouping of shacks on their off time, which soon made up a sizable shanty town around the borders of the plant. Even as the company was informed that the first Peruvian crude oil shipment required to start refining at the end of the year would be unlikely to arrive, the work slowly moved forward as deadlines were pushed further and further into 1915.

As fate would have it, the prospective facility would have its opening pushed back even further by the actions of that Sunday morning. Oil refineries themselves were rightfully viewed by the Germans as potential bottlenecks which if exploited properly, could put pressure on the rapidly modernizing sections of the Royal Navy which relied upon oil firing to propel their vessels and other articles of war. The cruisers initial loop around the port was announced by a boom of guns and the associated pair of geysers reaching skyward just off the pair of facilities. The din of the guns died away but was quickly replaced with the sound of alarms seemingly coming from all directions at once, Leipzig’s extended rampage in Vancouver harbor had seemingly had the facilities themselves already on high alert and her appearance sent employees and families alike quickly fleeing into the hills. Of course, the Hun had not arrived to pillage shanty towns contrary to what British propaganda had stated but to the people on the ground, an attack of any kind was not something they would like to stand around and observe. In any other situation, Leipzig focusing her finite shells on a largely unfinished and sparse property like Ioco would have been a major boon for the Canadians, but the boastful pride of Imperial Oil had come back around to squarely plant its foot in uncomfortable places. Due to the heavy newspaper coverage of the plant and its progress every step of the way, the German Consul in San Francisco and Captain Haun by extension were perfectly aware that attempting to destroy the entire plant would be a costly resource sink. Ever the sharp mind, Haun instructed his gunnery officers to ignore the hollow, easily repaired oil tanks around the property and instead focus on hitting the more valuable pieces of infrastructure on the premises with methodical and well placed shots. The first salvos landed amidst the warehouse and adjacent boiler room at the foot of the wharf, almost immediately sending the overhung forward-facing side of the former building toppling down off its supports and into the harbor below. A locomotive and its associated cars carrying construction materials was caught in the impromptu demolition, catching brick and wood shrapnel before being buried in steel scrap when the train shed came crashing down. The boiler room adjacent held up somewhat better for a few moments, but it quickly disappeared in a cloud of superheated vapor. Targeting some parts of the facility had likely been a difficult task given how residential buildings were sandwiched between the refinery high on the hill and pier far lower down however, it seemed like the Germans were more than up to the task. The towering smokestacks and any other significant buildings on the hill were used as reference points for fire but as Leipzig circled around to target the smaller facility across the bay, the only damage she had inflicted to the upper facility had been the destruction of a few steel pipes and the perforation of a large but empty fuel tank.

The BC Refining Company’s compact shore side property made for a rather quick and plentiful slaughter as the 4” guns of the cruiser effectively destroyed the plant in only one pass. One shell clipped the upper most tip of the main building’s smokestack, sending a makeshift wrecking ball directly downwards through the thin sheet metal roof of the structure. A handful of explosions inside both the main and secondary refining buildings sent shards of glass outwards in all directions as fire begun to take hold within their bowels, various articles of piping and holding vessels throughout the area gushing oil as they warped and broke. The weakly built wood and sheet metal structures around the grounds proved incredibly unsuited to concentrated artillery fire and quickly became little more than rubble surrounded by black tar and rising flames. Storage drums built atop the artificial hill had been punctured by shrapnel and shot but largely only dripped their contents until the rest of the main buildings funnel collapsed off its weakened foundation. A miniature tidal wave of black sludge was let loose from the tanks as the funnel came back down to the earth, smashing five or more storage tanks as it did. The larger tanks alongside the rail lines below faired only somewhat better as they were blow apart by shell fire alongside yet another trainshed near the facilities wharf. The ferocity of the fires melted and warped whatever remained from the shelling as boilers and machinery exploded in the background, such terrible fires would rage uncontrollably through the immediate woodland areas as well and cause undue amounts of carnage.


Leipzig did not immediately resume her destruction of the remaining facility though as a lone three masted vessel in the bowels of Port Moody was soon the center of attention. Tied alongside one of the many sawmill wharves was the SS Lord Templeton, a 2,150t sailing cargo vessel built in 1886 and registered in Victoria, British Columbia. Due to the fact that the vessel was partially shielded by the wharf itself and the structures built atop it, Leipzig was forced to bombard her from somewhat further away. Such a task was still though within the purview of the East Asia Squadrons elite and within a short period, both Lord Templeton and the immediate port infrastructure had taken quite the beating. The vessels luck held out initially as her heavily laden state hid her hull beneath the clutter of the surrounding dock but as that clutter was ruthlessly blown out into the surrounding waters, the inevitable first shell struck her followed by another and another. Due to some of the shells passed low under the spindly outstretching docks, Lord Templeton had her waterline facing the dock holed which caused her to eventually roll inwards towards the structure in an attempt to capsize. She would snap off her heavy masts as they collided with the dock infrastructure, creating a mess of splintered wood, sail and cabling strewn about. The vessel would prove rather troublesome to salvage in the coming days due to her precariously perched status against the dock being the only thing keeping her above the water alongside the internal cargo which had dangerously shifted in her death roll.

While the Germans would never inflict the same amount of sheer destruction upon the Ioco facility as they did to their previous targets, it was not for a lack of trying. The cruisers second attempt against the facility proved to be much more effective as her shells falling amidst the construction site created a horrendously dangerous sight to behold. Live electrical wires were hauled down alongside their poles and strewn about, the softer incomplete structures and their bordering scaffolding collapsed under the explosive power of incoming shells while a mobile fuel cart far up on the hill ignited in an immense fireball. Soon the groupings of funnels with their lower structures hidden by the altitude of the hill begun to fall one by one as Leipzig refocused her fire back on these hardened structures, the boiler rooms and surrounding machinery was a tough nut to crack however, such large valuable equipment would be difficult to quickly replace or repair. Empty distillery containers toppled over onto their sides as shrapnel or shells lanced through their supporting brick and metal lattice work structures while salvo after salvo pounded the brick structures to pieces. Ioco was lucky in the fact that none of the larger brick smokestacks had been erected as even their shorter and stouter steel counterparts proved to be rather destructive as they toppled over and damaged anything in their path. While many of the boilers and refinery machinery was not outright destroyed in this bombardments, the shrapnel damage they suffered and more so the amount of damage the structures around them sustained caused future repair and construction efforts to be slow and forcefully methodical to avoid building collapses. One high explosive shell which had failed to initially detonate would end up exploding months later when attempts to clear debris from a boiler room went horribly wrong.

As Leipzig was finishing her final sweep of Port Moody and slinked back out into Burrard Inlet at roughly 0923 that morning, the unmistakable thunder of gunfire could be heard far to their west. All was moving on schedule and according to plan as the cruiser made her way north, up Indian Arm in search of more targets. As the thinly spread Canadians would soon come to realize, the Germans had decisively opened up a second avenue of attack on the coast and were poised to ruthlessly exploit such a fact.


(Above is a panoramic view of the Ioco site in 1916, it would be largely similar in August of 1914 although obviously much less built up.)




I apologize for yet another delay. Next chapter will be out by midnight Wednesday, firm.