Aug 21, 1445 hours. British Columbia Provincial Legislature.
Sir Richard McBride, Premier of British Columbia, sat in his office composing a telegram.
TO PRIME MINISTER RIGHT HONOURABLE ROBERT BORDEN AM LISTENING TO GERMAN WARSHIPS BOMBARDING MY CAPITAL AS I WRITE STOP LET US REVISIT DISCUSSION ABOUT FUNDING DEFENCE OF THE PROVINCE AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE STOP R
McBride sent a clerk off with the message, then tossed his fountain pen down on his desk, overcome with ennui. The windows of the Premier’s upper floor office were open to allow the fresh ocean breeze to take the edge off the early afternoon heat. The sound of explosions echoed off the stone buildings of the downtown. Outside his windows, in the Inner Harbour, framed to the east by the chateau styled mass of the new Empress Hotel, and to the north by the stolid Customs House, the expansive docks of the Canadian Pacific Railway steamship line were unusually sparsely populated. Only the smaller steamers
Princess Mary and
Princess Maquinna were tied up. Their smokestacks emitted no smoke, their boilers were cold. No ship was heading out of the harbour this afternoon.
The Grand Trunk Pacific steamship docks were completely empty; their ships were all either up the coast, requisitioned by the Navy, or captured by the enemy. No American ships of the Puget Sound Navigation Company were in port. Some neutral vessels had fled earlier in the day, others had bypassed scheduled stops in Victoria and landed in the United States instead. Farther up the harbour, the moorages of the whaling and sealing fleets on work Street were mostly empty, holding only a few derelict vessels that had not joined the hunts this year. The masts of half a dozen sailing ships rose from behind the warehouses and mills lining the inner harbour, both above and below the E & N Railway swing bridge, and a cluster of steam tugs were rafted together at the foot of Telegraph street.
McBride heard the whistling of an incoming shell, and a waterspout rose from the inner harbour.
“Well,” he said to his remaining clerks, “I believe it is time to head for the basement.” The clerks did not hesitate and, efficient as always, were out the office door in a flash.
McBride turned to follow them. He knew there was now a great risk of overpressure from nearby exploding shells sending the window glass spraying into the Legislature offices. Or perhaps the Hun was directly targeting this very building, and a shell would soon come crashing through Rattenbury’s exquisite copper domes to land on McBride’s desk. Bombarding the seat of government of a British Empire Dominion Province would make a plum prize for Hunnish propaganda. Yet, like a bystander drawn to the spectacle of an automobile accident, McBride could not pull his eyes away, so he remained standing there, on his Persian carpet, watching the drama unfold.
Another shell fell in the harbour off Laurel Point, but McBride could see the majority of the shellfire was landing in and around the British American Paint Company plant on Bellville Street, a short 3 blocks west of the Legislature. The windows in his office rattled, and he could feel the concussion from the high explosive detonating, but the open windows allowed the pressure wave of the explosions to pass through without breaking the glass, for now at least. Bright orange fireballs blossomed in the sprawling BAPCO factory, and debris few high in the air.
“If there is a city block in Victoria more densely packed with things that burn,” McBride muttered to himself, ”I have yet to hear about it.”
To the east of the factory complex, closer to the Legislature, the gingerbread clubhouse of the James Bay Athletic Association took a direct hit, and was blown to smithereens. A shell struck the Canadian Pacific linen stores building, and it soon caught fire. But the BAPCO factory received most of the incoming shellfire. Drums and storage tanks of linseed oil, turpentine, shellac, alcohol, and mixed enamel paint were torn asunder by red-hot shell splinters, the vapours ignited and roared skyward in a series of volcanic upwellings. Pigments carried by the flames burned with a variety of colours, adding a Dominion Day fireworks display quality to the conflagration. Along with the flames, the fires produced a huge smoke pall. This was carried eastward by the strong breeze, and within a minute McBride had his view of the burning factory blotted out by thick smoke enveloping the Legislature. The smoke came right in the open windows, and McBride’s eyes immediately began to sting with partially combusted vapours. It was the smoke filling his office that finally drove him away, coughing horribly. He fled into the equally smoke filled hallway, and felt his way along the walls and down the stairs, unable to see or breathe.
The premier had directed his staff to take shelter in the Legislature basement, but as he himself took his blind flight from the upper floors, he emerged from a sally port onto Menzies Street. There he found himself hatless, among a sea of humanity fleeing from the proximity of the falling German shells. Workmen in overalls from the BAPCO plant, grandmothers holding shawls over their faces, gentlemen in waistcoats or shirtsleeves, and mothers carrying infants in arms or dragging weeping toddlers streamed eastward and southward from the immediate danger and into the residential streets of the James Bay neighbourhood. Their collective voices expressed a chorus of woe. A carriage, driverless, pulled by a pair of wild-eyed horses, stampeded down the cobblestone street, scattering the fleeing Victorians onto the the boulevard and Legislature lawn, trampling flower gardens and picket fences. Only the famed rose gardens were able to defend their ground, by virtue of their thorns. The sky was black with smoke. The sun high overhead just barely showed through the gloom, its disk filtered to a hellish orange.
McBride passed by the Menzies Street Armoury. Its great barn doors were thrown wide open. In the courtyard sat a pair of 13 pound field guns hitched up to their limbers. Not one member of the militia was in sight. A man rode by on a pennyfathing bicycle, a woman in skirts sitting on his lap; between them they carried a brass birdcage and a dressmaker’s dummy. An acquaintance of McBride’s, an insurance broker, recognized him. The man ran up to Sir Richard and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“I am ruined!” the man exclaimed. “I am ruined!” Then he ran off. Insurance salesmen had been making a killing over the last 3 weeks selling bombardment policies.
I suppose they will have to start paying out on claims, thought McBride. The sound of exploding shells echoed through the air, now sounding more distant. The tide of humanity drew McBride southward, towards the oceanfront. He passed an escaped green macaw, perched atop the street sign at the corner of Menzies and Superior streets.
“Nevermore!” shouted the parrot. “Nevermore!”
McBide heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats. This sound grew and magnified. The parrot flew off. The crowd parted to allow the passage of a thundering troop of the 30th Regiment, British Columbia Horse, racing westward along Superior Street at full gallop. Rifle scabbards and swords clattered as the cavalry rode past. “The Hun are landing at Ogden Point!” he heard one cavalrymen yell to a passerby.
Menzies Street had become jammed with a crowd of milling humanity, and McBride, for once in his adult life, found himself anonymous and powerless to influence the masses. He cut a block eastward, down Superior Street, past a stationary and abandoned streetcar , then continued south on Birdcage Walk, and onwards to Government Street. In contrast to the crush on Menzies Street, this street was deserted. Tendrils of smoke wove between the houses and the Gary Oak trees lining the boulevard.
“Help!” McBride heard a chorus of plaintive children’s voices calling through the smoke. “Help! Help!” He picked up his pace to a trot, in order to render assistance, but when he emerged from the smoke he saw a flock of peacocks and pea hens, escaped from Beacon Hill Park, pecking away at a vegetable garden. A large male standing atop a pergola fanned its tail at Sir Richard, and called again with its eerie human-like voice.
A block further along, McBride passed the young proprietor of a boarding house, standing in the front garden of her establishment, known locally as The House of All Sorts. She was soothing a worried monkey that stood on her left shoulder, and the woman surveyed the smoky street with a resigned disapproval.
Now the quality of the smoke filling the air had changed, and taken on the aroma of burning wood and tar. McBride made his way down Government Street until he reached Holland Point, and the cliffs at the ocean front. A crowd had gathered on seaside Dallas Road, watching the naval spectacle off shore. Here, the air had cleared, and the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula stood out in sharp detail, 20 miles to the south. The partially sunken wreck of
HMS Shearwater burned behind the Ogden Point breakwater construction site, and beyond, towers of smoke rose from the direction of Rithet’s Pier, but this was blown into the streets behind them. The smoke trails from the German cruisers could be seen as the ships retreated to the west, out towards Race Rocks . Shells seemed to have stopped falling on the city. Waterspouts from Fort Rodd Hill and Fort McAuley chased the Germans, but always fell short. The crown lining Dallas Road included more than a few venerable retired sea captains, all of whom had brought their telescoping spyglasses.
“There is a new ship rounding Race Rocks!” exclaimed one of the former sea captains, and speculation raged back and forth in the crowd about who the new arrival might be. “She is engaging the Hun!” The sound of fresh naval gunfire sounded out.
“My I see?” asked McBride, reaching for the spyglass. The owner would have none of it, and stepped away. McBride had to remain content with the sea captain’s narration, and what he could make out with his naked eyes.
“She is flying the White Ensign! That’s the
Rainbow!” called out the captain, and a “Hurrah!” rose from the crowd.
The sounds of naval gunfire increased. McBride attempted to again get a view through the spyglass, and was again rebuffed. The old salt with the spyglass gave a running report, as if he was watching a sporting event. The cruisers had turned west again, and the gunfire increased in ferocity and rapidity. This seemed to provoke great anxiety among the United States Navy ships who raced back can forth along the border. The battle was hidden by the funnel smoke, and then from fires on shipboard as damage was inflicted. The narration came to include more “I can’t quite see,” and reports of hits corrected with, “no, that’s not right.” McBride could see lots of waterspouts and smoke, but no detail of the action. The tension among the crowd only increased, but it was hard to maintain as the length of the battle stretched out. At one point the boarding house proprietor McBride had seen earlier shouldered past him, the monkey still perched on her shoulder, to get a better vantage point to sketch the battle with charcoal sticks on a coil-bound pad of paper. McBride looked over her shoulder as the woman’s hands flew lightly across the page, tracing delicate curls of funnels smoke, mountaintop, and tide lines in the sea.
“The leading Hun is doing poorly,” reported the retired captain. “But the
Rainbow is having a hard time as well.” The battle turned west again, and the combatants now emerged from the enveloping smoke. One of the German cruisers could be seen to be burning all over. The Canadian warship was even worse off. “I can’t see if
Rainbow is firing any more at all.” said the captain. The battle lines continued to close one with the other. The ships maneuvered in a way that was hard to decipher.
“Something is going on out there,” the captain reported. “A boarding action? No. Is Rainbow trying to ram?” The crowd pestered the old man with the spyglass, demanding more information. Then everyone saw, without the need of a spyglass, a waterspout rise from the side of the burning German cruiser, taller than the mast top. The sound of this louder explosion arrived to the ears of the crowd, and echoed off the cliff.
“A torpedo hit! On the Hun!” called out the captain, but he was drowned out by a cheer that ran all down Dallas Road. “Hurrah!” “Three cheers for the
Rainbow!” Men threw their hats in the air. There was a great deal of embracing, backslapping, and handshaking. Bottles were produced, and toasts were offered.
McBride finally managed to get ahold of the telescope, and have a look for himself. One of the Hun’s cruisers was definitely injured, and had come to a halt. He panned across the battle scene. The
Rainbow was barely moving, had completely lost her upperworks, and was burning stem to stern.
“I would wager that is wasn’t Hose that landed that torpedo blow,” McBride said to himself. He swept the water with the spyglass, trying to spot a periscope or conning tower, but the whitecaps did a splendid job of hiding that kind of detail, and at this angle of the sun was throw ing reflections into his eyes. His gaze was drawn further to the west. Great amounts of black smoke showed from the vicinity of the Naval Dockyard. The coastal defence guns were attempting to hit the damaged German, but remained frustratingly out of range.
The damaged German came under way again, and began to limp away westward. Her forward two funnels were venting dirty grey steam, but her after funnel produced black coal smoke. The other cruiser escorted her slow departure around Race Rocks until the two disappeared from sight.
Rainbow wallowed in the moderate seas, at the base of her funeral pyre, making very little headway, but steering in the direction of the Royal Roads anchorage. McBride noticed a launch appear from the William Head Quarantine Station wharf, and set course towards
Rainbow. The lighthouse keeper’s boat from Race Rocks soon followed. The Fisheries Protection patrol vessel
CGS Alcedo rounded Trial Island, her 3 pounder gun bravely manned but late to the fight, and headed to assist
Rainbow as well. Soon a regular flotilla of small boats converged on the dying cruiser, with a pair of steam tugs from Victoria harbour, a yard boat from Esquimalt, and even a few private sailing boats joining. Off at the International Boundary,
USS Milwaukee had swung out her boats, but remained on the American side of the line.
The
Rainbow was definitely sitting lower in the water. The quarantine station launch was the first of the rescuers to reach the wounded cruiser, but had difficulty coming alongside on account of the flames. The Tug
SS Maud arrived next, and brought her firehoses into action to knock down the flames around
Rainbow’s conning tower.
CGS Alcedo added her hoses to the effort. McBride could not see onto
Rainbow, but from the attitude of the tugs crews, the evacuation of the cruiser was being coordinated from her own conning tower. The steam tug
SS Lorne attempted to take
Rainbow under tow, while other rescue boats rafted to the outside of
Maud and
Alcedo. Survivors from the cruiser walked or were carried across the decks of the tugs to the outboard moored boats, depending on their conditions.
The old sea captain retrieved his spyglass from McBride and surveyed the rescue operation.
“They had better have pumps running to make up for all that firefighting water going topside, or they are going to sink that old girl,” he commented. “Oh, I expect she is done for anyway, God bless her.”
McBride had seen enough. Despite his prominence, or notoriety in the community, he somehow remained anonymous in the crowd of spectators. A horse drawn taxi appeared, and he flagged it down.
“Take me to Esquimalt,” he told the cabbie. “I may wish to make some stops along the way.”
BAPCO factory, taken from GTP Wharf, Victoria inner harbour.
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Victoria Parliament Building, in which the Provincial Legislature sits.
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