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Photo courtesy BC Maritime Museum, Richard MacKenzie

The Tales that Were Told
There are several different versions of a tale told about a lifeboat discovered in a cave somewhere down the coast from the location of the Valencia shipwreck. In all of the stories, it is a cave that is accessible only during extreme tides, and in each version, the lifeboat
is manned by a crew of skeletons.

In 1933, more than 27 years after the Valencia had wrecked off the shores of Vancouver Island, lifeboat No. 5 was found drifting in the waters of Barkley Sound. No one has ever been able to establish her whereabouts for those years, nor been able to explain why her paint was still in such good condition.

In the book Shipwrecks by Thomas W. Paterson, (1976), he ventures that ....
" Surprisingly, the Valencia horror has occurred not once but several times—if one believes reports which have circulated among the
West Coast marine fraternity for 70 years.
In 1910 the Seattle Times reported a spectre which had been observed in Vancouver Island's Graveyard of the Pacific: "During the past summer, persistent rumors were brought into Seattle by sailors on vessels frequently
in and out of the cape, of a phantom ship seen off the dangerous coast of Vancouver Island.
"They said it resembled the ill-fated Valencia, which went down in those waters a few, short years ago with more than 100 souls, and that
they could vaguely see human forms clinging to her masts and rigging.
On some occasions the spectacle seemed immobile, and again the mystery
was accentuated by the fact that the phantom moved steadily with the ship of those who watched, maintaining its relative position perfectly.
Again it leaped upon the rocks where the real ship met destruction…"
Hallucination, optical illusion or—?Who knows.
Again, we can only ponder. If ever a ship could be haunted, it is ill-starred Valencia and her lost 117."

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The Sinking of the Valencia: The Tragedy and Beyond
31 October 2005
South West Vancouver Island, Canada