West Vancouver has many heroes but almost all of them did their deeds of valour far away. The sole exception is Captain Darius Smith, who earned his fame in the First Narrows on February 4, 1935 when West Vancouver Ferry No. 5, of which he was the skipper, was rammed and sunk by the CPR vessel Princess Alice.

Captain Smith was the epitome of a sea dog, a breed that has long disappeared from the world. He was born on November 26,1878 in Musgrave Harbour on the east coast of Newfoundland. When he was only one year old, both of his parents were drowned in a boating accident. In Newfoundland in those days, drowning was as common as dying in bed.

He was adopted and brought up at Greenspond on Bonavista Bay. His adopted father was in the cooperage business. He converted flour and other barrels in which goods were imported into fish barrels in which Newfoundland salt fish could be exported. Darius was articled as a student cooper to his adopted father, in whose employment he was obliged to remain until he was 18. Upon graduation or the equivalent thereof, his adopted father gave him 5 dollars, a gun and a feather bed, and sent him out to earn his living in the wide world. Darius never went to a school, properly so called, after the age of 8.It is to the credit of his Newfoundland schoolteachers that, although his spelling was a bit rocky all his life, he wrote a good legible hand and expressed himself clearly and directly.

This was Newfoundland, and so as soon as he had discharged his obligation to his stepfather, he went to sea before the mast. There is little record of his career as an ordinary seaman, but as soon as he got his ticket as an able seaman, mate, or captain, he had to keep a log of his career including particularly a “Discharge Certificate” for each vessel he sailed on. This included spaces for the previous skipper or employer to comment on how satisfactory he has been. One must remember that this was the era in which Britannia ruled the waves and Newfoundland was a British Colony. There were British officials all over the world who stamped the “Discharge Certificates” and Darius had entries from many obscure places. These “papers” were his professional identity cards – his biography in shorthand. . .