Estevan Point Lighthouse is located on the headland of the same name in the Hesquiat Peninsula Provincial Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada.[1]
During the Second World War, in 1942, the Estevan Point lighthouse was fired upon by the Japanese submarine I-26, marking the first enemy attack on Canadian soil since the Fenian raids of 1866 and 1871.[2]
Currently the Canadian Coast Guard still maintains Estevan Point, with the light still active as of 2022. The light emits a signal of a double flash every 15 seconds with the focal plane located at 37.5 m (123 ft) above sea level.[3]
The Spanish explorer Juan José Pérez Hernández, originating from Mallorca, traded with the natives of the region (the Nuu-chah-nulth) when he explored the area in 1774 and named the headland "Punta San Esteban". Four years later, James Cook's expedition arrived in the Nootka Sound and made contact with the local population.[4]
The lighthouse was established in 1909 as one in a series of buttressed lighthouses designed by engineer William P. Anderson. The lighthouse was constructed in concrete as a 30.5 m (100 ft) tall octagonal tower supported by buttresses. Originally, a first order Fresnel lens made by Chance Brothers of England had been used but together with the lantern it was dismantled during the 1980s and was then donated to a regional museum in 2004.
During the Second World War, the Estevan Point lighthouse was attacked by the Japanese submarine I-26. On June 20, 1942, I-26, under the command of Yokota Minoru, surfaced and shelled the lighthouse,[5] at the same time as the Japanese submarine I-25 made a similar attack at the mouth of the Columbia River, Oregon, shelling Fort Stevens.[6]
I-26 fired 25–30 rounds of 5.5 in (140 mm) shells at the Estevan Point lighthouse and radio-direction-finding station, but failed to hit its target and the lighthouse station remained undamaged.[7] Five Royal Canadian Navy patrol vessels and a Supermarine Stranraer, a flying boat of the Royal Canadian Air Force, were dispatched to search for the submarine but failed to locate I-26 which fled north and then returned to Japan. One of the 5.5-inch shells was recovered by a naval shore patrol after the attack while additional shell fragments were found in 1973.[5] An explosive demolition team from CFB Comox destroyed one explosive fragment while an inert fragment was presented to the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. Although the attack resulted in no damage or casualties, the subsequent decision to turn off the lights of outer stations caused difficulties for coastal shipping.[8]
A 1995 episode of the CBC Television newsmagazine program The Fifth Estate reported contradictions in eyewitness descriptions of the attacking vessel and speculated that the attack may have been a false flag conducted by Allied surface vessels with the intent of increasing domestic support for Prime Minister Mackenzie King and his wartime policies related to conscription.[9]
Estevan Point has an oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb). The average annual temperature in Estevan Point is 9.9 °C (49.8 °F). The average annual rainfall is 3,097.0 mm (121.93 in) with November as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 14.9 °C (58.8 °F), and lowest in December / January, at around 5.9 °C (42.6 °F). The highest temperature ever recorded in Estevan Point was 30.5 °C (86.9 °F) on June 28, 2021, during the Western North America heat wave;[10] the coldest temperature ever recorded was −13.9 °C (7.0 °F) on January 14, 1950.[11]
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