Cape Beale is the site of a historic lighthouse marking the southern entrance to Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, about 89 miles (143 km) west-northwest of Victoria and 4.7 miles (7.6 km) southwest of Bamfield, British Columbia. The cape was named in 1787 by Captain Charles W. Barkley on the Imperial Eagle, who was on a fur trading expedition sponsored by several East India Company directors and organized by Daniel Beale with the Macao partnership of John H. Cox and John Reid. Beale’s cousin, John Beale, sailed on the Imperial Eagle as purser but was killed in a confrontation with the Quileute or Quinault on the Washington mainland near Destruction Island. Cape Beale is formed by mixed plutonic rocks called the Westcoast Crystalline Complex, which consists of diorite, gneiss, and metamorphosed calcareous rocks. These rocks are exposed intermittently in a zone six to nine miles (10-15 km) wide along the west coast of Vancouver Island for 174 miles (280 km), from the San Juan Fault near Port Renfrew in the south to the Brooks Peninsula in the north. Vancouver Island is mostly formed by Wrangellia, a large composite terrane that includes the Alexander terrane, which is part of the Insular Belt of the western Canadian Cordillera. The terrane developed during the Triassic age (about 250 million to 200 million years ago) and was intruded in the Early Jurassic (about 200 million to 175 million years ago) by magmatic activity; in the mid-Cretaceous (about 143 million to 66 million years ago) it was accreted to North America.

The eastern shore of Barkley Sound was the traditional territory of seven historically autonomous Huu-ay-aht First Nations. Their territories were relatively small and constrained by neighboring groups, requiring limited movement from each group’s major village to hunt, fish and gather food. Four groups gave rise to the modern Huu-ay-aht through amalgamation; the remaining three went extinct and the Huu-ay-aht acquired their lands. The Ch’imaataksulh were the people of Cape Beale, described in 1913 as a large tribe considered wealthy for having access to gray whales. Whaling was central to their economy and their principal occupation. The Ch’imaataksulh were well placed for this since gray whales, in their annual coastal movement, hugged the shore until rounding Cape Beale. Their territory extended from a rocky point just inside Barkley Sound to one on the outer coast east of Keeha Beach. Their main village was at Cape Beale and they had a summer village called Kixaa. Since their territory lacked salmon rivers, they acquired access to the Sarita River, about 12 miles (19 km) inside Barkley Sound, by force, marriage or a social or military co-operative arrangement. The decades following European contact in the late 18th century brought tribal amalgamations due to dramatically declining populations from introduced diseases and intensified internecine warfare.

The first lighthouse in British Columbia was built by the Canadian government in 1874 at Cape Beale. The light is 167 feet (51 m) above the sea, visible for 19 miles (30 km), and serves as a major landmark and coastal navigation aid. Several lightkeepers at Cape Beale and their families are known for aiding in significant rescues. On December 7th 1906 the American bark Coloma was bound for Australia from Seattle with cargo mainly of lumber. On clearing Cape Flattery, Coloma was engulfed in a southeasterly gale that swept her towards the Vancouver Island shore. The distressed vessel was sighted by the lightkeeper at Cape Beale, but the telegraph line to Bamfield was broken by the storm. Unable to abandon the foghorn by day or light by night, the keeper’s young wife, a mother of four, set out for Bamfield via a primitive six-mile (10 km) overland trail. CGS Quadra, under Captain Charles Hackett’s command, was sent to rescue the crew. Today, Cape Beale station participates in daily sea-surface temperature and salinity observations carried out on the British Columbia coast since the early 20th century. Observations started in 1914; 11 stations were added in the mid-1930s and several more in the 1960s. The number has varied as sampling has been discontinued at some stations and started or resumed at others. The program is now called the British Columbia Shore Station Oceanographic Program, with most stations at lighthouses staffed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Read more here and here. Explore more of Cape Beale and Barkley Sound here: