Dodd Narrows is located at the northwest end of Mudge Island, separating it from Vancouver Island, approximately 33 miles (53 km) west-southwest of Vancouver and 6 miles (10 km) southeast of Nanaimo, British Columbia. The Narrows is named after Charles Dodd, a distinguished ship captain and fur trader in British Columbia and Alaska. Dodd arrived on the Pacific coast in 1834 as second mate on the Hudson’s Bay Company brig Nereide. The following year, he was assigned as second mate to the newly built steamship Beaver, which sailed from London in August 1835 for Fort Vancouver. By 1845, Dodd had risen to captain of the Beaver, making him commander of the first steamship to operate in the waters around Vancouver Island. Dodd Passage and Dodd Rock, near Port Simpson, British Columbia, are also named in his honor.

Mudge Island, located in the Strait of Georgia between Gabriola Island to the north and Vancouver Island to the west, is one of the Southern Gulf Islands and part of the De Courcy group. The island measures approximately 0.5 miles (0.8 km) wide and 2.5 miles (4 km) long. It is named after William F. Mudge, a great-nephew of Lieutenant Zachary Mudge of the Vancouver Expedition. William Mudge served as a Royal Navy officer aboard HMS Plumper under Captain George H. Richards, who surveyed and named many features in the area in 1859. During his service, Mudge was involved in the San Juan dispute, a territorial standoff in which British forces occupied the northern San Juan Islands while American forces held the south. Neither side yielded, and the standoff lasted twelve years.

The timber industry in Nanaimo relies on a steady supply of logs transported as timber rafts from distant logging operations. Used throughout Southeast Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, these rafts provide an economical means of moving whole logs by water. They can be enormous—sometimes reaching 2,000 feet (600 m) long, 165 feet (50 m) wide, and stacked 6.5 feet (2 m) high—and contain thousands of logs. Tugboats pull and control these massive rafts as they arrive from various locations in British Columbia, occasionally passing through Dodd Narrows. The rafts are temporarily moored along the shoreline of Gabriola Island before the logs are processed at a mill. Read more here and here. See a short video of a log raft pulled by a small tugboat here. Explore more of Dodd Narrows and Mudge Island here: