Coal Harbour is the Vancouver harbor setting where George Pocock and Dick Pocock began building racing shells again in 1912. In a makeshift workshop that could rise, list, and drift with the tides, the brothers established the craft that would become their life’s work; the harbor also provided the setting for George’s first encounter with University of Washington rowing coach Hiram Conibear.

Setting and Establishment

After arriving in Vancouver in 1911, the brothers took on whatever work they could find. The following year, the Vancouver Rowing Club commissioned them to build two single sculls, paying one hundred dollars for each. To fulfill the order, they set up shop in a derelict shed floating on timbers about fifty yards offshore in Coal Harbour. The commission gave them a way back to boatbuilding after a difficult start in Canada and marked the beginning of their sustained work making racing shells.

The Floating Workshop

The shed offered little protection from the weather: daylight showed through its roof, and gaps between the wallboards admitted wind and rain. George and Dick slept in an unheated room above the workshop. For a bath they had to dive from the bedroom window into the harbor, while drinking water required a row to a public fountain in Stanley Park.

The tides governed both the building and the work. At low tide, the shed rested on a sloping mud bank, listing about twenty-five degrees from bow to stern. As the water returned, the waterlogged timbers held the structure against the mud. Sometimes the shed slipped its anchor and drifted among ocean liners while the brothers slept. When the rising water finally lifted it free, water ran through the doors, and they could resume work until the next change of tide. The shop was not simply beside the harbor: its unstable position made the harbor’s movements part of the working day.

Craft and Encounter

The brothers completed the two sculls despite the workshop’s conditions. As word of their craftsmanship spread across Canada, new commissions followed. By the middle of 1912, George and Dick, then twenty and twenty-one, were beginning to feel established after their unsettled arrival.

One blustery day, George saw a man struggling to row toward the workshop. His awkward effort led the brothers to suspect that he was drunk; they found a boathook, caught his boat, and pulled it alongside the shed. Once aboard, the man introduced himself as Hiram Conibear, the rowing coach at the University of Washington. The encounter brought a university coach to the brothers’ floating workplace and connected Coal Harbour’s boatbuilding story with the development of rowing at Washington.

Narrative Significance

Coal Harbour is presented as a place of precarious beginnings rather than a settled industrial workshop. A modest rowing-club commission puts the brothers back to work, but their progress depends on persistence in a structure exposed to weather, tide, and passing ships. The shed’s repeated submersion and release gives the setting a material rhythm: work pauses when water enters and resumes when the building rises. Within that unstable space, the Pococks complete their order, attract further commissions, and meet Conibear, making the harbor a crucial early setting for both their craft and their connection to Washington rowing.