It was moving day at the Princess Mary Restaurant, an old ship surrounded by a sea of asphalt.
The clinking of beer bottles echoed in what had once been the stern, more recently a dining room. The happy sound was not one of celebration.
Pallets of booze were being loaded onto a truck, as were salvageable bits from the restaurant's earlier incarnation as a coastal steamer.
Once, this was an elegant Canadian Pacific vessel plying the waters between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia coast.
After retirement in 1951, it was unceremoniously cut into two. The hull became a barge, while the cafeteria and dining room from the superstructure were run aground. It has ever since been parked across Harbour Road from the Point Hope Shipyard facing Victoria's Inner Harbour. It has been landlocked at bearings unchanged for a half century -- latitude 48 degrees 25 minutes 33 seconds, longitude 123 degrees 21 minutes 30 seconds.
The restaurant has been a Victoria landmark for generations, a place of fine seafood dining where families gathered to mark their birthdays and anniversaries. Romances were sparked on the dance floor, proposals made at the tables, marriages celebrated in the banquet hall.
The Rotary Club lunched here, as did the Chamber of Commerce, which was appropriate since the son of the group's first treasurer had been the one to haul the old vessel to its current home. The annual induction dinner of the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame brought the city's greatest athletes to the Princess Mary.
"A lot of famous people have been through here," owner Bill Lang said. "We've had prime ministers and hockey plays -- Jean Chrétien, Joe Clark, Ralph Klein, Frank Mahovlich, Gordie Howe."
He thought for a bit.
"We even had James Bond."
(The owner was asked which Bond. "Connery, Sean Connery," he said, as if there could be any other.)
Mr. Lang, 54, a restaurateur and golf-course consultant, played host to a farewell dinner for 600 patrons on New Year's Eve, returning a few hours later at dawn to begin the back-breaking work of dismantling a working banquet facility.
The restaurant is making way for a large residential project called Dockside Green, the latest in a series of projects transforming a working harbour into the showcase of a city no longer dependent on a maritime economy.
It can be hard to spot the original vessel. Over decades, bits of other crafts have been added, creating a sprawling and jury-rigged building as much a low-ceilinged labyrinth as a dining place.
Part of the restaurant even includes a Venezuelan freighter "named for a high-profile prostitute," Mr. Lang said.
Bits of the Princess Mary's original glory can be found if one looks closely enough. A skylight includes several stunning patterns of coloured glass decorated in an art nouveau style. The trim is mahogany.
Elsewhere, a well-worn door with a brass handle swings open to the galley, as it has done since the ship was built in Scotland in 1910.
One of those who came by yesterday to pay last respects was Robert D. (Bob) Turner, a curator emeritus at the Royal B.C. Museum and author of several books on CP's Princess ships. He cast a learned eye on the remains before pronouncing: "There's some lovely old boat here. There really is."
Mr. Turner has volunteered for more than 20 years helping to restore the S. S. Moyie, an 1898 passenger sternwheeler now berthed at Kaslo in the Kootenays. The village purchased the retired ship for $1 in 1957.
The preservation has cost considerably more.
Mr. Turner has fond memories of dining at the Princess Mary, yet at 59 he is too young to remember it docked a few metres away in the harbour during its working days as a freight and passenger vessel.
"She has had more time as a restaurant than as a steamship. Hard to believe," he said.
The owner marched around the emptied facility to show visitors the outline of the original vessel. He will be consulting with Mr. Turner as to how best to save the original bits of the Mary.
The Powell River Historical Museum failed late last year to raise funds to have the ship barged across Georgia Strait to become a tourist attraction. The museum displays a wooden scale replica of the ship, as well as the original bell and whistle.
The Princess Mary was launched in 1910. Named for a daughter of King George V, it was extended 11½ metres in 1914. Soon after, it saw service as a troop ship during the Great War.
The ship carried 600 passengers. It was not designed to carry automobiles, although Mr. Turner notes it had a capacity for 90 head of cattle. Over the years, it worked a Vancouver-to-Powell River-to-Comox run, with stops at Hornby Island and Union Bay, as well as the Gulf Islands.
Canadian Pacific also offered five-day summer cruises around Vancouver Island with stops at such exotic and isolated ports as Clayoquot and Port Alice. Return fare aboard was $35.50.
In 1939, the Mary carried passengers from Saltspring Island on a special run to see King George VI and Queen Mary, the aunt and uncle of the princess royal for whom the ship was named.
Although built with the finest materials, a ship once known for its luxurious fittings, as well as bridal suites, was described as an "old tub" by the end of the Second World War. It was retired from service in 1951 and sold before being chopped up the next year.
In April of 1954, the Princess Mary's old hull, renamed Bulk Carrier No. 2, was carrying a load of ore concentrates bound for Vancouver from Skagway when heavy seas caused the barge and the tug towing it to founder and sink off the Alaska Panhandle. All 14 Canadian seamen aboard the ocean-going tug Chelan were lost.
The old dining room has had a happier fate. Harold Elworthy of Island Tug and Barge brought the remnants onto this site, where it operated as a coffee shop for his workers. Over time, word spread about a delicious cup of chowder to be had at the old ship. A legendary restaurant was born.
A 1965 menu offered shrimp cocktail (65 cents), fillet of Dover sole ($1.35), smoked Alaska black cod ($1.40), salmon steak ($1.95), grilled swordfish steak ($2.15) and Australian lobster tail thermidor ($3.45).
The chef's suggestion was "a brochette of oysters consisting of fresh Sooke oysters wrapped in bacon, put on a skewer with select mushrooms, dipped in butter, then broiled and served with our own tartar sauce" for $1.65.
Not only prices have changed in the past decades.
Yesterday, the movers strained under the weight of brass fittings and round porthole frames. These were being saved for later delivery to museums.
Seeing the movers struggle, the owner invited them to help themselves to a dozen beers at the end of the day.