A large brass propeller that once powered an Al Capone-owned rumrunner up and down the Eastern Seaboard was snatched in the dead of night Friday from a front yard in West Vancouver.
For owner Joe Spears, the value of the prop was not its historic cachet, nor its 140 pounds kilograms of brass. Instead, the marine consultant says the prop represents a model of how people can work together to salvage a vessel in sensitive marine environments.
Spears acquired the prop in 2000 following the salvage of the vessel ‘Texada’ in Haida Gwaii. He intended to donate it to a National Maritime Centre that was proposed in North Vancouver.
According to 2004 Federal Court documents, the narrow, 30-metre schooner was built in Nova Scotia in 1930 as a fishing vessel, but secretly had her modest six-cylinder engines replaced with two monster, authority-eluding, 12-cylinder diesel engines and served as a rumrunner during the United States prohibition on alcohol.
One of the cabins was even decorated with a diagonal row of bullet holes from a machinegun, according to the documents.
The vessel was seized and transferred to the Vancouver Shipping Registry, where it was renamed Texada and was purchased by a marine surveyor in 1945.
In August 2000, the Texada, which was then being used as a camp vessel for forestry activities, ran aground in Burnaby Narrows, adjacent the Gwaii Haas National Park Reserve in Haida Gwaii.
The propeller is worth around $5,000, west Vancouver Police said.
