SS Okanagan

SS Okanagan was a steamship in service to the Canadian Pacific Lake and River Service, also known as the British Columbia Lake and River Service, a division of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was constructed in 1907 at O.K. Landing, at the northern end of Okanagan Lake, in British Columbia, Canada. This vessel was used to link the transportation hubs at the north and south ends of the lake, Vernon and Penticton, respectively. The CP lake service was inclined to use stern wheelers in this role because of their known ruggedness, as well as their relative ease of maintenance. The flexibility of the stern wheeler was also respected at the time, allowing the vessel to engage in activities outside what was possible for a propeller or screw driven vessel to perform.

Use and design
The CP lake service operated many vessels at that time and preferred to rely on proven designs, with an eye for more rugged and durable vessels. This was for the simple reason that the infrastructure required to service modern vessels was unavailable in the interior lake regions. As such, these sternwheelers seemed rather quaint to their more worldly contemporaries although they were a supremely suitable response to the conditions and limitations faced by the CP lake service.

Okanagan was designed along the same lines as its successful predecessor, SS Rossland, but was larger. Okanagan was 61 m long, 9.1 m wide, had a hull depth of 2.1 m, and had a gross weight of 1,008 tons.

The hull itself was formed into a deep lake boat pattern; this allowed it a level of speed that would not be possible for a riverboat of similar proportions. The ship was designed with an eye for elegance, resulting in a graceful silhouette. Okanagan avoided the boxy or top-heavy look of some other sternwheeler riverboats.

Okanagan had a layout similar to the other larger boats in the CP lake service fleet. The ship had three main decks, with the bottom-most for freight and machinery, as well as for housing the crew. The upper-most decks were reserved for passenger travel, featuring sitting rooms, galleries, observation decks, dining rooms, and saloons. Okanagan boasted five dining room tables, seating thirty guests at a time, along with thirty two staterooms, and a total passenger capacity of four hundred.

Okanagan was built in 1907 at the Okanagan shipyard. Its construction was done in two parts: first came the steel hull, and afterwards the wood interior was constructed. Lightweight wood was selected for the carpentry, as it would reduce the over-all weight of the ship, allowing for greater loads of freight. The weakness of the lighter wood was reinforced by using haug posts anchored in the steel hull, as well as using steel support attached to the hull. This would strengthen the entirety of the ship.

Mechanically speaking, Okanagan was of fairly standard design. It was powered by a large boiler, which provided steam to the stern wheel engines, as well as powering a dynamo for electrical lighting. The boiler itself was coal-fired and like other boilers of its time, was certified to provide steam pressure up to 140 psi. This steam was transmitted to the rear of the ship where the engines drove the paddle wheel by means of a bulkhead, after which the steam would be condensed back to a fluid state and returned to the boiler by the jet condenser. This arrangement is well documented in vessels of this kind.