First Narrows (Vancouver)
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First Narrows is the official name for the entrance to Burrard Inlet, the mouth of Vancouver, British Columbia's inner harbour.
Captain George Henry Richards named the First Narrows and Second Narrows during his 1859–60 survey for the British Admiralty. Judge Gray suggested the alternative name of "Lion's Gate" in 1889 with respect to the Lions to the north, a name generally adopted for the later bridge.[1]
Dredging
In 1909, the DGS Mastodon was ordered from a shipyard in Scotland. She was commissioned in 1911. Her crew worked 24 hours a day, six days a week, from 1912 to 1917, to dredge the channel. The 5 million tons of excavated material was a mixture of blue clay with embedded rocks and boulders. Some of the boulders were too large to be scooped up by the dredge's buckets, and had to be smashed first. The project widened the waterway from 270 metres (900 ft) to 430 metres (1,400 ft).[2]