Ripple Rock
— — the mountain they pulled out of the tide.
Not only on a wall.
“An underwater twin-peaked hazard in Seymour Narrows, the tide-driven channel between Vancouver Island and Maud Island in British Columbia. For decades the peaks lay just below the surface at low water, sinking 119 vessels and claiming more than 100 lives. On April 5, 1958, engineers detonated 1,375 tons of Nitramex 2H beneath the south peak, at the time the largest non-nuclear peacetime explosion ever set.
Ripple Rock, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Ripple Rock lay in Seymour Narrows, the narrowest stretch of the Inside Passage between Vancouver Island and the smaller Maud Island, a few kilometres north of Campbell River, British Columbia. The narrows funnel the entire tidal exchange between the Strait of Georgia and Discovery Passage; currents run to about 15 knots on a spring tide. The twin peaks of the rock rose from a base on the channel floor to within about 2.7 metres of low water at the south peak, close enough that wave troughs cleared the summit and exposed it intermittently.
Engineers from Dolmage and Mason designed a vertical shaft sunk from Maud Island, then a horizontal drift under the seabed, then upward raises into both peaks of Ripple Rock. The blast was set for 9:31 a.m. on April 5, 1958. Nitramex 2H, 1,375 tons of it, went off in a single sequence and lifted roughly 700,000 tons of rock and water more than 300 metres into the air. CBC broadcast the detonation live; it was, at the time, the largest non-nuclear peacetime explosion ever set, and remains among the largest.
Seymour Narrows still runs fast. The tidal exchange between the Strait of Georgia and Discovery Passage funnels through the kilometre-wide gap with currents reaching about 15 knots on a strong spring tide, generating overfalls, whirlpools, and standing waves on the surface. Slack water, usable for transit, lasts only about a dozen minutes at each turn. Canadian Hydrographic Service tables are still consulted by every vessel headed north from Campbell River. With the south peak now blasted to a depth of 14 metres below low water, the channel is safe for deep-draft traffic.