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World Shipping DirectoryCompanies · Ships · Fleets

A public reference property of Baalvion

Open data · every figure carries its source

World Shipping DirectoryCompanies · Ships · Fleets

BC Ferries

British Columbia Ferry Services Inc.

Headquarters: Victoria
Founded: 1960
Employees: —

Official website

Photo: Ericlee5 at English Wikipedia · Public domain · file

Ships in this registry

Counted from individual vessel records · Wikidata

Reported fleet size

—

No published figure available

Container capacity

—

Not a ranked container line

Gross tonnage on record

221,007

Summed over 27 ships reporting tonnage

In brief

What BC Ferries is

Full article ↗

British Columbia Ferry Services Inc., operating as BC Ferries (BCF), is a former provincial Crown corporation, now operating as an independently managed, publicly owned Canadian company. BC Ferries provides all major passenger and vehicle ferry services for coastal and island communities in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Set up in 1960 to provide a similar service to that provided by the Black Ball Line and the Canadian Pacific Railway, which were affected by job action at the time, BC Ferries has become the largest passenger ferry line in North America, operating a fleet of 41 vessels with a total passenger and crew capacity of over 27,000, serving 47 locations on the B.C. coast.

The federal and provincial governments subsidize BC Ferries to provide agreed service levels on essential links between the BC mainland, coastal islands, and parts of the mainland without road access. The inland ferries operating on British Columbia's rivers and lakes are not run by BC Ferries. The responsibility for their provision rests with the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, which contracts operation to various private sector companies.

Corporate profile

Identity and registration

Legal name: British Columbia Ferry Services Inc.
Industry: —
Legal form: —
Country of registration: Canada
Headquarters: Victoria
Formed in: Victoria
Founded: 1960
Dissolved: —
Employees: —
Head office coordinates: 48.4222, -123.3657

Ships on record here: 44
Vessel types operated: 2
Flag states used: 3
Average vessel age: 36.9 years
Oldest vessel on record: 1951
Newest vessel on record: 2021
Largest vessel by tonnage: 21,777
Average tonnage: 8,185
Market share: —
Parent company: —
Alliance: —
Record source: wikidata
Last refreshed: 2026-09-05

Fleet on record

What this company sails

Composition of the 44 vessels this registry attributes to BC Ferries. Bars are true proportions of that set, not of the company's full fleet.

By vessel type

By flag state

By shipbuilder

Victoria Machinery Depot5

Allied Shipbuilders4

Yarrow Shipbuilders Limited4

Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft4

Remontowa Shipbuilding3

Burrard Dry Dock2

Burrard Yarrows, Victoria1

Delivery history

10-year fleet record

Ships delivered in each of the last 10 years, counted from the recorded build year of vessels attributed to this company, with the running total of its fleet on record. 9 deliveries fall inside this window.

Year	Ships delivered	Gross tonnage added	Fleet on record
2017	2	17,456	37
2018	0	—	37
2019	0	—	37
2020	4	—	41
2021	3	—	44
2022	0	—	44
2023	0	—	44
2024	0	—	44
2025	0	—	44
2026	0	—	44

Vessel records

Ships on record · Ferry

Show all types

Ship	IMO	Type	Flag	Built	Gross tonnage	Deadweight	Length	Builder
Northern Expedition	9408413	Ferry	Canada	2009	17,729	—	150.8 m	Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft
MV Queen of Burnaby	6510148	Ferry	Canada	1965	4,902	—	105.3 m	Victoria Machinery Depot
Skeena Queen	9137090	Ferry	Canada	1997	2,652	—	110.0 m	Allied Shipbuilders
Island Kwigwis	9900590	Ferry	Canada	2021	—	—	—	—
MV Island Gwawis	9900605	Ferry	Canada	2021	—	—	—	Damen Group
Queen of Sidney	5288011	Ferry	—	1960	—	—	102.4 m	Victoria Machinery Depot
Queen of the Islands	5425255	Ferry	—	1963	—	—	71.9 m	Burrard Dry Dock
Salish Heron	9905746	Ferry	Canada	2021	—	—	—	—
Vacationland	5428568	Ferry	Canada	1951	—	—	119.3 m	Great Lakes Engineering Works

Ships in registry counts individual vessel records attributed to the company here. Reported fleet is the company’s published total. They measure different things and are shown separately on purpose.

In context

How BC Ferries compares

Counts over companies and vessels actually held in this directory — not over the world fleet, which is larger. Nothing here is estimated.

With 44 vessels attributed to it here, BC Ferries is the 19th largest of the 965 operators in this directory that hold at least one ship on record, against a median of 2 across that group. That is a count of individually identified hulls, not the company’s published fleet size — the two are different measurements and both are shown above where available.

Canada is the country of registration for 23 commercial operators in this directory, among which BC Ferries ranks 1st by ships on record. Between them those companies hold 92 vessels here. See every operator registered in Canada.

Founded in 1960, BC Ferries is 66 years old. This directory holds 74 operators founded within five years either side of that date, whose median fleet on record is 1 ships. The median founding year across all commercial operators here is 1966, and the oldest on record dates to 1514.

Provenance

Where this page comes from

Company and vessel recordsWikidata item Q795723, released under CC0. Counted figures on this page are counts over those records.

Written summaryQuoted from BC Ferries on English Wikipedia, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Published fleet figuresNo published fleet figure is available for this company.