board. A passenger told a British officer: "This ship belongs to the whole of India, this is a symbol of the honour of India and if this was detained, there would be mutiny in the armies". Arrival in Vancouver When Komagata Maru arrived in Canadian waters, first at Coal Harbour in Burrard Inlet some 200 meters (220 yards) off CPR Pier A, it was not allowed to dock. The first immigration officer to meet the ship in Vancouver was Fred "Cyclone" Taylor. While Prime Minister of Canada Robert Borden decided what to do with the ship, the Conservative Premier of British Columbia, Richard McBride, gave a categorical statement that the passengers would not be allowed to disembark. Conservative MP H. H. Stevens organized a public meeting against allowing the ship's passengers to disembark and urged the government to refuse to allow the ship to remain. Stevens worked with immigration official Malcolm R.J. Reid to keep the passengers offshore. Reid's intransigence, supported by Stevens, led to the mistreatment of the passengers on the ship and prolonged its departure date, which was not resolved until the intervention of the federal Minister of Agriculture, Martin Burrell, MP for Yale—Cariboo. Some South Asian Canadians already settled in Canada began launching "shore committees" led by Husain Rahim (Gujarati-Canadian), Muhammad Akbar (Punjabi-Canadian) and Sohan Lal Pathak. These were to protest the decision that denied entry to the Komagata Maru passengers. Protest meetings were held in Canada and the United States. At one of these meetings held in Dominion Hall, Vancouver, the assembly resolved that if the passengers were not allowed entry into Canada, Indo-Canadians should follow them back to India to start a rebellion or Ghadar. A British government agent who infiltrated the meeting wired government officials in London and Ottawa to tell them that supporters of the Ghadar Party were on the ship. The shore committee raised $22,000 as an installment for chartering the ship. They also launched a lawsuit under J. Edward Bird's legal counsel on behalf of Munshi Singh, one of the passengers. On July 6, the full bench of the British Columbia Court of Appeal delivered a unanimous judgement that under new orders-in-council it had no authority to interfere with the decisions of the Department of Immigration and Colonization. Angry passengers relieved the Japanese captain of control of the ship, but the Canadian government ordered the harbour tug Sea Lion to push