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In February, 1857, I
received my appointment as Lieutenant to H.M.S. ‘Plumper,’ then at
Portsmouth, fitting out for service at Vancouver Island.
This distant possession, and tlie adjacent mainland of British North
America, were then little known and still less heeded. What little was
known of them, from the chance visits of explorers, and their more
recent occupation by the Hudson Bay Company for the purposes of then-
great fur-trade, may be very briefly stated.
The Spaniards were the first Europeans who set eyes upon the coasts of
the Pacific. During the earlier half of the sixteenth century they
busied themselves at intervals in exploring it. At that time Spain and
Portugal were the two great maritime powers of Europe, and there had
been concluded between them a treaty, which the Pope was expected to
confirm; by which, while the latter nation was to enjoy all rights of
discovery and possession eastward of a meridian line passing 370 leagues
west of the Cape Verd Islands, to Spain were to pertain all seas and
lands west of that line.
There was another maritime power in Europe, however, which, although of
little importance then, was destined one day to eclipse theirs totally.
The rising navy of England was little disposed to consider itself bound
by an arrangement that closed so many seas and shores against it. Nor
was the English people, flushed with its recent repudiation of the Papal
power, inclined to submit without a struggle to the partition of the
unknown world by the Court of Pome. Elizabeth did not understand, it was
explained to the Spanish ambassador, “why her subjects should be
debarred from traffic in the Indies. As she did not acknowledge the
Spaniards to have any title by donation of the Bishop of Home, so she
knew no right they had to any places other than those they were in
actual possession of. As to their having touched here and there upon a
coast, and given names to a few rivers and capes, these were such
insignificant acts as could in no way entitle them to a proprietary
farther than in the parts where they settled and continued to inhabit.”
The adventurous mariners of that time were ready enough to act in the
spirit of Elizabeth’s protest, and entered upon the career of discovery
in the West energetically. It must be confessed that they sometimes went
beyond it, and the Gulf of Mexico—and later the southern shores of the
Pacific —were haunted by free-traders and freebooters, who, carrying
their defiance of Papal authority and Spanish prohibitions to an extent
somewhat unjustifiable, plundered the Spanish settlements of the coast,
and took and sacked their trading vessels. For a time it seems that
their dread of the passage of the Straits of Magellan kept them from the
Pacific; but at length the reports -which reached England of the wealth
that lay there mastered them fears, and Drake in his first voyage round
the world came there in 1578. A year later, when he started to return,
gorged with the spoil of the coast, being anxious to avoid the passage
of the Straits of Magellan, where he might be intercepted by the
Spaniards, he sailed west and north-west, thinking to reach home by that
way. He is supposed to have got as far north as the 42nd—by some it is
asserted the 48th—parallel of latitude, when, meeting adverse winds, and
the wintry, foggy -weather telling seriously upon his crew enervated by
their stay in the sunny south, he was forced to return.
In his wake came, among others, Cavendish, to the same shores upon the
same errand. In the year 1587, he captured a galleon near Cape St.
Lucas, the southern extremity of California. Setting fire to the vessel
he landed the Spanish crew upon the friendless, desolate shore, where
they were like to perish of exposure and starvation. Fortunately,
however, a storm blew their deserted vessel ashore in their immediate
vicinity; and repairing it as well as they could, they set sail and in
time reached Europe. Among them there happened to be a Greek sailor,
named properly Apostolos Valerianos, but more commonly known by the
designation used by his fellows —Juan de Euca, of whom we shall have to
say more hereafter.
About this time that search began, which our own days have seen
concluded, for a northern passage of communication between the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans. The English and the Dutch had already prosecuted it
eagerly, and vague reports were rife in the maritime world of its having
been at one time or other really made.
Among them the following narrative was current. It will be found related
at full length in an historical and geographical collection called ‘The
Pilgrim,’ published by Samuel Purclias, in 1625, under the title of ‘ A
Note made by Michael Lock the elder, touching the Strait of Sea commonly
called Eretum Arrianum, in the South Sea, through the North-west Passage
of Meta Incognita.’ The following is a summary of Mr. Lock’s narrative.
That being at Venice in the year 1596, upon business connected with the
Levant trade in which he (Mr. Lock) was concerned, he came across an old
man, aged 60, called Juan de Fuca, but named properly Apostolos
Valerianos, a Greek mariner, an ancient pilot of ships. The account
which he gave of himself was that he had come from Spain to Florence,
whence', finding one John Douglas, an Englishman, a famous mariner,
ready coming to Venice, he had accompanied him thither. This John
Douglas, to whom the Greek seems to have been communicative, being
acquainted with Mr. Lock, gave him knowledge of the old pilot, and
brought them together that his brother Englishman might in his turn
listen to his passenger’s yarns ; and so we are informed that, in many
long talks and conferences, the following story came out.
Apostolos Valerianos, by his then name of Juan de Fuca, professed to
have been in the West Indies of Spain for forty years, and had sailed to
and fro many places in the service of that power. He happened to be in
the Spanish ship which, in returning from the Philippine Islands, was
taken off Cape California by Captain Cavendish; upon the occasion of
that capture, losing 60,000 ducats of his own goods.
Subsequently to this event he had been in the service of the Viceroy of
Mexico, and on one occasion had been sent with a small caravel and a
pinnace up the shores of California, now called North America. He
reached the latitude of 47°; and there finding that the land trended
north and north-east, with a broad inlet of sea between the 47th and
48th parallels, he entered the same, sailing therein more than twenty
days,—still finding land, trending sometimes north-west, and north-east,
and north, and also east and southeastward, with much broader sea,
islands, Ac. So he sailed until he came to the North Sea, finding it
wide enough everywhere, and then, being unarmed, and the native people
being savage, he returned, and was not rewarded for his services. Having
thus a grievance with Spain, he was willing to serve England, by whom he
hoped to be recompensed for his loss by Captain Cavendish, who by this
time was dead. And if His Majesty would but give him a ship of 40 tons’
burden, he undertook on his part to perform the North West passage in
thirty days.
Upon this Mr. Lock wrote to Lord Treasurer Cecil, Sir Walter Raleigh,
and Master Richard Hakluyt, the famous cosmographer, and prayed them to
disburse him 100l., to bring the pilot to England, his purse not
stretching so wide. To his request came an answer, that the action was
well liked and greatly desired by his correspondents hi England, but no
money; and the Greek pilot sailed for Cephalonia, his native place. Mr.
Lock, it further appears, at a later period corresponded with him there,
and he wrote in reply, stating that he was ready to come with twenty
companions and fulfil his promise, but that money was indispensable, for
he had been utterly undone in the ship: ‘ Santa Anna,’ taken by Captain
Cavendish. No money, however, was forthcoming until much later, when
Apostolos Valerianos, being then an old man, at the point of death,
could not take advantage of it.
This story of the old Greek pilot’s was long current in England, and,
although it was considered legendary by some, it generally met with
credit. There were not many, however, who had the courage or the fortune
to test its accuracy. As late as the year 1719,—although we know that
long before that time the shores of the Atlantic as high as the 74th
parallel of latitude, had, in the search for the long-desired North West
Passage, been explored and taken possession of by the Hudson Bay
Company, — little, if anything, of the Pacific above the 43rd parallel
north was known. About that time, however, the Spaniards sailing north
came upon the mouth of the Columbia River, while the Russians began to
push down from then* far-away settlements at Kamschatka. But it was not
until the year 1776 that the British Government, having thirty years
before offered a reward of 20,000l. to whoever should make the passage
between the Atlantic and Pacific from either sea, commissioned Captain
James Cook to examine the shores of the latter ocean. His instructions
were to sail for the 45th degree of latitude north. Having reached it ho
was to make his way northward to the 65th, searching in his course for
rivers or inlets pointing towards Hudson or Baffin Bays; taking
possession, by the way, of the new lands he might discover, in the name
of his master, King George.
In March of the year 1778, Cook sighted the coast at 44°, sailing thence
up to 48°, where he named the projecting point of the shore Cape
Flattery. Southward of Cape Flattery, Cook examined the coast with
minute care, having it in his mind to decide for ever upon the truth or
falsity of the story of Juan de Fuca’s discovery, which had so long been
current. The old pilot, in his account, had put it between the 47th and
48th parallels of latitude. Examining this extent of the shore
carefully, and with no success, Cook authoritatively pronounced the
Greek’s story a fiction, and sailed on past the wide strait that now
bears Fuca’s name, stopping at Friendly Cove and Nootka Sound, which he
took to be part of the main shore. It was not, indeed, until ten years
later that Captain Berkeley, an English seaman in charge of a
merchant-vessel, found that a passage of some sort existed, immediately
north of Cape Flattery. He did not explore it, but a year later an
English naval officer on halfpay, Captain Meares, coming upon it, named
it the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and sailed up it in a boat some thirty
leagues, until, attacked by the natives on the northern shore, he was
forced to return.
A few years later there were matters of difference between the
Governments of Spain and Great Britain relative to the north-west coast
of America and the navigation of the Pacific; and in the year 1792,
Captain Vancouver, an officer in the English navy—and not, as has been
often erroneously supposed, a Dutchman—was despatched to Nootka, to
settle, with the Spanish Commission, named for the like purpose, what
lands, buildings, and vessels seized there by Spain should be restored
to England, and the amount of indemnification that should be paid her.
In addition to the official business upon which he was despatched,
Vancouver was directed to explore the coast of the Pacific, from the
35th to the 60th parallels of north latitude, and to look out for any
water passage, which it was still thought might be found connecting the
two oceans; particularly the Strait of Juan de Fuca, reported as
recently rediscovered. On Vancouver’s reaching Nootka, he found the
Spanish Commissioner had not arrived, and proceeded to survey the Strait
of Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, and thence northward. On the 22nd June, 1792,
as he was returning to his ship from Jervis Inlet, he met the ‘Sutil’
and ‘Mexicana,’ two men-of-war, commanded by Signors D. Galiano and C.
Valdes, and forming part of the Spanish exploring expedition. These
officers exchanged information in the most friendly way. Then
separating, Vancouver, after long and difficult navigation, forced his
way between the islands of the Gulf of Georgia and through the strait
named by him Johnstone, coming at length into the Pacific at Queen
Charlotte Sound, 100 miles north of Nootka. The island thus discovered
it was decided should bear both their names, and will be found
designated in all but quite recent maps, Quadra and Vancouver Island.
Let us now inquire what was known of these regions from the eastern side
of the great American continent. The first to reach them, crossing the
Pocky Mountains from Canada— the first at least who left the impress of
his name there—was Mr. Simon Fraser, an employe of the North-West
Company, an association formed in Canada to rival the Hudson Bay
fur-trade. Mr. Fraser, penetrating the range of mountains from Fort
Chipewyan, in 1806, formed a trading establishment upon a lake bearing
his name, situate on the 54th parallel of latitude. Later, rival
American fur companies were formed, and in 1810 the most important of
them, the Pacific Fur Company, having at its head Mr. Astor, a German
merchant of New York, founded the well-known, unsuccessful settlement
bearing his name at the entrance of the Columbia River.
Before this time, the shores of the Pacific, the theatre of these
comparatively unimportant events, attracted little if any attention from
the Governments, who were yet prepared to lay claim to their exclusive
possession, whenever their occupation should appear valuable. About this
period, however, the attention of the American Congress was directed to
the districts through which the Columbia flowed; aud the subject being
referred to a Committee of the Senate, a report was made, that all the
territory in question, from the 41st to the 53rd, if not to the 60th
degree, belonged to the United States. Their claim to its possession was
grounded upon the purchase of Louisiana from France in the year 1808,
and the acquisition of what titles of discovery and occupation might be
possessed by Spain, by the Florida Treaty of 1818; together with the
rights conferred by the settlement of American citizens there. No active
steps, however, to enforce these pretensions were taken until 1823, when
President Monroe, in his Address to Congress, asserted that the American
continent was henceforth not to be considered as subject for colonisation by any European Powers.
There were but two Powers with any pretensions to oppose the claim of
the United States to the exclusive possession of the shore of the
Pacific, viz., Russia and Great Britain. The former had for many years
been settled in some force at Sitka and the neighbourhood. Both by Great
Britain and the States of America, the right of Russia to the districts
which she had in some measure colonised was readily conceded. In 1824 a
convention was entered into between that Power and America, by which
Russia bound herself not to encroach south of a line drawn at 54° 40',
and in the following year Great Britain entered into a similar treaty;
both nations thus confirming the claims of Kussia, but careful in no way
to compromise their own, to the country south of the line of boundary
thus laid down.
It can serve no purpose to rake up the yet live embers of the irritating
and difficult boundary dispute between this country and the United
States, relative to the possession of that portion of the shore of the
Pacific which has since proved so valuable. It is sufficient to say,
that by conventions renewed at intervals, the territories and waters
claimed by either Power west of the Rocky Mountains were declared to be
free and open to the vessels, citizens, and subjects of both; until,
urged by their growing importance, and the impatience of settlers east
of the Rocky Mountains to colonise them, the boundary question assumed
the importance of a great political crisis, more than once threatening
to result in war. Happily this was averted, and in 1844, by a treaty,
the details of which were settled at Washington by Mr. Richard Pakenham
on behalf of the British Government, the line of boundary from the Rocky
Mountains to the sea was declared to be the 49 th parallel of north
latitude. The course which the line should take upon reaching the
sea—fertile as it has been and may still be in difficulties and
misunderstandings— was thus declared to continue to “the centre of the
Gulf of Georgia, and thence southward, through the channel which
separates the continent from Vancouver Island, to the Straits of Juan de
Fuca.” It was subsequently found that there were three separate channels
existing between the island and the main shore, and contention arose as
to the construction of the treaty in respect to them.
In the year 1856 the American Government appointed a commission to
settle this disputed line of boundary after it reached the sea-coast, as
well as to determine the course which the parallel of 49° took across
the continent.
The English Government in their turn appointed Commissioners for the
like purpose. Captain Prevost was the first selected, and in the autumn
of 1856 was ordered to commission H.M.S. 'Satellite’ and proceed to
Vancouver Island. It was then discovered that no accurate chart of the
channels in dispute betireen the island and the mainshore existed; that
the position and extent of the group of islands among them were very
imperfectly known; while the relative value of the channels themselves
could only be arrived at from such meagre information as the masters of
two or three Hudson Bay Company’s trading vessels were able to give. It
was therefore determined that a surveying vessel should also be
despatched—in the first place to make a complete survey of the disputed
waters, and afterwards to continue it along the coasts of Vancouver
Island and the mainland of the British territory. For this purpose
Captain George Henry Richards was selected, and commissioned H.M.S.
‘Plumper.’
The ‘Plumper’ is what is called in the navy an auxiliary steam-sloop,
barque rigged, of 60-horse power, and armed with two long 32-pounders
and ten short ones, of a pattern which has now nearly gone out of date.
She had been paid off from a long cruise on the West Coast of Africa the
day before Captain Richards commissioned her, and it was not to be
wondered at that when she came to be “overhauled” in the dock she was
found very rotten in some parts. It was discovered also that she would
be very inefficient for the surveying work unless a chart-room were
built on deck, and accordingly this had to be done. Owing to these
causes her preparation for sea was greatly prolonged, and we were not
ready for a start till the middle of March.
Captain Richards was well known both as a surveyor and an Arctic
explorer, he having been the Commander of Sir E. Belcher’s ship the
'Assistance,’ in the search for the remains of the Franklin expedition,
and having while there made one of the longest and most harassing
sledge-journeys upon record.
He had previously assisted in the surveys of the Falkland Islands, New
Zealand, Australia, &c. Besides the command of this survey, Captain
Richards received an appointment as Second Commissioner for the
settlement of the boundary, in conjunction with Captain Prevost. Of the
other officers, Mr. Bull, the master, was the principal surveyor, and
with him were Messrs. Pender and Bedwell, then second masters, now
masters. These three, with the captain, made the whole of the surveying
staff at starting. Of course in five years several changes have taken
place. On Mr. Bull’s death Mr. Pender became the senior
assistant-surveyor, and other junior officers have learnt the work and
have been added to the strength of the survey. The surgeon, at that time
Dr. Forbes, undertook the Natural History and Botanical departments; hut
he was likewise changed. He was invalided when the ship arrived at
Valparaiso, and relieved by Dr. Lyall. Subsequently when the Land
Boundary Commission, under Colonel Hawkins, arrived at Vancouver Island,
Dr. Lyall was detached from the ship to them, and his place taken on
board by Dr. Wood.
The repairs which wore found necessary before the ‘Plumper’ could start
for so long a voyage, kept us in Portsmouth Harbour till the 11th of
March, on which day we made our trial trip on the measured mile in
Stokes Bay. The average speed obtained was six knots (nautical miles of
2000 yards each) per hour, which, although as much as we expected from
the horse-power of the vessel, we afterwards found by no means adequate
to the rushing currents in the inner waters between Vancouver Island and
British Columbia.
Recurring to my description of our destination, I may remark that the
manner in which the northern shores of the Pacific are parcelled out is
simply thus. From the Mexican boundary, as far north as the 49th degree
of latitude, the Americans hold possession; a few colonists at long
intervals being thinly scattered over the states of Oregon and
Washington. Vancouver Island had in the year 1843 first been occupied by
the Hudson Bay Company, a party of whose employes, landing at Victoria,
had settled there, building a fort and laying the foundation of what
became an important trading station. In 1849 a grant of the island to
the same Company was made by the Home Government, upon condition that
within five years steps should be taken by the lessees for its perfect
colonisation. What steps were taken, however, proved unsuccessful; and
at this time, beyond a somewhat prosperous station and farm at Victoria,
a fort at Rupert, in the north of the island, and a small settlement at
Nanaimo, no use of Vancouver Island was made by the English. Of the
mainland, secured to Great Britain by the boundary treaty of 1844, and
known then as New Caledonia, the same Company also held possession under
a similar grant. It was used by them exclusively for the purposes of
their fur-trade, a few forts at distant intervals sheltering them from
the Indians and serving as trading stations.
North of the British possessions the Russians were busy, too, in the
pursuit of furs, which they exported to China and their own country. The
mainland of their possessions was utterly valueless for any other
purpose, the islands only being available for agriculture. They, too,
possessed their forts and factories, but in greater number and strength
than the English, having taken further trouble to colonise the country.
The aboriginal inhabitants pay formal allegiance to the Russian-American
Trading Company, in the sendee of which they are bound to enter, if
required; while from the more distant tribes tribute of furs is
enforced. Moreover the Company possess twenty-eight establishments south
of Behring Straits; and on Baranof Island, at Sitka, or New Archangel,
the capital of Russian-America, a fortified town will be found, with
arsenals, shipyard, foundry, hospital, a church, splendidly adorned
shops, schools, library, museum, and laboratory.
Such, briefly, was the condition of the neglected and unknown land for
which the ‘Plumper’ was bound. This much was known of it: and that its
area, exclusive of Vancouver Island, itself half the size of Ireland,
was about three times as large as Great Britain, with a coast-line of
500 miles, made up of lake and mountain, forest, marsh, and prairie. |
