|
Guy Carleton | Jay's
Treaty | Black
Loyalists | Alexander
Mackenzie | Simon Fraser |
David Thompson |
John Graves Simcoe |
Captain
George Vancouver |
The Northwest Company |
Prevost's Conciliation |
Tecumseh |
The War of 1812 | Lord Selkirk
| Newfoundland |
Constitution Act 1791
In many ways the Royal Navy was more of a
meritocracy then British Society. Captain George
Vancouver was an example of this in that he joined the
Royal Navy in 1772 at the age of 13 as an able seaman
and was able to work his way up to become a Captain by
1792. After Cook, Vancouver was the greatest British
explorer and cartographer to sail the Pacific. He
learned many of his skills and gained much knowledge
from his experience with Captain Cook in 1775 on the HMS
Discovery. It was during this voyage that Vancouver was
promoted to midshipman.
In 1780 Vancouver
passes his Lieutenants exam and is sent to the
Mediterranean where he sees a considerable amount of
action against the French who were allied with the
Americans. Vancouver's rise in rank proceeds quickly
during his service on the HMS Europa while serving in
the Caribbean. He is promoted from 3rd Lieutenant to 2nd
Lieutenant and then to 1st Lieutenant which put him
second in command of the ship. It was during this period
that he served with many of the men that he would later
take with him to the Pacific Northwest such as Joseph
Baker, (Mount Baker Named after him) Peter Puget, (Puget
Sound named after him, Zachary Mudge, (Cape Mudge named
after him) and Joseph Whidbey (Whidbey Island named
after him) In
1792 Vancouver was chosen as the Captain to lead an
expedition to the Pacific Northwest. He was assigned 3
objectives by the admiralty and was expected to act as a
diplomat as well as an explorer. He was to meet with the
Spaniard Bodega y Quadra on the wets coast of the Island
that was to bear his name, Vancouver Island. The exact
location for this meeting was Nootka Sound where
the Nootka Indians inhabited the shoreline and the
Spanish had built a fort. By the terms of the Nootka
Convention which both Spain and England had agreed to,
England was to settle damage claims that the Spanish had
claimed. Vancouver was also to chart the coastline in
the Pacific Northwest from 30 degrees North to Cook's
Inlet in Alaska. This was not done in any detail with
Cook because he was primarily looking for a passage to
the Atlantic. The third objective was to look for that
elusive passage which Cook had not found. The discovery
of this passage would give the British a huge advantage
in this area of the world with direct access via the
arctic to the Northern Pacific.
Vancouver meet with the Spanish and he
and Quadra became friends in the course of the
negotiations. The Spanish recognized the primacy of the
British in the area. Vancouver also completed the second
task with charts that were so accurate they could be
used today. He mapped the intricate, roughed coastline
and meet with many of the native groups along the coast.
His third objective was a relatively impossible
due to the fact that the great Northwest passage that he
and many others were looking for over the centuries was
only open at the height of the summer around the
Northern tip of Alaska and only during some summer
seasons.
Vancouver returned to Britain in 1795 and in 1798 his
journals "A Voyage of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean and
Round the World in the Year 1790 - 1795: were published
posthumously. Vancouver had died on May 12, 1798.
His voyages and the cross continent journey by
Alexander Mackenzie which brought him to the West Coast
on July 20th, 1793, were the two actions which opened up
the Northern Pacific for the British. Coincidently,
Mackenzie and Vancouver missed each other on the West
Coast by just 6 weeks.
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