by Scott Ridley
The crew did what they could in the six days Gonzales had allotted. The Columbia needed to be hauled out to fully repair seams that had opened, but that would have to wait. Some of the work was hampered by strong winds from the south, funneling violent gusts down the ravines and out onto the bay. These microbursts, lasting only one or two minutes, disrupted replacement of chafed lines and tore apart anything on deck not lashed down. As they prepared to leave on the sixth day, a heavy rainstorm and winds from the north drove into the harbor, keeping them at anchor until June 3.
Meanwhile, word of the Columbia, carried by the packet, had reached Valparaiso and set off a panic. The primary warship in the region, the thirty-four-gun Santa Maria, was not prepared for sea. A merchant brig, the San Pablo, was quickly armed and sent off in pursuit on June 12, followed by the Maria.
WITH A HEAD START OF SEVERAL DAYS, the damaged Columbia limped northward along the course Kendrick had instructed Gray to take, keeping far off the coast of the continent until they reached variable winds on the coast of California. Meanwhile, the San Pablo patrolled inshore and missed the Columbia entirely. After days of searching northward, she put into Lima with news of the Bostonesa Fragata. As panic spread up the coast, Peru’s viceroy, Teodoro de Croix, sent out another ship from Callao. De Croix was outraged that Gonzales had not seized the armed American ship. “We cannot ignore the strangers who penetrate into these seas with no license from our court,” he wrote. “They must be tried like enemies … Regardless of how innocent the designs of the American Republic …” de Croix believed it was right to be suspicious “to protect the King’s serene and pacific possession.” He pointed to invading pirates who could easily disrupt commercial shipping and leave coastal towns desolate. Behind his concern was the reality the Columbia made obvious—that without a huge Pacific fleet of warships, Spain had no way to protect shipping and the numerous coastal villages and towns of this sprawling domain.
After the pursuit ships returned empty-handed, Gonzales was stripped of his office for not seizing the Bostonesa Fragata and arresting her crew. Gonzales argued that he had carried out his office with diligence and obeyed the law with an interest in promoting peace between the two nations. It was a case that would go on for years. Eventually, Kendrick would enlist Thomas Jefferson to help restore Gonzales to the Spanish court’s good graces, but Jefferson’s efforts too would prove futile.
Viceroy Teodoro de Croix sent a warning north to Viceroy Flores in Mexico City that the American fragata Columbia had appeared at the island of Juan Fernándes. He also dispatched the warning to officials in Guatemala, with copies to minister Antonio Valdes in Madrid. Mexico’s viceroy Flores sent the message on to San Blas, Acapulco, and the missions north to San Francisco: “A ship named Columbia which belongs to General Washington of the American states, and under the command of John Kendrick sailed from Boston September 1787 to make discoveries and inspect the establishments of the Russians …” If the Columbia or its consort, Lady Washington, appeared, they were to be seized and the crews arrested as pirates.
UNAWARE OF THE EVENTS THEY HAD SET IN MOTION, Kendrick and his crew continued slowly northward on their seventy-five-hundred-mile course, averaging less than a hundred miles a day. They planned to land near “New Albion,” along the coast of northern California and southern Oregon, the area Britain claimed was discovered and named by Francis Drake in 1579.
A Night Dance by Women in Hapaee by John Webber. Published as part of James Cook’s journal of his third voyage, engravings of this type fed the fantasies of sailors and the public alike about the exotic nature of the Pacific.
Eight months into their voyage and far into the Pacific, the Columbia’s crew likely grew enamored with the idea of visiting islands described by James Cook. They also became eagerly focused on their destination—Nootka. The exotic-sounding wilderness harbor where Cook’s crew had traded for prized furs lay midway between San Francisco and the Gulf of Alaska. Spanish captain Juan Perez, who had briefly traded with natives there in 1774, called it San Lorenzo. In typical imperial fashion, Cook renamed it King George’s Sound four years later as part of Britain’s efforts to lay claim to the coast. London mapmakers reportedly borrowed from Cook’s notes and gave it the name of Nootka, by which it had become known.
Although Joseph Barrell had issued specific instructions that no man was to trade on his own account, talk of how James Cook’s crew had traded buttons and nails for prime skins was common below deck. The Russians called sea otter furs “liquid gold” because of the high payments they received from Chinese traders. Few of the Americans had seen the furs, but they were known to possess a mesmerizing beauty and were marveled at for their thickness, softness, and near-luminous sheen. Glossy black or brown on the outer surface, the inner fur held a silvery underluster that looked incredible when rippled in the wind or by the hand. It was the choice of royalty, and the Chinese treasured it for exclusive clothing for wealthy mandarins. Native people of the Northwest Coast prized it as well, and sewed three five-foot skins into robes for chiefs, or trimmed collars and capes with it. Each Columbia crew member undoubtedly hatched plans for trading and smuggling a few prime skins that could be worth ten times his wages. Kendrick let them dream, knowing there was great uncertainty ahead and they could soon be tested by a daunting enemy.
JUNE PASSED INTO JULY as they plodded northward. Cold water from the north and hot, steamy days created thick fogs. Despite manning a close watch, the Columbia went far west of the Galapagos. Rain kept the water barrel full, and albacore and turtles provided fresh meat, a break from the last of the goats on deck and the meat they had salted and packed six months earlier at Cape Verde. As they sailed with a prevailing northwesterly wind guiding them, their good fortune gave out.
Two of the crew showed purple blotches on their skin. Others complained of bleeding gums and aching in their joints; some seemed unusually pale and their eyes were sunken. This was the curse of longdistance voyages that any captain feared more than hostile ships or storms: scurvy. The disease was unpredictable, and superstition dictated that it came from “sea vapors.” Although at first it would affect only a few members of the crew, given enough time it could disable most of them. Kendrick knew that as the disease advanced there would be shivering and trembling, listlessness, bleeding under the skin, and boils and open sores that would not heal. Old wounds could reopen. Eventually, the men’s feet, legs, hands, and even bones would begin to rot. At an advanced stage the disease led to an agonizing death. Although it was generally believed to be accelerated by the unsanitary conditions that prevailed below deck on most ships, some physicians and captains believed it could be cured or prevented by a good diet. The disease, in fact, resulted from the body’s inability to make collagen when it did not receive vitamin C from fresh fruit and vegetables. James Cook was among the early mariners to try various foods to cure scurvy, but packing oranges, lemons, and limes aboard ships for long voyages was not a common practice until the early nineteeth century. Not until the early twentieth century was the connection between vitamin C deficiency and scurvy conclusively proved.
John Hammond and Hanse Lawton, two of the three seamen who had signed on just before sailing from Cape Verde, were in the worst condition. They had not fattened and rested with the crew as Kendrick prepared for the long voyage. Isolated from the other men and confined in the sick bay, Hammond’s condition steadily worsened. Kendrick and Ingraham had the crew wash down the ship with gunpowder and vinegar, hoping the fumes would kill the contagion and whatever other opportunistic disease might be lurking. Two other common ship illnesses, typhus and dysentery, could appear at the same time and further disable the crew.
The haunting presence of disease increased the crew’s eagerness to reach land. Many believed that solid earth restored a man’s vitality. Often, sailors tried to cure the disease by burying a scurvy victim in sand up to his waist, a treatment that exacerbated infections and death.
As the symptoms of scurvy became mor
e prevalent among the men, watches were unable to get aloft to change sail, and the topsails remained reefed. This conserved the men’s energy but prolonged their suffering since the ship was now making slower headway. It was a different kind of hell from the thrashing they had received coming around the Horn. Kendrick watched his sons and others for signs of the disease, and tried to give heart to Lawton and Hammond. The condition of Columbia’s men deepened his concern over the fate of the Washington, if she had survived the storms around the Horn.
THE WASHINGTON’S MEN WERE also afflicted with scurvy, and her progress had slowed as well. When the Columbia was departing Cumberland Bay on June 3, the Washington was seven hundred fifty miles southwest of Manzanillo on the Mexican coast. She had been too far inshore and was caught in the strong southward-flowing current. More than two weeks later, on June 19, the sloop had made only twenty miles of headway. Finally, giving up this course, Gray took the ship westward about nine hundred miles and then swung northeast again. It was a roundabout route, but the trade winds and currents would favor them.
The weeks wore on, and the rainfall that Gray and his men prayed for replenished their water casks, but seven of the eleven men were suffering from scurvy. Three or four developed very serious cases. Salted meat seemed to add to the problem. They caught turtles, whose strong flavor and stringy flesh was judged “not very delicate eating.” Gray knew they needed to find land soon.
The crew was kept busy braiding anchor cables in anticipation of reaching shore. The unrelenting work of making rope by picking apart old strands and reweaving the threads into new braids went on for hours each day when there was nothing else to do. Gray took sextant readings, noting their drift and the changing winds that finally allowed them to make steady progress.
On July 31 came the surprise they had long hoped for: they sailed into a dense flock of birds. Hours later, they sighted a haze to the east. The following day the water changed from blue to a greenish hue. Huge strands of kelp torn from the bottom by some storm floated on the surface. Piling on a press of sail they made what speed they could toward the haze, and on the morning of August 2, with “inexpressible joy,” they saw the dark blue line of the American coast appear nearly thirty miles off. Haswell took a sextant reading. They were in 41°38’ north latitude (approximately twenty miles south of the Oregon border near the Klamath River).
The morning of August 4 was foggy. Riding a light breeze, they closed with the coast of North America. Green hills huddled all along the shore and stretched across the entire eastern horizon. That night they waited anxiously offshore to avoid shoals, sunken rocks, or reefs. The following morning, a light breeze carried them in, then died, and they lay in a calm about two and a half miles out. The current carried them slowly southward, where they could see a river through the glass. Gray put out the anchor, and they were planning to lower the longboat to explore the river when they sighted a canoe approaching.
They primed the swivel guns, and the men loaded their muskets as the broad redwood canoe came over the swells. The canoe was long—maybe twenty feet—with square ends arching inward at the bow and stern. There were ten men inside. As they approached the ship, a few rose and made signs of friendship. They stood several yards off, gesturing and talking. They were brown-skinned and naked except for deerskin loincloths and blue beads of European manufacture. Some were marked with various tattoos. Haswell noted that they were “welllimbed” and was impressed by their strength and ability to handle a canoe at sea. Gray coaxed them to the ship. They came alongside, and a few offered short pipes stuffed with tobacco or sweet-scented herbs. Gray gave them presents, keeping the crew on guard. As they attempted to converse, the wind gusted up from the west bearing signs of a squall. Fearing they would be driven onto shoals inshore, Gray cut short the encounter and turned north, looking for a harbor.
They searched for hours and found only an endless stretch of beach. There seemed no safe place to land, which was all the more agonizing for those suffering the worst cases of scurvy.
For the next few days they coasted, finding the land “thickly inhabited by the maney fiers we saw in the night and Culloms of smoak we would see in the day.” All the tribes were down at their summer camps along the shore. As the sloop cruised past, men came off in canoes, and others fled from their houses into the woods or ran along the shore, shaking their spears and shouting in defiance. All the signs seemed to show that traders had been on this shore at some time.
Near midday on August 9, four days and about two hundred miles north of their first encounter, two men in a small canoe with pointed ends came toward them. They hung out of pistol range until one of them stood. A “very fine looking fellow,” Haswell noted, “delivered a long oration, accompanying it with actions and Jestures that would have graced a Europan oritor.” Gray believed they were offering fish and fresh water on shore and he let them know that he and his men were seeking furs, which they indicated they would bring the next day. The Washington ran offshore again that night for the safety of deeper waters. The next morning, in fog and wet weather, they set down the longboat to search out a landing place. While the longboat was exploring the shore, two canoes paddled out to the sloop, one carrying the two men from the previous day and the other holding six men armed with bows and spears. They offered several sea otter skins, and one man came on board. Haswell noted that a few were pitted with smallpox scars and carried metal knives, more signs of previous traders.
It wasn’t until the evening of August 13 that they found a harbor large enough for the sloop. Heading offshore at dusk, they returned the next day and armed the longboat with a swivel gun. Then they sent First Mate Coolidge and a few of the crew to sound the entrance and mark bearings to the channel. The Washington anchored a half mile from shore, near what is now Tillamook Bay. Smoke rose from a village in a clearing in the trees. A few natives appeared and stared at the ship. Gray was reluctant to send anyone in. After great amounts of gesturing and enticement a canoe finally ventured out. Gray handed them presents over the side. Others followed, bringing with them boiled crabs and baskets of berries as return gifts. Haswell noted, “these were the most acceptable things they could have brought to most of our seamen who were in a very advanced state of the scurvey and was a means of a restoration of health to three or four of our Companey who would have found one months longer duration at sea fatal to them so advanced were they in this malignant distemper.”
By evening there was a brisk trade of sea otter skins for knives, axes, adzes, and other goods. And the next day the crew took on several boatloads of wood and refilled water casks. While the crew worked onshore, the natives cautiously approached, bringing more berries, but always with their knives gripped, ready to strike. There was fear and fascination on both sides. Haswell noted that the crew knew nothing of the manners and customs of these people, and observed “the women wearing nothing but a petticoat of straw about as long as a highlanders kilt.”
News of the sloop went from the village into the countryside, and on the third morning, amid pleasant weather and a breeze from the ocean, an “amazing number of the natives” came alongside offering boiled and roasted crabs and dried salmon and berries, which the men bought with buttons or other stray metallic objects. Growing uneasy about the number of natives surrounding them, or perhaps due to some unnoted incident, Gray decided to depart. They weighed anchor and started out on the tide, only to go aground on a rocky reef in the channel.
They would have to wait for the next flood tide to refloat the ship. In the meantime, Gray sent out the longboat with seven men to gather grass and fodder for the few goats still on board. The landing party of seven men included victims of advanced scurvy. Haswell later noted that they had only two muskets and three or four cutlasses with them. Haswell and Coolidge were armed with swords and pistols, and brashly walked into the village. There they found a group of men demonstrating their skill with spears and arrows. They also began a war dance, “accompanied with frightful howlings” and h
orrid gestures, that convinced the two young officers to leave.
Marcus Lopius, a young black servant Gray had taken on at Cape Verde, was scything grass near the shore, his cutlass stuck in the sand. As he turned to carry a bundle to the boat, a native who had been loitering nearby grabbed the cutlass and began to run. The men yelled, threatening to shoot him if he didn’t drop the cutlass. Lopius took off after him. No one could call him back.
Hearing the commotion, other natives rushed out of the village. The shouts carried down the beach to Haswell and Coolidge. Realizing the danger they were in, Coolidge ordered the longboat to follow them, and the two officers and a crewman ran back to the village to find Lopius. Despite offering gifts, no one would tell them anything. Then, “turning a clump of trees that obstructed our prospect the first thing which presented itself to our view was a large groop of the natives among the midst of which was the poor black with the thief by the colour loudly calling for our assistance … when we were observed by the main boddy of the Natives to haistily approach them they instantly drenched there knives and spears with savage feury in the boddy of the unfortunate youth. He quited his hold and stumbled but rose again and staggered towards us but having a flight of arrows thrown into his back he fell within fifteen yards of me.”