by Scott Ridley
A second shower of arrows then fell on Coolidge, Haswell, and the crewman as they ran for the boat. The tide was low and they splashed into the shallows with the natives chasing them. Haswell turned and shot the closest pursuer with his pistol. Coolidge did the same and called to those in the boat to cover them as they waded out. The natives plunged in after them, hurling spears and shooting more arrows. Coolidge was wounded slightly, as was Haswell, and the crewman with them took an arrow that made a seemingly fatal wound. He fainted from sudden loss of blood as they ran. They grabbed him and dragged him aboard the boat as it pushed out.
The natives launched canoes to cut them off from the ship. It was a race, with the natives quickly gaining until musket fire from the longboat began to hold them back. Haswell was convinced that they had walked into an ambush. If the men ashore had been killed, Gray and the three men onboard the Lady Washington would have been easily overwhelmed.
Musketfire from the longboat continued to hold off the canoes, and as the frightened men reached the sloop, Gray fired three swivel shots, which drove the last of the canoes to shore. The crewman who had been wounded on the beach was unconscious. Gray feared he was near death, but he recovered after the arrowhead was removed and his bleeding stopped.
All that night the sloop helplessly waited for the tide as the sleepless men listened to “hoops and houlings” from the village. There was a large fire on the beach near where Lopius was killed and they could see a great number of men passing back and forth in front of it. Haswell wanted vengeance, and he wished Gray would rake the fire and village with swivel guns. But Gray thought that would only make matters worse. Right now, the men were vulnerable, and firing on the villagers would only inflame the situation.
At 4 A.M., just before first light, the Washington raised sail in a desperate attempt to get offshore. She lifted from the shoal, but as they passed the sandy point of the harbor, the wind died and the current dragged the sloop out into the surf breaking over another bar. They dropped anchor too late and the swells drove them hard onto the shoal, breaking over the stern, shattering the transom windows, and flooding the captain’s quarters. The men were tossed about on deck. Those watching from the shore must have believed the sea was vanquishing their new enemies. All seemed lost.
Despite the pummeling on a flooded deck, the men held on. As the pintals and gudgins that kept the rudder in place were bent by repeated crashing on the hard shoal, the crew could only hope they remained workable and the hull stayed sound. As the tide slackened, Gray put the longboat over the side carrying an anchor they could use to kedge themselves into the channel. As they labored to move the sloop, a large war canoe slipped out of the harbor, staying out of gun range and taking a position between them and the open ocean. Hauling on the anchor proved fruitless. Now they were grounded and blocked.
For a second night they awaited the wind and another high tide. The next morning, August 18, was foggy and still. In the mist, a great crowd of natives gathered by canoes on the beach and shouted out to the war canoe beyond the bar, which answered soon after. The fog did not burn off, and about noon the Washington’s crew saw three large war canoes carrying thirty men each emerging from the mist with bows bent and spears ready. Gray fired three swivel shots. The war canoes turned. Gray did not want to risk the possibility of attacks from both sea and shore, so they hurriedly raised anchor and strained frantically to scrape off the bar. With the help of a light breeze and a surging wave, the sloop lifted. Onshore, a mix of relief and dismay probably passed among the warriors as the strange vessel slipped beyond the waves and disappeared into the fog.
The shock of those long hours of the encounter most likely left Gray and his crew exhausted and wondering if this was what they should expect all along the coast. How would they survive, let alone trade? Nootka, where James Cook had described the natives as friendly, was two hundred fifty miles north, if they could find it. Even there, they would be vastly outnumbered. Although Haswell mentioned nothing in his journal, it was clear that Gray’s headstrong drive to part from the Columbia and his naive blundering had left them badly exposed.
CHAPTER FIVE
Halting the Incursion
Northwest Coast
MAY–OECEMBER 1787
AS THE WASHINGTON WAS FLEEING TILLAMOOK, the Columbia was logging slow and steady headway a thousand miles off the Mexican Baja coast. The pursuing ships had dropped off long ago, but the alarm about the American expedition was still spreading. From the north, Estevan José Martinez aboard his war frigate Princesa was coming down the Pacific coast. He had not learned of Kendrick yet, but he was already convinced he had found a dire threat to the Spanish Empire, and had in his hands a plan to defeat it.
Three months earlier, in May, Martinez had sailed north to reach the sprawling archipelago of southern Alaska, with the armed packet boat San Carlos trailing him with supplies. He cruised past the eerie maze of fog-shrouded inlets and islands, believing that somewhere here might be the Straits of Admiral de Fonte. But there was no time to search, and the land gave no clear sign of a passageway into the continent. When the fog burned off at midday it revealed only immense mountains and dense green forests coming out of winter. Fixed on his mission, Martinez pressed northward, and at the mouth of Prince William Sound, on May 17, he began the search for Russian outposts.
Estevan José Martinez Fernández y Martinez de la Sierra was the temperamental founder of Spain’s fateful settlement at Nootka. (Portrait from the Spanish Royal Navy)
Problems with his officers and those of the San Carlos were dogging the voyage. The difficulties ranged from silent animosity to direct disobedience of orders. An apprentice pilot argued with Martinez for a few days over the identification of Isla del Carmen. The pilot insisted it was Montague Island, as marked on the British map by James Cook. Frustrated by the apprentice’s persistent refusal to record the correct name in his journal, Martinez struck the young man, knocking him flat on the deck and ordering him to go aboard the San Carlos.
For Gonzalo Lopez de Haro, the pilot commanding the San Carlos, the incident added to the reasons he disliked being under Martinez’s command. Lopez de Haro was ordered to keep in visual contact with the Princesa, but like Robert Gray in the Washington, he evaded his commander and sailed north on his own. On the Kenai Peninsula, the San Carlos pilot encountered Aleut natives who indicated where the Russians might be found. The Aleuts showed him letters written in Russian and one in English from William Douglas, the captain of a British ship that had recently traded in local villages.
Although Martinez and Lopez de Haro had not seen them, there were three British fur-trading ships prowling the Alaskan coastal waters as part of an effort to monopolize the fur trade: the Iphigenia Nubiana, which Douglas commanded, and the Prince of Wales and Princess Royal commanded by James Colnett, a former officer of James Cook.
On June 30, Lopez de Haro found the Russian settlement the natives had described in Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island. The commander told him there were six other outposts in Alaska, a Russian sloop on the mainland, and more than four hundred men. Another Russian ship, Trekh Sviatitelei, commanded by two imperial naval officers, was also cruising the region. The ship carried painted posts, copper plates, and medals to stake out and claim the Russian domain at 52° north latitude, halfway south to Nootka. An expedition from Siberia was expected in the coming year. It would be led by Joseph Billings, another one of Cook’s officers who was now serving Russian empress Catherine II. The Russians were intent on putting a halt to British trading ships, and they planned to make a settlement at Nootka.
With his new information, Lopez de Haro hurried to rejoin the Princesa. But Martinez had found an even richer source of intelligence. As he cruised north and west along the Aleutians, he happened upon the Russian outpost at Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska. In the shadow of a looming mountain, twenty native huts on the shore surrounded a crude warehouse and a long building used to shelter Aleut hunters. A single grizzled R
ussian, Potap Zaikov, commanded the outpost. Martinez had been anchored in the harbor for ten days when the San Carlos appeared, and during that time had developed a warm relationship with Zaikov.
When Lopez de Haro gave his report, Martinez angrily told him that the information was of little use. His figures on the Russian men were not accurate, and from Zaikov, Martinez had learned more of the Russian and British plans. There were four additional Russian men-of war coming around the Cape of Good Hope to reinforce the Billings expedition. And the Russians wanted to establish a settlement at San Lorenzo de Nuca during the next summer, in July or August of 1789, to block British trading and assert their claims.
Even though some of Lopez de Haro’s information confirmed what Zaikov had said, it didn’t matter. Martinez viewed Haro’s excursion as insubordination and began a formal process to remove him from command of the San Carlos, an action that sparked further dissent among Martinez’s officers and crew. At one point a pilot and pilot’s apprentice went down on their knees, pleading with Martinez to go no further on his charges against Lopez de Haro. He resisted their appeals and told them they could lodge a formal complaint against him when they returned to San Blas.
Following the viceroy’s instructions, on August 5 Martinez held a small ceremony onshore, surreptitiously taking possession of Dutch Harbor despite the Russian settlement. His spirits seemed to brighten, and the officers’ appeals concerning Lopez de Haro finally succeeded. He restored de Haro to command of the San Carlos, warning him again to remain in visual contact, and if separated to rendezvous with the Princesa at Monterey. On August 15, the two Spanish ships left Dutch Harbor and started homeward.
Martinez was deeply disturbed by the threat the Spanish Empire faced at Nootka in light of growing British interests and the Russian intent to establish a settlement there. On the return trip he began work on a plan to deliver to José Commacho, his commander at San Blas, and to Viceroy Flores. At the center of the plan, he believed San Lorenzo de Nuca (Nootka Sound) should be fortified as soon as possible to act as the main base for Spain’s defense in the North Pacific. Ships stationed there could explore south to San Francisco and north to Cook Inlet, Alaska, securing the coast and making special note of any inlets that would appear to be the straits of Admiral de Fonte or Juan de Fuca. He also added the possibility of Spanish companies taking over the fur trade and extending Spanish control to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). To assert his devotion, Martinez swore to sacrifice his “last breath in the service of God and King” to carry out the plan.
If Martinez had received the warning from Teodoro de Croix about Kendrick and the American expedition, he would have considered the situation even more critical. He also might have lingered on this part of the Alaskan coast to take these vessels. But he had been gone from San Blas a few months when de Croix’s warning arrived.
As he voyaged south, Martinez missed the Washington, which was making her way up the Oregon coast north of Tillamook. Two weeks later, he passed the track of the Columbia, sailing farther offshore and headed for her American landfall.
Things were still going wrong with his officers. Not surprisingly, Lopez de Haro had parted with the Princesa again at the first opportunity in heavy southern Alaska fog. While Martinez waited for him at the planned rendezvous at Monterey, Lopez de Haro pressed southward, eager to be the first to bring news about the Russians to San Blas and to file a complaint against Martinez for brutality and drunkenness. What he didn’t contemplate was that the urgency of his news would override consideration of his complaint.
When Martinez arrived at San Blas a month after Lopez de Haro, he repeated the news from Alaska and delivered his plan to defend the empire. Viceroy Flores agreed that having an armed presence in those northern waters was now vital. Although it would be difficult to support on a permanent basis, a Spanish base could secure the empire’s claim and counter the threat of the Russians and British, as well as the Americans.
Flores understood the critical nature of the American expedition and their desires for a port on the Pacific. He embraced Martinez’s recommendations and instructed the sharp-tempered captain to make the Princesa and San Carlos ready for sea, granting him the rank of commander-in-chief for the new expedition. Short of men and supplies, Martinez would have to draw some of his crew from the local population who had never been to sea. The pilots who had just failed in their official complaints against Martinez would now be required to serve under him once again.
In his instructions to Martinez, Flores denigrated the validity of any claims Russia or Britain might make to the Northwest Coast by citing previous Spanish expeditions, which established “our just and preeminent right to occupy the coasts discovered to the north of the Californias, and to defend them against foreign colonizing powers.” Flores considered it a “delicate undertaking” for Martinez, who was to halt any foreign trading with native villages and to attempt to reason with Russian or English commanders. He was to remember the serious consequences of arousing the hostility of the Russians, and to remain firm with the English. Flores also warned Martinez that he might encounter Kendrick’s Bostonesa Fragata and “a small packet which was sailing in her company.” For these American ships he could use “more powerful arguments.” If the Americans were to try to use force, Martinez was to repel them. Although not stated in the instructions, Martinez knew that royal standing orders allowed him to seize any foreign ship in Spanish waters as an enemy.
Spanish Frigate Princesa off Neah Bay 1792 by Hewitt Jackson.
The new command was an ambitious undertaking. In addition to securing Nootka, Martinez was also ordered to send the San Carlos to explore ports and inlets north of Nootka from 50° to 55° north latitude, in the vicinity where the Straits of Admiral de Fonte were thought to lie. When the Aranzazu and Conception arrived later in the year with supplies, they were to examine the coast from Nootka south to San Francisco and take possession of harbors while looking for the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
No one could have guessed that Martinez’s plan would soon make the wilderness harbor at Nootka an international flashpoint. Completely unaware of what lay ahead of them, John Kendrick and the American expedition were sailing into the middle of it.
PART II
Infinite Wilderness
CHAPTER SIX
Nootka
Northwest Coast
SEPTEMBER 1788–MAY 1789
UNDER A CLEAR HALF-MOON the American landmass rose on the night of September 22 as the Columbia approached the mountainous coast. Kendrick took a lunar observation and fixed within a few miles how far north they had come. Not wanting to fight the southward current, he had kept his course far offshore until they were in the vicinity of Nootka. The past few days, progress had been agonizingly slow. When the night watch changed, word of landfall spread through the ship greatly lifting the spirits of the crew.
Dawn broke with high clouds and moderate winds as Kendrick brought the Columbia in along the southwest-facing coastline. The vast green land stirred excitement, with men watching over the rail, and a few aloft, examining the shore for a break or inlet. This was not the American paradise of ancient explorers, but an infinite wilderness of northern coastal rain forest swept by fourteen-foot tides and hemmed in by harsh rocky terrain. It looked incredibly majestic from the sea. Low, rounded ridges close to the shore stood in the shadows of a continuous chain of taller peaks behind them, one reaching into the sky a mile or more. Along the shore, the forested ridges fell to weather-beaten headlands and sandy pocket beaches hedged in undergrowth and thick cedar hummocks.
The entrance they were looking for, known as San Lorenzo de Rada (Road of Saint Lawrence) to the Spanish, was easily lost in the ragged folds of the shore. It lay about two miles wide in a lowland gap near a rocky point. They cruised slowly to the southeast and by midday they found it. After almost a year of voyaging, this channel in the wilderness meant release from the sea and the ship, a return to health, and perhaps fortune. Arrival had come none too
soon. Many of the crew were in advanced stages of scurvy, exhausted and barely able to move, with open sores and badly swollen legs and joints. The two Cape Verde men had suffered the most. One of them, John Hammond, had succumbed four days earlier. The other, Hanse Lawton, was near death as well.
Kendrick ordered a launch put out to explore the channel. But before they could lower it, the sail of a ship’s boat appeared coming out of the sound. The crew’s jubilation peaked when someone called out that it was the longboat from the Washington. As the boat approached, Kendrick was overwhelmed with relief. The months of doubt that haunted him as they plodded northward now vanished. Everyone was elated. They had an expedition once more.
Gray had arrived at Nootka only a week earlier, on September 16. For a month he had cruised the coast north of Tillamook, cautiously trading offshore after Marcus Lopius was killed and they narrowly escaped losing the sloop. In foul weather he overshot the sound and then spent days doubling back to find it. When he first took the Washington into the sound, Gray had seen a sail, and for a brief time believed the Columbia had beaten them to their destination. Much to his surprise, it was a boat from an English ship, the Felice Adventurer, commanded by a former British navy lieutenant, John Meares. Meares was sailing with two other ships he owned, all under Portuguese colors to evade monopoly rights granted to the British South Sea Company and the East India Company for Pacific trade. His fine features and sparsely bearded face held an attitude of pompous self-assurance. As he helped guide the Washington to safe harbor, Meares told Gray that his coming was a mistake; there were few furs to be had in this area. During the next few days the Americans found Meares to be calculating and duplicitious. Haswell complained in his journal that he tried to scare them off by “fabricating and rehursing vague and improbable tales” about “vast dangers” in navigating the coast and “the Monsterous Savage dispositions of its inhabitants.” He said it would be madness for the Americans to attempt to winter among the local Mowachaht people, who were cannibals. After days of this, Meares finally departed for Macao. Gray had been preparing the Washington for a cargoless voyage to China when the Columbia appeared.