by Scott Ridley
MARTINEZ GAVE THE AMERICANS an opportunity to dispatch a bundle of letters on the Argonaut, which was about to be taken to San Blas. For most of the men, it was the first chance to write home in two years. For Kendrick it had been thirteen months since he had written to Joseph Barrell from Cumberland Bay after rounding the Horn. In the midst of all the drama at Friendly Cove, he had made a fateful decision about the expedition. But knowing the letter could easily be opened and read, Kendrick was hesitant to divulge any meaningful information. He told Barrell that he would cruise northward and proceed to China where he would receive Barrell’s instructions and let him know of the voyage’s success, which to this point was “not by any means equal to your expectation.” Kendrick also enclosed a letter to his wife, Huldah, and asked Barrell to forward it by “the first safe conveyance” to the village of Wareham.
AS KENDRICK MADE FINAL PREPARATIONS, the Argonaut was towed out of the cove and anchored in the sound. Manned by Spanish sailors, the captured ship departed for San Blas on the tide at 2 a.m. on July 14 carrying Colnett, Duffin, and the other captives locked below. A headwind from the south-southeast forced the ship to tack most of the day, until it finally dropped out of sight at sunset. The departure must have seemed like watching a slow-burning fuse. There was a globerattling blowup coming: it was just a matter of when, and whether the Americans would remain caught in the middle.
The Taking of the Bastille by Jean-Pierre Houël. Events in Europe, such as the storming of the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789, would ultimately affect what would unfold in the far Pacific, just as events at Nootka would shape the lead-up to war in Europe and ambitions of the United States.
CHAPTER NINE
Divided Dreams
Nootka, Clayoquot, Queen Charlotte Islands
JULY–OCTOBER 1789
AT 10 A.M. ON JULY 15, the Spanish woodchoppers were at work along the shore as the longboats from the Columbia and Lady Washington towed the ships out of the harbor. Kendrick looked up and could see the men clearing the ground for gardens and the Mowachaht village standing dismantled and nearly empty. Perhaps for the first time in thousands of years, this site was uninhabited by native people during the summer.
The expedition had waited on the tide, and men at the oars got an added lift from the current out of the cove and through the entrance of the sound. Martinez went along with his boat, accompanying the ships “a distance of five or six miles in order to take leave of the Americans,” who he said were continuing “their voyage of discovery.” It was a strange parting. The Spanish commander seemed to grow more belligerent as his outpost took shape. His attitude would continue to darken. A few months after the Americans left, he reflected on his tangled relationship with Kendrick and noted: “I treated this enemy as a friend” and “could have taken his sloop and the frigate Columbia.” Keenly aware of Martinez’s unpredictable behavior, the Americans were glad to be gone.
After nearly a year in what seemed an infinite green wilderness, Kendrick was at last looking ahead at a flat, clear horizon. This was the first time the Columbia and many of the men had been to sea in ten months. Though she had been overhauled, reballasted, and packed for a long Pacific voyage, the ship still handled like a sluggish box on ice. Like Martinez, the men believed the expedition was headed north, but once out of sight of land Kendrick turned southeast for Clayoquot. He had personal reasons perhaps: Callicum’s father-in-law, Wickaninish, was there, and the Americans needed to preserve good relations after the chief’s killing. But more importantly, Kendrick had decided on a dramatic change in the course of the expedition.
Off Clayoquot, surf was breaking over submerged rocks. Kendrick lowered a boat to guide the Columbia through the half-mile-wide channel between two rugged islands. Three miles inside the sound the summer village of Opitsat lay on a low slope above a sandy beach. There were five main villages off the three large arms of the sound. Opitsat was the largest. More than twenty-five-hundred inhabitants lived here, in ancient carved houses that stood in a winding cluster about a half mile across. The Americans noted that the village seemed to be growing, as people who had formerly lived at Yuquot settled there. Kendrick and his men knew many of them, and their canoes came to trade once the two ships were anchored. At nightfall, when they were gone, Kendrick spoke with his men, taking the most seasoned hands aside for confidential discussions.
He then sent a messenger to the Lady Washington, inviting Gray to his cabin. The relationship between the two men had deteriorated further. Gray had written a letter of complaint to Joseph Barrell, attacking Kendrick’s character, and sent it to Boston on the Argonaut. The complaint started with their landing at Cape Verde at the beginning of the voyage, “where we lay forty-one days, which was thirty-six more than I thought was necessary …” He also brazenly told Barrell: “I had the good luck to part Company the first day of April in a severe gale and thick snow storm to the Southward and Westward of Cape Horn.” However, he failed to mention that under the “good luck” of going off on his own he had lost a man and almost sacrificed the entire crew and sloop at Tillamook. Gray told of scurvy on the Columbia, but nothing of the disease on his own vessel, and claimed that Kendrick prevented him from making “the best voyage that ever was made on this Coast.” He went on to boast of the “considerable success” of his cruises while “the Columbia has rid it out here all the time.” He concluded by writing, “I have nothing more to inform you except the voyage will not turn out to the Owners expectation, all for want of a nimble leader.” And in a snide postscript, Gray asked Barrell to “present my best respects” to the other owners “and inform them that we have orders not to write to them, we must refer them to Capt. Kendrick’s Letter for all information relative to the voyage.”
During the past year, Kendrick may have wondered if it would have been better to sack Gray at Cape Verde. The sniping and sarcasm started then, but the disobedience didn’t appear until Cape Horn. The seasoned commander may have hoped he could win the headstrong young captain over, but that had failed, and Gray’s resentment built. Kendrick had recognized that the best way to manage Gray and Haswell was to send them off on missions and tell them only what they needed to know. That was what he would do now. He explained to Gray that there were not enough provisions for both ships to cruise north, and an early start to the market at Macao with the Columbia might bring a better price for furs. Much to Gray’s surprise, Kendrick then told him they would switch ships. Gray would take the Columbia to Canton. Kendrick would take the Washington north. Kendrick didn’t tell him when he would follow him to China, and Gray had no idea that Kendrick had asked Martinez about coming back the following year. Gray did understand that with the British ships captured and driven off the coast, the Americans had at least a brief opportunity to be in sole possession of the fur trade. As he absorbed the full scope of what Kendrick was saying, Gray undoubtedly recognized that the new orders presented an opportunity to escape Kendrick’s command once more.
All the furs for market were shifted over to the Columbia, plus the bundle of ninety-six furs Martinez had given to Kendrick to cover the expenses of the Northwest American prisoners. Kendrick took the 137 furs that Martinez had asked be sold on the Spanish account.
Kendrick was now embarking on something more than an American trading adventure. It would become an odyssey, extending into the unknown, and bent on securing a presence for the new nation in the Pacific. He divided the men to give the Lady Washington a full complement of skills and the most seasoned hands. The Washington‘s first mate, Robert Davis Coolidge, would go with him, as would the blacksmith Jonathan Barber, carpenter Isaac Ridler, sailmaker William Bowles, gunner James Crawford, cooper Robert Green, and Thomas Foster, John Cordis, John McCay, Samuel Thomas, and ten others, a total of twenty-one men, including himself.
Haswell, Ingraham, and Solomon Kendrick would go with Gray, who would have a total of thirty of the expedition’s members plus the prisoners from the Northwest American. Kendrick pressured the
most experienced prisoners to serve as seamen on the Columbia and threatened to leave them onshore in the wilderness if they did not sign on. Perhaps out of admiration for the charismatic commander, or out of a desire for adventure, a few of the Northwest crew volunteered to sail with Kendrick’s select group.
THE STAY AT CLAYOQUOT lasted two weeks. During that time Maquinna came down with Callicum’s grieving wife and family. Hearing rumors that Martinez would be looking for an excuse to shoot him next, he remained at Clayoquot. Callicum’s murder deepened Wickaninish’s distrust of the Spanish and European traders, but he and
Maquinna reaffirmed a special friendship with Kendrick. As much as trading partners, they would become important allies.
ON JULY 30, THE MEN on the Washington fired a thirteen-gun salute and watched the Columbia and their crewmates sail out of Clayoquot. Solomon Kendrick was among them. No one recorded what advice Kendrick might have given Solomon, or what personal message he might have asked him to carry home. He might have confided that the future was wildly uncertain, depending on what happened in the next several weeks.
As the Columbia disappeared, Kendrick was filled with excitement and dread at what he was undertaking. It was a dangerous combination he was setting loose, sending Haswell and Gray off together to deliver a group of resentful and enraged prisoners from the Northwest American to Macao. Unknown to him, the prisoners were carrying the secret letters Robert Duffin had written to Meares about the capture of the Argonaut and the Princess Royal. Meares’s wrath could be expected, but the depth to which it would go was impossible to foresee. Kendrick regarded the risk as more than worth what was at stake.
Fort Washington at Mawina offered an opportunity to gain a beachhead for the new nation on this coast. Kendrick’s reputation and the alliances the “Boston Men” had built with native people could provide security against the Spanish and the British and a steady flow of furs. Moreover, Kendrick now had a chance to mount his own search for the Northwest Passage. Staying behind to achieve these larger goals would mean giving Gray the honor of the first American circumnavigation, but Kendrick hoped that what would come later would carry a greater glory. He had the right men willing to stay with him. For all of them, this was still the voyage of a lifetime, and for those close to Kendrick and charmed by his dreams, it was a chance to sail into history.
WHAT KENDRICK DID NEXT has stirred controversy among historians. The prospect of entering the Strait of Juan de Fuca, just a day’s sail south of Clayoquot, was extremely tempting. Coolidge had been in the strait twice now, and Wickaninish, who ruled the region below Nootka, traded with people on the inland sea and had ties to tribes in the south, including a niece married to Tatooch, whose domain lay at the mouth of the strait. Kendrick could take on some of Wickaninish’s men at Clayoquot to help pilot the Washington into the inland sea and lead him to natives who could in turn direct them farther.
Wickaninish had already told Colnett that “The Straits of Juan de Fuca ran 5 days sail to the Eastward.” There was “a large Passage to the North … and also a large sea to the South.” The Clayoquot chief’s canoes could not enter the passage, but by carrying them over an isthmus of land “he had been as far down in this Southern Sea as to get wood as sweet as my Sugar.”
Colnett concluded, “It’s the general Opinion of Capt. Duncan & of all that saw those Inlets that they Communicate with Hudson Bay’s nearest Settlement of the Hudson Bay Co. Which is Hudson House is Lat 53d Long. (blank) Bears (blank) West dis 400 leagues. I have also every reason to think that the Straights of Juan de Fuca Joins with all those Inlets to the Northward & that all the Coast of America as far north as Prince William Sound is only a body of Isles & that the Main lays much farther to the E.ward than is generally believed …”
Wickaninish most likely shared the same information with Kendrick. If Martinez was requesting more ships to find and claim the passage for Spain, Kendrick knew that this was his opportunity to press on. He would not have been interested in a survey and detailed mapping, but in discovering a targeted passage through the region with native guides. Coolidge, or Wickaninish, may have cautioned him about taking the sloop so far into potentially hostile waters. Given his limited provisions, he might also have been forced to choose between exploring Juan de Fuca here in the south, or the Straits of Admiral de Fonte to the north.
According to John Meares, after the Columbia sailed for China, the Lady Washington
entered the Straits of John de Fuca, the knowledge of which she had received from us; and, penetrating up them, entered into an extensive sea, where she steered to the Northward and Eastward, and had communications with the various tribes who inhabit the shores of the numerous islands that are situated at the back of Nootka Sound, and speak, with some little variation, the language of the Nootkan people. The track of this vessel is marked on the map, and is of great moment, as it is now completely ascertained that Nootka Sound and the parts adjacent are islands, and comprehended within the Great Northern Archipelago. The sea also, which is seen to the East is of great extent; and it is from this stationary point, and the most Westerly parts of Hudson‘s Bay, that we are to form an estimate of the distance between them.
If Kendrick had in fact traveled up the Strait of Juan de Fuca and followed the route marked by Meares, the four-or five-hundred-mile distance could have been traversed in four weeks. It would have been quite difficult for Kendrick to tow the Lady Washington for much of the eighty-mile transit through the narrow channels of Discovery Passage and the Johnstone Strait, or similar channels to the east. But with native assistance he could have accomplished the trip.
Backing up his statements, Meares published a narrative and map, showing for the first time what would become known as Vancouver Island. Traced onto the map was the Washington‘s approximate route in the autumn of 1789. However, Kendrick never made a public claim that he circumnavigated the island, or that he had searched for the Northwest Passage at any time. Outnumbered by the British and Spanish, the American commander may have maintained his practice of keeping his own counsel. It would have been logical for him to protect information on the fur-rich villages on the east side of the island, to avoid admitting that he had misled Martinez, and to keep secret any information about an inland passage.
It is also possible that Meares fabricated the report of the Washington‘s inland cruise to prod Parliament and the British Admiralty to act (which it did) out of fear that the Americans or the Spanish would soon discover the passage. At the southeast end of the “inland sea” (near Puget Sound), Meares indicated the great “river of the west” extending eastward toward the Missouri River.
CONSIDERING THE LACK OF ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE and Meares’s reputation for lying, some historians do not believe that Kendrick made the journey around Vancouver Island. Others, who have considered the collateral evidence and take Meares at his word, believe that the Washington was the first vessel to pass through the “inland sea,” which presents a great inconvenience for the later claims of British captain George Vancouver.
The next confirmed report of Kendrick was in September, more than a month after he had left Clayoquot. He was a day’s sail above where he would have come out from the “inland sea” through Queen Charlotte Sound. Thomas Metcalf, of the tiny twenty-six-ton schooner Fair American, was looking for his father’s ship when he encountered Kendrick. Metcalfe later told Martinez that he spoke with Kendrick at 54°20’ north latitude, four hundred miles up the coast from Nootka. Martinez jealously observed that Kendrick was in “one of the mouths of the strait of Fonte.”
Kendrick was near the present-day Alaskan border (just below Dundas Island), among a bewildering string of fog-enshrouded bays and inlets winding seventy or a hundred miles among huge forested islands. Three months earlier, the Washington had entered this area during Gray’s cruise northward in the early summer. Haswell thought a survey of the branching channels that teased far inland would prove “an almost endless task,” needing to be undertaken by a
nation willing to bear the expense. Coolidge, who had been here with the Washington, would have been of some help in the search, but the task was daunting. Kendrick could ask native people about a passageway as he traded along the coast, but by September, time was a factor in acquiring the information he was looking for. The rainy season was starting. Salmon were in the upper reaches of the rivers and streams. Snow lay on the mountaintops, and most of the native people were headed into their winter quarters. Moreover, if Kendrick wanted to catch up with the Columbia at Macao to send communications homeward, he would have to leave the coast and his initial explorations aside. Equally vital, he had to finish gathering enough furs to fund a return to the coast the following year.
BY THE END OF SEPTEMBER, Kendrick took the Washington from the foggy archipelago to the Queen Charlotte Islands, about forty miles offshore. While the islands close to the mainland had a fierce and rugged wildness, the Queen Charlotte Islands seemed to have a more ethereal and mysterious quality. The native people knew them as Haida Gwaii (“the islands of the people”), or Xhaaidlaglia (“the islands at the borders of the world”). The Spanish were said to be the first Europeans to see them, during the expedition of Juan Perez in 1774. James Cook had missed them. Cook’s officers Nathaniel Portlock and George Dixon were the first to trade there and named them after Britain’s queen in 1786. Robert Gray had called them the “Washington Islands.”
Several villages rich in furs lay along the eastern shores of the islands. The Lady Washington may have stopped at Masset and the villages of Skidegate and Skedans as Kendrick made his way down the shore. At the southern end of the islands, Kendrick went into “Congethoity,” named “Barrell’s Sound” by Gray when he traded there in June. The sound lay about fifteen miles above the southernmost point and had two entrances. The eastern entrance (the Houston-Stewart Channel) was flushed by dangerous currents and tides that dropped as much as twenty-four feet during a full moon. Sunken rocks lay hidden in the channel and thick beds of kelp choked the open water. Kendrick took the Washington into the sound below several small islands, some of them barren rocks stained black by the sea. Nature here was much starker than in the rocky wilderness at Nootka. The black silence and stillness of the bays coupled with the raw beauty of the forests and the strands of slowly twisting fog inspired a kind of reverence. The eastern shore of the island, which the Haida called SGang Gwaay (Anthony Island), held dark, sea-worn headlands framed with thick hemlock and pine and thickets of wild rosebushes. Farther in, stands of huge tideland spruce hundreds of years old and as much as sixty feet in circumference soared two hundred feet out of the mossy ground. No branches grew on the lower half of the massive trunks. At least one was reported to have a dwelling carved into it.