by Scott Ridley
AS KENDRICK’S BOAT DREW ALONGSIDE, the Columbia fired another salute, and the men gave three cheers. Here was the captain who had remained on the unknown side of the world and given the expedition its mystique, the man who was the reason all Americans here werecalled “Boston men,” and who was becoming part of the legend of this coast, a captain they recognized as of a different order than Robert Gray. Still, despite the glowing welcome, Kendrick’s status as the commander of the Columbia was anything but clear. As usual, Gray and Haswell concealed their animosity under a polite veneer. Having no idea what Kendrick was accomplishing, Haswell railed privately in his journal against his “former commander,” depicting Kendrick as having done nothing during the last two years, while they had sailed around the world and returned.
Kendrick’s joy at finding men he knew from home, including crewmen, on this far side of the world made up for long months of isolation. Gray’s insubordination and Haswell’s arrogance might have seemed insignificant at the moment, especially in light of the fact that he held title to this sound they were about to enter. There would be time to sort things out.
Kendrick spent the evening with Hoskins and the Columbia’s officers. Over dinner he gave a full narrative of what had happened since the Columbia had sailed from Clayoquot two years earlier. He talked of his travails at Macao and of entering Japan, and in answer to Hoskins’s questions, he described in gory detail the attack by Coyah’s people. Violence was increasing on the coast, especially as more ships arrived. Three other Boston ships were now cruising these waters: the Hope under Joseph Ingraham, the Hancock under Samuel Crowell, and the Margaret under James Magee. There were also five British traders, as well as the British ship Mercury sailing under the Swedish flag as the Gustavus. Most were avoiding Nootka Sound, out of fear of the Spanish, and focusing on the waters of the Queen Charlotte Islands.
Kendrick was doing well amid the growing competition. Haswell noted that after trading in the north and at Nootka and Clayoquot for two months, the Washington had about twelve hundred otter skins in her hold. By comparison, after cruising up and down the coast, the Columbia had gathered only five or six hundred, and Captain Crowell of the Hancock had about seven hundred skins and was planning tohead to Macao in two or three weeks. Gray would not find many more furs here at Clayoquot. The natives told Hoskins they had few skins, having sold them all to Kendrick. Although he would not have spoken of it, Kendrick’s status was more than just a formal holder to title of the land. During his stay at native villages, he had negotiated advance payments to local chiefs for furs yet to be gathered. A significant portion of next year’s harvest of sea otters at Nootka, Clayoquot, and to the south already belonged to him. This was another benefit of the careful alliances he was taking time to build. Joseph Ingraham later commented that when trading in the region around Nootka: “Every one of the natives enquired particularly about Captain Kendrick saying they had plenty of skins for him and they would not sell them to anyone else.”
WHILE THE OFFICERS WERE AT DINNER, the Columbia was towed to the mouth of the sound and anchored in darkness to await the tide and daylight. Kendrick left the ship late. Though he sensed something amiss, this was not a time to be rash. He would be able to talk over awkward behavior and unanswered questions at a meeting he had scheduled for the morning. At dawn, Hoskins accompanied Gray in the Columbia’s jolly boat inside the sound to have breakfast with Kendrick. In the bright, still morning they were rowed up a northern arm of the sound to what was apparently Fair Harbor. “We were received at a small Island which he had fortified and dignified with the appellation of Fort Washington,” Hoskins wrote. The rough log outpost, consisting of living quarters and a building to store provisions, displayed an American flag on a bare pole. Beside the fortification, the Lady Washington had been hauled on shore to be graved in preparation for departure to Hawaii and Macao.
Hoskins and Gray bore a letter from Joseph Barrell soliciting Kendrick’s cooperation with Gray and the Columbia. Gray was in charge of the ship. Kendrick read the letter and was stunned and dismayed by the contents. He would later write to Barrell: “Your letter per Captain Gray I received, but found it different from what I expected, as I thought to have the conducting of all your business in this part of the world …” He told Barrell that “had the Columbia been sent to me, it would have been much more to the benefit of the concerned, as she could have returned to America this season.” Certainly if Kendrick had added a thousand furs to the Columbia‘s cargo, her voyage would have been over by September and proved much more lucrative than the first.
But faced with the debt he owed and the plans he was in the midst of, Kendrick would not simply hand over his command and his furs to Gray. It’s not clear whether Hoskins had an opportunity out of Gray’s hearing to explain to Kendrick the charges made against him. In later private conversation, Hoskins may have explained in tempered terms what Gray and Haswell had said to the owners. Either way, Kendrick certainly heard the allegations later at Macao. At this point, the rationale for such a huge change may have been puzzling, and Kendrick was left questioning what course to take.
On the morning of September 20, Kendrick breakfasted again with the Columbia‘s officers. Hoskins and Kendrick did apparently speak in private at this point. Whether it was a gesture of cooperation or a test of his remaining authority, Kendrick offered to turn over the Washington and one thousand sea otter skins to Hoskins as Barrell’s agent. In return he asked for payment of his men’s wages and the debt he had contracted in Macao of about four thousand dollars (this was apparently the debt and interest to Douglas, but not what he owed Martinez). Hoskins replied that he wasn’t authorized to accept such an offer, or demand payment from him, “nor did I think any person in the Ship” had such authority, he noted. Hoskins clearly feared that the transaction would play further into Gray’s hands.
At this point, Kendrick was on his own with the Washington. Until he received orders dismissing him, he would continue working on the outpost and the exclusive trade he was setting in place. With deeds in hand for a thousand square miles of the coast, and with future tradelocked in, Kendrick wanted to establish himself more firmly in the Sandwich Islands. He would resolve matters with Joseph Barrell later.
After breakfast, Kendrick helped tow the Columbia to a cove that would be her winter quarters at Clayoquot. Gray and Hoskins borrowed from Kendrick’s strategy on the Columbia‘s first voyage and sought to be the first on the coast next season and to build a small sloop that Haswell would command on trading cruises.
Out of sympathy for Hoskins, Kendrick gave him a canoe as a parting gift. The young clerk, who had lost his father when he was a boy, perhaps regarded Kendrick as a father figure. In contrast to his disdain for Gray, Hoskins wrote that “during the continuance of our two vessels in port Captain Kendrick has offered and afforded us every assistance and also treated us with the most marked politeness particularly myself who am indebted for many tokens of friendship.”
This time it was the Washington sailing from Clayoquot and leaving the Columbia behind. It would soon become obvious that Gray did not have the diplomatic skills to maintain good relations with Wickaninish and his people. In an incident over a coat, Gray took one of the chiefs, Wickaninish’s older brother, Tootiscosettle, as a hostage and threatened to kill him. Later, Gray once again took a hostage and made threats after his Hawaiian servant, Atoo, deserted him and went into hiding with the tribe.
Native animosity toward Gray and the Columbia would grow. Before the end of winter, Gray discovered what he believed was a conspiracy to attack their ship and camp. In bitter retaliation, as the Columbia was preparing to leave the sound on March 27, 1792, Gray decided to cannonade the main summer village of Opitsat to which most inhabitants had not yet returned. One young officer, John Boit, would write:
I am sorry to be under the nessescity of remarking that this day I was sent with three boats, all well man ‘d and arm‘d, to destroy the Village of Opitsatah it was a Comma
nd I was no ways tenacious off, and am grieved to think Capt. Gray shou‘d let his passions go so far. This Village was about half a mile in Diameter, and Contained upwards of 200 Houses, generally well built for Indians ev’ry door that you enter’d was in resemblance to an human and Beasts head, the passage being through the mouth, besides which there was more rude carved work about the dwellings some of which was by no means innelegant. This fine Village, the Work of Ages, was in a short time totally destroy’d.
Worn down by a long winter of intrigue, Hoskins wrote nothing of the destruction, and lamented only that the Columbia’s opportunity for “any future intercourse” here was limited.
KENDRICK, IN THE MEANTIME, made his way to the Sandwich Islands. After leaving Clayoquot on September 29 the Washington arrived at Hawaii about the third week of October, at the start of the makahiki period of peace. During the summer, talk had circulated among the trading vessels about violence and attempts to take ships in the islands. Since the spring of 1790, warfare and treachery had been nearly incessant.
Ingraham said that in May he had evaded a scheme by Kaiana to take the Hope at Hawaii. The small sloop and her crew of sixteen made a likely target. At Molokai, Ingraham had found Kendrick’s carpenter, Isaac Ridler, who described the taking of the Fair American fourteen months earlier. The story sent anxiety among Ingraham’s crew soaring. In fear of attack, the Hope fired on Kahekili as he approached with thirty canoes containing two hundred fifty warriors. Ingraham then fled to Oahu.
The Hancock‘s captain, Samuel Crowell, told of how he stopped first at Hawaii on his voyage from Boston. He traded for furs, which, as it turned out, had been taken off the Fair American. When Crowell went ashore, Kaiana revealed to him “that it was his people’s wish thathe should kill them and seize their vessel.” The sometimes duplicitous chief assured Crowell that he “would not take any advantage of people who trusted themselves within his territories.” Kaiana told Crowell that he had satisfied his warriors by telling them “to wait til the morrow noon when they had his liberty to attack.” He advised Crowell to leave the island as soon as possible. The Hancock sailed that night.
In August, the captain of the British trader Mercury also had a close call. At Oahu, a number of the island’s most beautiful women had been brought on board by the chiefs. In the evening they lulled most of the crew and officers into a stupor. Then, while they slept, the ship’s anchor cable was cut. There was immediate danger that they would be swept ashore or onto a reef. When the watch raised an alarm, “every girl on the ship clung fast to her man in a very loving manner,” to stop them from getting on deck. The captain ended up shelling the village of Waikiki in a futile attempt to have the anchor returned.
The zeal to take ships and their weapons had much to do with the inter-island war.
Coming into the harbor at Kealakekua, Kendrick saw the aftermath of all the warring. More women were in mourning with their front teeth knocked out. They paddled out to the Washington, offering fruit, hogs, and taro, as well as themselves. Kaiana arrived and told Kendrick that Kahekili and his brother Kaeokulani had shown up on the north coast of Hawaii with a fleet of seven hundred canoes, including a double canoe armed with a cannon and foreign gunners. They were seeking revenge for Kamehameha’s invasion and slaughter at the Iao River a year earlier. Kamehameha met them with his own fleet of double-hulled canoes, foreign gunners, and the Fair American. In a long battle off Waipio, near a lush sacred area on Hawaii’s northwestern coast, the two forces clashed. People watching from shore saw the red flashes of the cannons and called it Kepuwahaulaula, which meant “Battle of the Red-Mouthed Gun.” The fighting left uncountable dead. Kahekili was driven off and retreated to Maui, where he prepared for a counterattack.
Knowing he could not fight on two fronts at once, Kamehameha requested that his Hawaiian adversary, Keoua, come from his realm in the northern part of the island and make peace at a new temple Kamehameha had built. Despite suspicion about the invitation, Keoua arrived with his retinue and warriors. As he climbed from his canoe onto the beach at Kawaihae, a spear was thrown at him. In the ensuing struggle, Keoua and several of his men were killed before Kamehameha put a stop to the fight. It was a major event. Through this treachery, Kamehameha was at last king of all of Hawaii, the first step toward his proclaimed destiny to rule over all the islands.
Kaiana told Kendrick that Kamehameha was not at Kealakekua, but in the north at Hilo, organizing his government and subchiefs in the lands that had fallen to him from Keoua. Kaiana said he was left as the district chief in his stead.
Kendrick gave the usual gift of a few muskets, but he decided not to linger. If men were to be safely settled at a trading base for sandalwood and pearls, he would have to place them beyond the reach of the current turmoil. Much to Kaiana’s disappointment, the Washington sailed from Kealakekua after only a few days.
By October 27, Kendrick was at Kauai, at the far end of the main islands from Hawaii. Keaokulani (Keao), who ruled there, was at Maui with Kahekili preparing defenses to stop Kamehameha’s expected invasion. In Keao’s place, Inamoo, an old chief whom Kendrick had met at Niihau two years earlier, was serving as the regent of the island and as teacher for Kaeo’s twelve year-old son, Kaumaulii. The large mountain at the center of the island contained sandalwood, and with Inamoo’s approval, Kendrick left three men across the channel at Niihau: his first mate, the Welshman John Williams; a young English sailor, John Rowbottom; and a feisty young Irishman, James Coleman. For eight dollars a month and a share in the profits, they were to trade for pearls and prepare cargoes of sandalwood. It was another modest beginning, but Kendrick told his men he believed that as many as twenty American ships could eventually trade between the coast and Hawaiiand China. He was thinking of returning to Boston to resolve matters with Joseph Barrell and gain support for the ships.
There was an urgency building to secure the islands for American trade and passage to the East. From the Spanish at Nootka, Kendrick knew that British officials were coming to make claims on the American coast. And Douglas would certainly have shared the plans of Meares’s London company. It was only a matter of time before the British reached for this gem in the North Pacific as well, and with their arrival, it was reasonable to fear they would attempt to close all these ports to Americans, as they had done in the Atlantic.
PART IV
Edge of Empire
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Soft War
Sandwich Islands, Northwest Coast
MARCH–SEPTEMBER 1792
AT DAYLIGHT ON MARCH 1, 1792, George Vancouver sighted the island of Hawaii lying in a haze twenty-four leagues off. As the Discovery and Chatham drew closer, the island arose with a familiar profile. From the southeast point, which appeared as a small hummock, the land increased with a gradual incline to the summit of Mauna Loa, which seemed to occupy the center of the island. Vancouver recalled being there fourteen years earlier as a junior officer. His memories included being roughed up on the beach at Kealakekua in the scuffle with natives that preceded Cook’s death. As with others who had been present through those tumultuous final days, it was an event by which he marked his life.
The appearance of the two Royal Navy ships signaled the official return of the British Empire and for Vancouver an opportunity to finish Cook’s work. No royal expedition had been launched into the North Pacific after Cook. Britain’s sweep to the East following the American Revolution had focused first on the South Pacific and Australia. The hard lesson London had learned from defeat in the American colonies was that it would be impossible to occupy and hold each new land with military power. Britain’s policy now targeted resource exploitation and development of new markets under pliable local leaders rather than systematic planting of colonies. Forts and ports would be sited only where necessary in a strategy designed to head off the Spanish and the Americans.
George Vancouver, a controversial figure in history, endeavored to establish Britain‘s hold on the North Pacific and t
he pathway between the Americasand the East.
AT THE HEIGHT OF THE NOOTKA CRISIS, John Etches had written a pamphlet charging that the Spanish “have the keys of the whole Pacific, to the exclusive monopoly of an ocean and its numerous islands, which embrace in their extent almost one half the globe.” Vancouver was sent to change that. Under the cover of a diplomatic and scientific mission, he was to wage a soft war to secure the North Pacific for Britain. Vancouver was to receive “restitution of the territories which the Spanish had seized” from John Meares. He was to search for the Northwest Passage, particularly inside the Strait of Juan de Fuca where the Washington was said to have passed. He was to map the region and make strategic claims along the stretch of coast north of San Francisco (the region of Francis Drake’s ancient claim of “New Albion”) into Alaska. And he was to regard the Sandwich Islands as a priority.
The first order in his instructions from the king was to proceed with “no loss of time” to the Sandwich Islands where he was to remain during the next winter, employing his ships “very diligently in the examination and survey of the said islands.”
Situated at the crossroads of the North Pacific, the islands were viewed as essential to ruling these seas. John Etches’s brother and partner, the merchant Richard Etches, had raised the vision of the Sandwich Islands as an emporium between Asia and the Americas. John Meares had pushed the concept further with his belief that a prosperous colony there could someday be the home of a half-million British subjects. Investigating harbors and potential plantation lands, Vancouver would attempt to fill in those visions with detailed maps, granting British names to landmarks as the first act of possession. His efforts would increasingly come up against John Kendrick, who was seeking to ensure that neither Britain nor Spain would dominate these islands and access to trade with the East. Over time, the twocaptains would become entangled in deadly competition for control of the islands.