by Scott Ridley
In an odd parallel to the supposed chance encounter with William Brown a year earlier at a remote bay below Dundas Island, on July 3, he came across Brown and the Jackall near Cross Sound. Brown had just arrived on the coast, having stopped at the Sandwich Islands on his way from Canton and Macao. Vancouver may have hoped that he carried a dispatch from the Admiralty. Instead, Brown delivered devastating news.
Vancouver was stunned by “the latest accounts of the state of Europe that had appeared in China before his sailing.” France had declared war on England. Louis XVI had been sent to the guillotine and there was anarchy and a reign of terror in the streets of Paris. At home, internal rebellion was stirring against King George, promoted by discontented British subjects through “the promulgation of French doctrines, to subvert [Britain’s] inestimable constitution.”
View of Prince William Sound and Captain Cook’s Ships by John Webber. At Prince William Sound, Vancouver continued to encounter disillusionment as mountains of snow and ice rose where waterways inland were hoped to lie.
Vancouver understood now why he had gotten no response from London. The world was burning with what seemed to be a crazed revolutionary fervor. Everything was in upheaval. France had also declared war against Spain and sent troops over the Pyrenees. In this strange twist of events, Britain and Spain were cast together as unlikely allies. Vancouver pondered what these events meant for their mission. The fire sweeping Europe was sure to affect the setting and holding of either empire’s boundaries in the Pacific.
Vancouver undoubtedly told Brown of Kamehameha’s cession of the island of Hawaii to Great Britain and of his failure to seize American residents in the islands as Brown had hoped. In the Atlantic, American merchant ships were being taken and their crews impressed for service on British vessels. But there was no prospect of that here. Seizing Kendrick’s ship and crew would be too blatant an act, and reached beyond Vancouver’s orders as long as the United States remained neutral.
In dark squalls and showers, Vancouver separated from the Jackall, and under close-reefed topsails the Discovery attempted to beat to windward and make her way further south.
AT NOOTKA, KENDRICK HEARD the same news of war in Europe from Ramon Saavedra. The notion of Britain and Spain as allies was baffling. Kendrick realized that his outlook could quickly turn bleak if Britain and Spain established joint control of the coast, or if the Americans were swept into war on the side of France.
As it was, the situation at Yuquot was dismal. Maquinna and his people had suffered extreme hardship during the winter and had been out of food for months. There may have been any number of causes—illnesses transmitted from the Spanish or the trading ships, poor fall salmon runs, or raiding between tribes. Maquinna’s emaciated face indicated how dire the situation was for his people. Saavedra was credited with providing supplies that kept many from starving. But the rift with Wickaninish over their children’s marriage continued. In his weakened condition, Maquinna feared an attack and wanted to move his village closer to the Spanish guns. Saavedra refused.
Kendrick learned that the winter at Barkley Sound for the Jefferson and Resolution did not go well either. One of the Jefferson’s men had been killed while he was hunting alone, and some of the Jefferson‘s goods and equipment had been stolen. In retaliation, the Jefferson‘s captain, Josiah Roberts, copied Robert Gray’s actions and staged a raid on the village of Seshart as they prepared to depart in late March. Armed boats fired swivel guns at the houses, forcing the people to flee into the woods. The sailors then went in among the houses, taking “anything of consequence,” including a great quantity of dried fish, copper, a supply of gunpowder, and one musket. They also tore down houses, smashed large canoes onshore, and rafted up others and stole them. “After having sufficient satisfaction for their depravations on us,” the first mate Bernard Magee wrote, the Jefferson sailed from the sound.
Kendrick had no idea what part his son might have played. Solomon had already gone south in the Resolution to “Gray’s River.” From there, the schooner planned to cruise north to the Queen Charlotte Islands. Sea otter furs around Nootka and Clayoquot were getting harder to come by, and with few furs, and intertribal conflict pending at Nootka, Kendrick took the Washington north.
THE MISERY AT NOOTKA INCREASED after he left. In mid-May, just as the weather was beginning to turn warm, a three-day gale from the south and west struck with unprecedented ferocity. Huge swells devastated the shore and surged into the sound. In Friendly Cove, gusts rocked the ships at anchor so violently their yardarms touched the water. As the winds raged, Saavedra feared the commandant’s house would be blown down. Several natives died, and the villages suffered great damage.
The British trader Jenny had ridden out the storm in a protected harbor near the Columbia River. She now came north and met the Jefferson, and Captain Roberts learned that Solomon’s schooner had sailed from the Columbia River about May 1. Roberts concluded that “No vessel could survive the force of the gale at sea … The Resolution if she were at sea must Doubtless be lost & that it was not possible for her to live through so hard and extensive a gale.”
Word of the lost ship did not reach John Kendrick. He was among the hundreds of islands of the Alexander Archipelago of southern Alaska, which he had first explored in the fall of 1789. The foggy, mosquito-infested shores and inlets were rich with furs. At the Tlingit settlement Shee-Aitka (Sitka), which would soon become a new trading center for the region, he disposed of all his trade goods, including fifty gallons of molasses his men had pressed at Kauai. By mid-July, he started south for Nootka. Perhaps having been told by native people that there was no passage eastward, or chastened by the fruitless British search, he made no further explorations for the mythical waterway. He concentrated instead on securing his American outpost.
DISMAYED BY THE NEWS of war and revolution, and with his health breaking down, Vancouver reluctantly reached a final determination about the Northwest Passage as well. On August 16, 1794, in a harbor near the southern end of Baronof Island named “Port Conclusion,” he finally declared their momentus search at an end. “Following up the discoveries of De Fuca, De Fonte and a numerous train of hypothetical navigators,” he had found no Northwest Passage. What he had discovered was a foggy, wild, thickly forested coastline congested with islands and countless blind inlets peopled by fierce tribes. Upon the announcement, the crew celebrated with “no small portion of facetious mirth.” The next day, seeking to give import to their endless mapping, the survey crews went ashore and raised their flag. With three musket volleys, “and all the other formalities usual on such occasions” Vancouver took possession of the area from New Georgia (the mainland at the southern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca) northwestward to Cape Spencer (Cross Sound) and all the islands within that thousand-mile stretch of coast for “His Britannic Majesty, his heirs, and successors.” It was a grand symbolic gesture, and an attempt to match what he had accomplished at Hawaii.
On August 22, the ships started south to Nootka in heavy fog and adverse winds. At six in the evening on Tuesday, September 2, the Discovery anchored at Friendly Cove. The Chatham did not arrive until after dark. At anchor in the cove were the Spanish ships Princesa, Aranzazu, and San Carlos and the British traders Phoenix and Prince Lee Boo, as well as John Kendrick with the Lady Washington.
THE EFFECTS OF THE MASSIVE MAY STORM were still evident along the shore at Yuquot. Uprooted trees and flotsam littered the shore. Cavernous washouts marred the fields where gardens had been planted, and then replanted. A few Mowachaht houses were planked and occupied, and a stained sailcloth tent stood in the north corner of the cove on the ground John Meares had claimed. Beside it, Kendrick had the Washington laid up on the beach, graving her hull.
By now, Kendrick had heard of the disappearance of the Resolution. Loss of a ship and her crew was a fact of life at sea, but the loss of a son or a loved one left a hollow feeling of unfinished business. There were many unanswered questions. Roberts had take
n the Jefferson to Canton in August without coming south, so there was no opportunity to ask him what search had been made, or any details of the fate of Solomon and his ten crewmates. Everything was hearsay.
Kendrick had some consolation in his anguish. His eldest son, now known as Juan Kendrick, had arrived as master of the Spanish frigate Aranzazu. Twenty-five years old, he had worked his way up from junior officer and pilot. During the last five years he had spent much time in Mexico, run supply trips to the California missions, and crossed the Pacific to Manila with the captured Princess Royal.
In an odd encounter at the Sandwich Islands, Juan and the pilot Manuel Quimper had engaged in a standoff with James Colnett, who was making his final, fateful passage to Macao after his release from San Blas. Colnett demanded they turn over the Princess Royal to him or he would blow them out of the water. Juan Kendrick went on board the Argonaut to negotiate. With his usual tragic blundering, Colnett seized him and then sent demands written in English to Quimper that no one could translate. In an attempt to end the foolishness, Quimper went on board the Argonaut and convinced Colnett to receive the Princess Royal at Macao.
The story may have amused the elder Kendrick, but it could not make the reunion with his son anything but bittersweet. There was more than the loss of Solomon. Although Juan was well stationed at the moment, he served a foreign king who was at war. Kendrick might have asked himself if it would have been better to leave both sons at home with land and a plow. He had lost good men on the Avenger, and now Solomon. He did not want to lose his eldest son. More than enough had been sacrificed on this far side of the world. His judgment and emotions were probably clouded. Even though it was a sailor’s common fate to disappear and never be seen again, as a father, he may have held out hope that some of the crew had survived and Solomon might miraculously turn up.
What he didn’t know was that the little schooner had been overwhelmed in July at a village in the Queen Charlotte Islands. All of the crew except one were massacred by a group led by Coyah, a chief named Scotsi, and his brother. Coyah had known that Kendrick’s son was aboard. Juan Kendrick learned of the massacre later, and in 1798 he and others who had lost relatives or friends on the Resolution would exact revenge on these chiefs.
His father would hear only rumors as he focused on getting the
Washington ready for sea. Kendrick had been away from home for seven years now. This would be his fifth trans-Pacific voyage. His eldest son would have seen as no one else how the years had begun to weigh on the massive shoulders of his father. Juan had told Estevan Martinez years before that John Kendrick was sacrificing wealth for glory. The sacrifice had become much more than wealth, and he had gained no glory. Following the lead of whatever letters he had received from his mother, Juan most likely urged his father to turn homeward and, like Odysseus, at least retake his position and good name from those who had tried to destroy him.
There were many appealing reasons to go. The Washington had two seasons of furs in her hold, and more than eighty pounds of ambergris from Oahu (if he had not traded it to another ship). The ambergris alone was worth as much as sixteen thousand dollars. Kendrick had his trade alliances and his five deeds for much of the land along the coast. In the Sandwich Islands, his men were in place and had established friendships with the chiefs. He could head homeward and return with the ships he wanted to ply the coast, securing the American outposts and the Sandwich Island trade.
There was also a way to redeem himself with Joseph Barrell, although he was not aware of it. Waiting at Macao was a letter from Barrell. He had considered Kendrick’s offer to purchase the Lady Washington, and wrote that if Kendrick “would send [him] to any part of the Continent 400 chests of Bohea Tea of the best quality, he paying the freight” (a total of about fourteen thousand dollars for the cargo), Barrell would discharge him.
Barrell told a partner: “I place no dependence on this, but am told he can procure the tea if he wishes it & Mr. Hoskins, who went on the second voyage of Columbia, is of the opinion that Kendrick will yet turn out an honest man …”
Kendrick may have taken Barrell’s offer to purchase the rugged ship. But it was unlikely he would sail homeward if there were any chance of not returning to the Pacific. At the village of Wareham, or in the streets of Boston, he would be expected to act the part of a modest churchgoing merchant. He was a king here, immersed in the horrors and pleasures and ever-present dangers of a frontier. The wilderness on the far side of the world had become part of him, and his work was not yet finished. At the heart of the glory he sought, he was shaping a Pacific outpost and a legacy for the new nation.
Perhaps from the beginning of the voyage, long before he saw this coast and the islands, the dreamer in him knew there would be no turning back. Although this season had become darker and more dismal than ever before, he held to his faith in the importance of his mission. As so often happened in the bleakest moments of his life, something now appeared that would lift the cloud of misery and throw his prospects wide open.
Two days before Vancouver arrived at Nootka, the Princesa came into the sound carrying Brigadier General Don José Manuel Alava as newly appointed governor of Nootka. Bodega y Quadra had died of a lingering illness in Mexico, and Alava had come at last to complete negotiations with Vancouver. The Third Nootka Convention had been signed in London on January 11, 1794. As the conflagration in Europe brought Britain and Spain together as allies, the agreement became one that would allow both nations to save face. Meares’s land would be handed over to Britain; Spain would dismantle the village and forts of San Miguel and San Rafael; a British flag would be raised and lowered; and then, surprisingly enough, both nations would abandon the sound.
Kendrick would be left unhampered by foreign nations on the coast. While Europe was at war, fewer British traders would appear, and he and other American vessels would have an opportunity for expanding a monopoly on trade. This would be certain to attract American merchants. And what might he expect from his letter to Jefferson, with copies of his deeds? What opportunities might lie in the fur-rich waters of southern Alaska and Sitka, or for whaling?
Both Alava and Vancouver were awaiting final instructions. The documents were expected at any time, but Alava’s orders were to sail for Monterey if the packet ship did not arrive with his papers before October 15. Vancouver hauled out the Discovery and began repairs as they waited.
THE WEATHER DID NOT SEEM quite as gloomy during that first week in September. The rain that fell continuously during the day usually cleared in the evening. At night a light breeze drifted off the land. When the clouds broke for a few days, the crew of the Washington was able to make headway on their ship. By September 11, no instructions had arrived for Alava, but Juan Kendrick came to his father and said he had received orders to take the Aranzazu south to San Blas. He was carrying a letter from Vancouver to the Admiralty, stating that the expedition had completed its survey of the Northwest Coast and the British captain was awaiting orders on a final settlement with Spain.
In the midst of that rain and gloom, father and son embraced as they had five years before, perhaps promising to send letters through passing ships between San Blas and Macao or Kealakekua, but sure of nothing, except that the seasoned American captain would continue to pursue his costly and uncertain glory.
Once the Washington was repaired, Kendrick most likely went up to Mawina. Maquinna would have told him how Vancouver and Alava had come to see him at Tahsis in armed boats to explain that they were leaving. His warriors had brought out all their guns and performed a dance to celebrate, perhaps to reinforce the wisdom of the decision. Maquinna’s people were well on the way to recovery from the previous winter. He might have envisioned for Kendrick how they would reclaim Yuquot, dismantling what the Spanish left behind and returning things to the way they had always been.
WITH THE APPROACH OF THE FALL EQUINOX, the weather remained unpredictable. Sudden showers and squalls blew in off the ocean and the winds increased. On
the evening of Sunday, October 5, a ship appeared, which was thought to be the overdue Spanish packet but turned out to be the Jackall. Brown had collected a thousand prime sea otter skins in his cruise to the north. Vancouver hosted him on board and told him of the claim he had made to the thousand miles of coast for King George. Then he told him of the plan to abandon Nootka. The irony that Spain and Britain had almost gone to war over a port that would now be abandoned must have struck both men. The obvious question for Brown was who would protect him against hostility here on the coast and against interlopers in his claimed domain in the Leeward Islands, especially if Kendrick continued to expand his influence or brought in other American ships.
Vancouver’s health was worsening, and Brown realized there was nothing more the British commander could do. He would be on his own. On October 15, after deciding that the Spanish packet was not coming, Vancouver had his men pack up the tents and instruments onshore. At midnight on October 16 the Discovery and the Chatham were towed out of the cove headed for Monterey. The Princesa, with Salvador Fidalgo and Governor Alava, departed the next day.
The Lady Washington lay snug in Safe Retreat Harbor at Mawina. Kendrick and several men from his original crew had outlasted all the commanders and leaders of other expeditions: Estevan Martinez, John Meares, James Colnett, Bodega y Quadra, Fidalgo, and Vancouver. And now they would contend with Brown.
Awaiting a break in the weather, and perhaps hoping for some further word of Solomon, Kendrick stayed late on the coast. Finally, taking the night breeze through Mawina’s narrow channel, under stars that filled the sky and dark waters, they cruised past the forested cliffs along the shore. At the mouth of the cove below the crude log fort, only the San Carlos could be seen at anchor. Brown’s Jackall and Prince Lee Boo had already left for Oahu.