the
UARTERDECK
Vol. 18 No. 4
Summer 1992
A review and newsletter from the Columbia River Maritime Museum at 1792 Marine Drive in Astoria, Oregon
H.M. armed tender Chatham and the Bristol schooner Jenny in Baker's Bay in early November 1792. When Lt. William Broughton of the Vancouver expedition entered the river in October of that year, he found the Jenny already there at anchor in the bay behind the northern cape at the river's entrance. Painting by Hewitt Jackson, copyright 1965, in the Edmund Hayes Collection of the Oregon Historical Society. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
The Arrival of the British on Columbia's River After entering and naming Columbia's River in May of 1792, American fur trader Robert Gray departed, never to return . With him, however, he took a rough chart of the lower river, which he deposited in the hands of Don Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, Spanish governor at Nootka and a personal friend of Gray's . Bodega later delivered the chart to George Vancouver as proof the American had found what Vancouver earlier in the year had disparaged-the entrance to a great river inside the perilous breakers of "Deception Bay" at the 46th parallel.
Gray's discovery confirmed what the Spanish mariner Bruno Hezeta had suspected in 1775. By conveying the chart to Vancouver, Bodega y Quadra officially alerted his British counterpart that American rights of discovery in this matter had been duly noted by the other major European power in the region. In the autumn of 1792, Vancouver's flotilla came down the coast. The Chatham entered Columbia's River, there to find British fur trader Capt. James Baker in the 3-masted schooner Tenny. Thus marks one of the lingering mysteries of early Northwest history .
Vancouver's journals indicate the Tenny had traded in the river earlier that year. Could it have been before Robert Gray found his way across the bar? The question has long been unsettled. This ambiguity seems to have been encouraged by the British during their long efforts to secure the Oregon Country. Lt. Broughton, after rowing and charting the river 100 miles inland, even maintained the actual entrance to the river was above the estuary at Skamokawa, in which case Gray never entered the river at all. Join us now as we turn our attention to the British on Columbia's River.