the
UARTERDECK
Vol. 23, No. 1
Winter 1997
A review and newsletter from the Columbia River Maritime Museum at 1792 Marine Drive in Astoria, Oregon
The Shark's crew continued their surveys while waiting for transportation out ofAstoria. This tinted lithograph, illustrating the landscape as it may have appeared to the surveyors, helped spread the image ofthe new lands ofthe west to curious readers around the nation. "Cape Horn, Columbia River," ca. 1854-61 by Saxony, Major & Knapp, Lithographers (1971.67.2).
ASTORIA IN 1846: ''Sharkville" In this issue, we return to "Sharkville" to conclude Burr Osborn's account of the wreck of the U.S. Navy Survey Schooner Shark and the crew's subsequent sojourn in the young settlement of Astoria. This is not only an entertaining piece ofreading, but also a significant recollection of a pivotal time. Several references to events in 1846-184 7 reveal that the young man's experience intersected often with significant people and major events in the opening of the West. Indeed, the Shark's very presence on the lower Columbia was part of the U.S. military's effort to map, chart and survey the Oregon Territory, at a time when the decades-long joint occupation with the British was ending. The second part of Osborn's account of Astoria covers a wide variety of topics. He examines Chinookan burial customs, and alludes to cross-cultural misunderstandings between natives and white settlers that almost led to violence. While the shipwrecked American crew sheltered in Fort George with the regular inhabitants of the post, who were in fact British subjects, the boundary
question between the United States and Britain was being played out in diplomatic circles. Also at the same time that Osborn and his cronies whiled away the rainy autumn, the renowned explorer John Charles Fremont was leading a detachment of men overland to San Francisco to fight Mexico for the annexation of California. Although the crew did not join Fremont's expedition, they finally left by sea - bidding "adieu to Sharkville" to embark aboard the Hudson's Bay Co. schooner Cadboro for a chartered voyage to San Francisco. In an ironic turn of events, after more than two months in Astoria the crew waited almost as long aboard the Cadboro for a chance to leave the Columbia River! These allusions make Osborn's account an historically rich tale. Read it for entertainment, or read it for fact - or simply to enjoy a reminiscence of a time when Astoria was a raw, politically uncertain settlement clinging to the edge of a vast and largely unknown continent. Turn to page 6.