Northwest Maritime Revival Celebrating the Role of Small Craft in the Age of Exploration and Encounter by Gregory Foster When the tiny British fleet under Captain George Vancouver abreast the Ship, haul'd our wind for itt, observed two sand arrived on the Northwest Coast of North America in 1792, bars making off, with passage between them to a fine river. little did anyone suspect the curtain was about to rise on the Out pinnace and sent her in ahead and followed with the Ship longest and most intricate charting expedition ever underunder short sail . .. the River extended to the NE as far as eye taken . Over the ensuing three years, Vancouver's quest for could reach, and water fit to drink as far down as the Bars, at the legendary Northwest Passage took his ships and boats the entrance. We directed our course up this noble river in into waters mysterious and baffling beyond all expectations, search of a Village. The beach was lin'd with Natives, who as he probed every strait, inlet, passage and sound between ran along the shore following the Ship . . . the Indians Oregon and Alaska ... the world's last temperate coastline informed us there was 50 villages on the banks of this river." to give up its secrets. Seven days later, Captain Gray named this waterway the It would have been an impossible mission, but for the superb Columbia's River, after his ship. Perhaps it should have been skills ofV ancouver' s mariners, assistance from the native people named "Columbia's Pinnace River." Three weeks earlier, while along the way, and the services of eight small open boats at his wintering base at Clayoquot Sound, in present-day British propelled by oar and sail. Indeed the launches, cutters, yawl and Columbia, Gray had experienced a midnight surprise attack by jolly boats carried on the Discovery and Chatham-together a large number of natives, local tribes with whom friendly with their counterparts from the Spanish explorations being relations had existed all that winter. When, however, the forces conducted at the same time-are perhaps the real heroines of the of Chief Wickananish realized the Americans had been alerted, epic. While the mother ships groped their way up 2,000 miles of they retreated. Gray did not forget what he evidently considered perilous seaboard in roughly linear fashion, the ship 's boats a betrayal . On his departure from the encampment a month later, covered 10,000 miles exploring every nook and cranny of this Gray destroyed the unoccupied native village of Opitsat, in challenging coast, virtually without mishap. retaliation for the threatened attack. On this occasion Boit The record of this amazing voyage is probably the greatest recorded with regret this very different kind of boat duty: small craft saga in the annals of seafaring, worthy to be "I am sorry to be under the necessity of remarking that this compared with the 3,600-mile open ocean odyssey of Captain day I was sent with three boats, all well man'd and arrn'd, Bligh with eighteen loyal seamen in a 23-foot ship's launch to destroy the Village of Opitsatah it was a Command I was following the mutiny on the Bounty. Yet for two hundred years no ways tenacious of, and am grieved to think Capt. Gray the achievement has gone unnoticed . shou ' d let his passions go so far. This Village was about half In the International Maritime Bicentennial currently ina mile in Diameter, and contained upwards of200 Houses, volving Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, the modgenerally well built for Indians every door that you enter' d em maritime world is paying tribute for the first time to these was in resemblance to an human and Beasts head, the valiant little vessels which routinely were expected to sound passage being through the mouth, besides which there was unknown channels ahead of the mother ship, tow her in calms, much more rude carved work about the dwellings some of carry out and retrieve her anchors, fill her water barrels, which was by no means innelegant. This fine Village, the provision her larder, fetch firewood for her galley stoves, ferry Work of Ages, was in a short time totally destroyed." passengers and cargo to and fro, conduct charting and fishing expeditions, and, in the event of shipwreck or Captain Secundino Salamanca, ofthe Galiano expedition of 1792, exploring in a men overboard, be called on for lifesaving duty. launch at the head of the inlet the Spanish named after him, later renamed At the same time, the Bicentennial is focusing re- Loughborough Inlet by the British. The Spanish were nervous at the massed newed attention on the superb Northwest Indian dugout approach of canoes, but the natives left without incident. (Drawing by Jose canoes and the seamanship of the native mariners, which Cardero, 1792, courtesy Museo Naval, Spain) reached their highest development on this magnificent coast. When the planked boats of the explorers encountered the dugout canoes of the Coast Indians, two of the world's important boatbuilding traditions met face to face in their heyday, and the splash of the oar and the dip of the paddle have been a basic rhythm in the music of Northwest waters ever since.
Looking Into the Journals Stirring episodes illustrate the capabilities-and sometimes the tragedies---ofboth the boats and canoes during the Age of Exploration and Encounter. When Captain Robert Gray 's fur-trading ship, the Columbia Rediviva out of Boston, became the first vessel to cross the treacherous bar of the long-sought River of the West in 1792, her pinnace was out ahead sounding the channel. Fifth mate John Boit's log revives the scene: "This day saw an appearance of a spacious harbour 16
SEA HISTORY 61, SPRING 1992