of wate r t hat roa red by th e m whe n mo untain o us seas b ro ke nearby. Earli er in the sto rmy passage H aswell had wo ndered in his jo urnal if he'd bee n wise to shift from the bi gge r Columbi a to the little Washington. She was co nstantl y awas h in surgin g icy wa ter in th ese extreme co nditions; in calm wate r, her deck was less than two fee t above th e surface, perilo usly li ttl e when co nfro ntin g breakin g seas runnin g 40 o r 50 fee t hi gh. H aswell notes that "our Sloo p scud ded exceedin gly well and suffered no o ther damage fro m th e sea than havin g her larboard [po rt] quarterb oa rds stove in ." T he next day, H aswell had to go o ut on the bowspri t, the w ind still bl owin g a gale, to repl ace a ji bs ray rhat had carried away in the blow. Sto rmy wea ther co ntinued rill mid-April , when the sea calmed, the sun sho ne and th e hands set about mendin g a to rn mainsail , repairin g other sto rm damage and dryin g o ut. Th e Columbia was nowhere to be seen, as th e Washington pursued her way no rthward toward Va nco uve r Island in wes tern Canada. So it turn ed out rhatthe little sloop Lady Washington, perhaps 60 feet long, became the fi rstAmerican vessel to carry the Am erica n Aag aro und Cape H orn- the fi rst in a lo ng process io n of ships which we re to change Am erican and wo rld history. G ray's seamanship had been outstanding th ro ugho ut this tempestuous passage. H e was a hard driver, piling canvas o n his vessel to hur ry her on her way, as attested to by th e lo ng passages m ade in short rim e spans by th e sloop under his command. H e p ushed his explo rations hard as well , taking the li ttle sloop and later the bigge r ship bo ld ly in to shoal wate rs and tricky harbo rs alo ng the un kn own coast, in a mann er that led to criti cal comments by the cautious H aswell o n more than one occas io n. O n 4 August 1788, Captain G ray wrote: "I made New AJ bio n in the Latitude of 4 1 degrees 36 minutes North ," o r about the same latitude as Boston, on the o ther side of the co ntin ent they had left ten mo nth s befo re. "New AJ bi on" was the name F rancis Drake had given what becam e the coast of Cal ifo rnia. We rake fo r granted that the West Coast is part of the U ni ted Stares, bur two hu ndred yea rs ago only a very few peopl e, li ke the vis ionary Ledyard, eve n d rea mt of the U ni red States as a continental nati o n. When Gray in the Washington arri ved ar Nootka So und, on Vancouver Island in
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what is today wes tern Canada, he found a British trader with two ships busily engaged in the fur trade wirh the Indians. Ashore a small schoo ner was under constructi on . N oo tka was becoming a m ajor center of rhe Indian trade of the ocean wo rld. W ithin a few yea rs fi ve nations would be acti ve in this remote cornerBrirain, Spain , France, R uss ia and rhe US. In the struggle fo r sovereignry the British won our over Spain , but o n this wild coast Am eri cans continued to trade freel y. So M o riso n tells us rhar in rhe pidgin English spoken o n "the Coast" (as Bostonians early on learn ed to call th e Pacific shore), America ns were ca lled "Bos to n men" to distingui sh th em fr o m "Kin gsh aursh (King Geo rge) men." T he dilatory Captain H endrick even tuall y jo in ed Gray in Noo rka. H e sent G ray ho me in co mm and of the ship Columbia, loaded with furs which she sold in C hin a. She then ro ok her way back to Boston by way of th e Cape of Good H ope, so beco min g the first Am erican vessel to sail around th e world. Kendrick took the Lady Washington on to C hina, where he re- rigged her as a brig, a square-rigged two-mas ted vessel, to repl ace the difficult-to-handle sloo p ri g with its enorm ous mainsail and huge bowspri t, which had carried her so fa r and so fas t under G ray's driving co mmand. Aboard this vessel Kendrick was accidem ally killed in an exchange of salutes in H awaii , where he had chose n to winter rather than return to Boston. The Colum bia Rediviva had no sooner returned in triumph fro m her three-year voyage than she was turn ed around and sent out on a second voyage, which las ted 179 0-1 793 under Gray's co mm and with H aswell as first mate. Part of her missio n was to see if she co uld find a back entrance to rhe fa bled No rth wes t Passage, now visualized in watered-down form as a great river, which might at least link up with the Hudson's Bay o r the American rivers wes t of the M iss iss ippi with a land po rtage betwee n. By this time the US Co nstituti o n had been ra tified, and Gray sail ed carrying a passpo rt signed by Pres ident Geo rge Washington and Secretary of State T ho mas Jefferson. And on 12 M ay 1792, the great ri ve r of which rhe Indians talked was indeed dis-
cove red, by Captain Gray. The Columbia picked her way through the sandbars at the river mouth, which have wrecked m any a tall ship and occas ional steamer, when in foul weather th e immense outpouring of fresh water enco unters rhe stron g Pacific w inds in a jumble of confused and dange ro us seas. On this occasion the weather was fin e, and, noted 17-year-oldJohn Bo it, ] r. , in his journal: "W e directed our course up this novel ri ver in search of a Village." Nati ves appeared, running along the banks to keep up with the ship, which th ey viewed "with th e greatest astonishment. " Th e mi ghty C olumbia River, which Captain G ray nam ed for his ship , opened the W est Coast for trade and settlemem , and irs discove ry by an American ship in the end ass ured the US clai m to what is today the American W est Coast. "On her first voyage," says Morison of rhis far-traveled ship, "the Columbia had sol ved the riddl e of rhe C hina trade. On her second, empire fo llowed in her wake. " Other American vessels began to filter into the Pacific, on other missions, beginnin g with the hum for whales. In August 179 1, the whale ship Beaver set out from the island ofNantucker, just off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. She was bo und for the Pacific by rhe sam e route in a mo re favo rable seaso n th an rh e Columbia and Washington. Nantucket sea captain s, havin g learned from the original W ampanoag Indians to catch whales off their sandy sho res, had developed a regul ar trade in whale oil which they shipped to coastal cities and ac ross the Atlantic to England. From En glish sources they learned of whales in the Pacific- and a yea r after the Beaver set sail there we re dozens of American wh aleships in the Pacific, most of them commanded by N antucket skippers.
A Floating Patrimony The perceptive French traveler, H ector Sr. John de C revecoeur, visiting N antucket in the 1770s, had sa id of rhe islanders rhat "the greatest part of their property is flo ating on the sea." Like the peopl e of Venice in the M editerranean , the Nantucketers took their sandbar settlem ent and m ade it into a thriving ho me po rt, or as N antucker' s great historian and bard the late Edouard Stackpole used to say, a "mother ship" to her flo ating imperium of small wooden ships scattered about the face of our ocean SEA HISTORY 86 AUTUMN 1998