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In June of 1778, Captain James Cook had charted the broad outline of the Canadian Pacific Coast. A midshipman on that voyage was a determined thirty three year old by the name of George Vancouver. Shortly after returning to England from that voyage he set about planning a voyage of discovery of his own. His goal was to make a detailed charting of the Coast, following every inlet all the way to it’s head.
George Vancouver was born in England in 1758. He entered the Royal Navy at the age of thirteen. Soon he had secured an appointment with the greatest of all seamen, James Cook. He was with Cook on his voyage around the world in 1772-74.
Vancouver left from Falmouth, England on April 1, 1791 with 100 men. His fleet comprised two vessels – the Discovery and the Chatham. It took the voyagers a full year of sailing to reach the starting point of their expedition, a point just north of San Francisco Bay. Vancouver’s precise nature is indicated by the fact that before anything else he took 85 lunar observations in order to establish his position with certainty.
Vancouver would work directly from his ships if possible, making slow advance as he plotted the harbours. Vancouver was meticulous in his work. At one point he and his officers rowed 700 miles into fjords in order to plot their outline. An average advance rate for the ships, however, was just five miles per day.
Vancouver, like James Cook before him, had initially missed the mouth of Columbia River. An American Sea Captain by the name of Robert Gray had earlier came across what he believed to be the mouth of a great river. Vancouver’s ships happened across Gray onboard his own vessel, The Columbia. Gray told him about the great river he had found. Shortly thereafter, Gray returned to the area and, managing to get his ship over the sandbar that blocked the mouth of the river and sailed up. He travelled about 20 miles then turned around. He also claimed the river for the United States and named it after his ship, The Columbia.
The records made by Vancouver and Gray with regard to the course of the Columbia River were of great interest to Thomas Jefferson. It did, in fact, encourage him in his plans for a westward crossing expedition. When he set out Meriwether Lewis and William Clark a few years later, he made sure that they had copies of the charts made by both men.
In October, 1792 Vancouver himself approached the mouth of the Columbia. Unfortunately Vancouver’s ship, The Discovery, was too big to cross the sandbar. However, the smaller ship commanded by Lt. William Robert Broughton managed to cross the sandbar and sailed about 100 miles up the river. He got as far as a point opposite modern day Portland, Oregon. He named the area Point Vancouver.
During the harsh Canadian winters, the voyagers would spend their time in Hawaii. But still, for Vancouver there was no rest. He made the first accurate survey of the Hawaiian islands. In the Spring he and his men returned to charting the Pacific Coast of Canada. Three years after they had set off from England the map makers came to the end of their assignment. The plotting concluded at Port Conclusion, which was just north of the present Canadian / Alaskan border. It took until October of 1795 for them to return home to England. In the four and a half years he had been away, Vancouver had mapped 1,700 miles of shore line. He also circumnavigated an island that was named in his honor. In the process he had pushed his men to the limit. They had sailed about 65,000 miles and rowed another 10,000 miles.
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