CHAPTER XXVI.
AN HISTORIC STEAMER.
The following interesting account of the historic steamer Beaver, the first to round the Horn into the Pacific, will be read by native sons as well as pioneers with renewed interest, as it is many years since this account was published.
The Beaver lay off the old Customs House for a long time, until taken by the Admiralty for hydrographic work. When done with for that purpose she was sold for mercantile purposes again.
For some years she was in charge of my old friend, Captain "Wully Mutchell," as he was called by his friends, and he had many, for he was as jolly as a sandboy and always joking, in fact more like a man of fifty instead of eighty, as he really was.
"More than thirty-nine years have passed and a generation of men have come and gone since the Hudson’s Bay Company’s steamer Beaver, whose sale was chronicled yesterday, floated with the tide down the River Thames, through the British Channel, and went out into the open, trackless sea, rounded Cape Horn, clove the placid waters of the Pacific Ocean, and anchored at length, after a passage that lasted one hundred and sixty-three days, at Astoria on the Columbia River, then the chief ‘town’ on the Pacific Coast. Built and equipped at a period when the problem of steam marine navigation was yet to be solved, is it any wonder that the little steamer which was destined to traverse two oceans—one of them scarcely known outside of books of travel—was an object of deep and engrossing interest from the day that her keel was first laid until the morning when she passed out of sight amidst the encouraging cheers of thousands gathered on either shore, and the answering salvoes of her own guns, on a long voyage to an unknown sea?
"Titled men and women watched the progress of construction. King William and 160,000 of his loyal subjects witnessed the launch. A Duchess broke the traditional bottle of champagne over the bow and bestowed the name she has ever since proudly worn. The engines and boilers, built by Bolton and Watt (Watt was a son of the great Watt) were placed in their proper positions on board, but it was not considered safe to work them on the passage; so she was rigged as a brig and came out under sail. A bark accompanied her as convoy to assist in case of accident; but the Beaver set all canvas, ran out of sight of her ‘protector,’ and reached the Columbia twenty-two days ahead. Captain Home was the name of the first commander of the Beaver; he brought her out, and we can well imagine the feeling of pride with which he bestrode the deck of his brave little ship, which carried six guns—nine-pounders. The Beaver, soon after reaching Astoria, got up steam, and after having ‘astonished the natives’ with her performances, sailed up to Nisqually, then the Hudson’s Bay Company’s chief station on the Pacific. Here Captain McNeil (now commander of the Enterprise), took command of the Beaver, and Captain Home, retiring to one of the Company’s forts on Columbia River, perished in 1837 in Death’s Rapids by the upsetting of a boat. From that period until the steamer passed into the hands of the Imperial hydrographers, the history of the Beaver was that of most of the Company’s trading vessels. She ran north and south, east and west, collecting furs and carrying goods to and from the stations for many years. Amongst the best known of her officers during that period were Capt. Dodds, Capt. Brotchie, Capts. Scarborough, Sangster, Mouat and others, all of whom passed away long since, but have left their names behind them. We believe we are correct in saying that not a single person who came out in the Beaver in 1835 is now alive; and nearly all the Company’s officers, with a few exceptions, who received her on her arrival at Columbia River, are gone, too.
"Yesterday, through the courtesy of Capt. Rudlin (one of her new owners and future commander) we visited the old ship. On board we met the venerable Captain William Mitchell, who has had charge of the vessel for some years. He was busily engaged in packing his clothes into chests preparatory to going ashore. He remembers well the Beaver in her early days. Every room, every plank possesses historic interest to him. He pointed out the Captain’s room. ‘Just the same,’ said he, ‘as when I first saw it in ’36. There’s the chest of drawers, there’s the bunk, and there’s the hook where the Captain’s pipe hung, and many’s the smoke I’ve had in these cabins nearly forty years ago. Nothing below has been changed,’ continued Captain Mitchell, ‘except—except the faces that used to people these rooms in the days long ago, and’—pointing to his thin, gray locks—‘I was a deal younger then!’ He led the way into the engine-room, chatting pleasantly as he went and relating incidents connected with the Beaver and her dead people of an interesting character which we may some day give to the world. There are two engines, of seventy-five horse-power, as bright and apparently as little worn as when they first came from the shop of Bolton and Watt. From some cuddy hole the Captain drew forth the ship’s bell, on which was inscribed ‘Beaver, 1835;’ then he showed us into the little forecastle with the hammock-hooks still attached to the timbers, from which had swung two generations of sailors. Then the main deck was regained and we took leave of the gallant old gentleman and Captain Rudlin, who informed us that the Beaver will be taken alongside of Dickson, Campbell & Co.’s wharf to-day to undergo the important changes necessary to the new trade in which she will henceforth be employed."