The Nootka Sound Controversy: A dissertation

by William R. Manning

This is a complete reversal of his decision quoted above from his letter of twenty-six days earlier. In his “Informe” of three years later the Viceroy cited in addition as grounds for his decision an article of the orders of the royal navy, and also a royal order of October 18, 1776, “to detain, seize, and prosecute any foreign ship which arrives in our ports of the South Sea.”[192]

A royal order had been finally given, March 23, definitely instructing the Viceroy to liberate the captured ships. In a letter of June 26 Revilla-Gigedo said that the royal order of March 23 had been completely satisfied by his accounts of May 1 and 27. He was pleased that he had conformed so happily to the decisions of the King.[193]

According to Colnett’s published account, he found on his return to San Blas that the Argonaut was in a bad condition on account of the treatment she had received. He says that the Viceroy’s liberality in allowing wages was counterbalanced by the charges for maintenance, traveling expenses, medical assistance, and an allowance of eight months’ provisions. He says also that before he was allowed to sail he was compelled to sign a paper expressing his complete satisfaction with their usage.[194] That paper was signed July 8, 1790, and is as follows:

I have the honor of informing your excellency that to-day I have been dispatched from San Blas; and I also have the satisfaction of adding that I have reason to be content with the treatment of the commandant and commissary of this department.

With all proper submission, I ask permission of your excellency to add that the money which I have received here is little more than the amount of my individual loss, and is not the fifth part of the damages by the most moderate calculation. Since I shall have to turn matters over to the company which employs me, I hope that your excellency will have consideration in keeping with your known generosity, and will not allow them to suffer such losses.[195]

This, if true, indicates that Colnett’s apprehensions of illiberal treatment at San Blas were well founded. On his arrival at Nootka the Princess Royal was not there. June 11 of the next year she was dispatched from San Blas to be surrendered to Colnett or some other representative of the company in China.[196] Colnett fell in with her and she was handed over at the Sandwich Islands.[197]

This closes the Nootka affair as far as events on the American continent are concerned. Before the Viceroy had finally decided to liberate the prisoners, the matter had been taken up by the home Governments, and all Europe was ablaze with excitement over an expected war. The center of interest now shifts to the diplomatic controversy, which is the most important phase of the Nootka incident.[198]

What has been discussed so far might be briefly summarized as follows: As far as discoveries and explorations, which could give definite claims, are concerned, the Spanish were the earlier; but the English were made in ignorance of the Spanish, and the results of the English were published first. Spain could claim a prescriptive title from the fact that she had maintained for so long an undisputed claim, and from the additional fact that the land was contiguous to her settled Mexican dominions; but the English were the first to attempt to develop the country by exploiting the fur trade. The first actual establishment was made by the English, and, although it was temporarily abandoned in the autumn, it was with the evident intention of renewing, enlarging, and making it permanent in the spring; but unfortunately for what was, in the autumn of 1789, an unquestionably superior claim, it was counterbalanced by the arrival of a Spanish expedition in the spring of 1790, a few days before the English returned to resume their occupation, and when there were no signs of previous or intended occupation. The fact that the Spanish expedition was public while the English was private, favored the former. From these recapitulations it is plain that there was abundant ground for disputing the respective rights.

As to the justice or injustice of the seizures at Nootka, there is also room for dispute. The Iphigenia, by pretending to be a Portuguese when she was really an English ship, aroused a just suspicion, and what was probably a harmless trick, meant solely to deceive the Celestials, assumed a grave appearance when the added suspicion of piracy was aroused. But this suspicion of piracy was based on a mistake made by the Spaniard in translating the ship’s instructions. Having seized her on the ground of this double suspicion, for the sake of consistency and to hide his blunder, Martinez justified his rash act on a totally different ground, but one which was plausible from the Spanish view. When the Argonaut arrived her captain made the mistake of rashly declaring his purpose before he knew his opponent’s strength, and of manifesting too much impatience to get out of the power of a man who would probably have allowed him to depart in peace had he been patient. Then a quarrel, caused largely by the mistakes of a blundering interpreter, ended in the Spaniard’s making another rash seizure, this one without so much as having had the Englishman’s papers translated.