Chapter II.
THE ENGLISH PLANS FOR OCCUPYING NOOTKA SOUND.

As early as 1785 instructions were given looking toward the establishment of an English trading post on Nootka Sound. In this year an English commercial company instructed the commander of one of its vessels to establish a post on the northwest coast of America for “securing the trade of the continent and islands adjacent.” King Georges [Nootka] Sound was suggested as being “in every respect consistent with the intent of forming such establishment.”[6]

The fur trade between the western coast of America and China was at the time in its infancy, but the profits accruing from it soon made it of great importance. Captain Cook, in his voyage of 1778, had brought the possibility of the industry to the attention of English shipowners. “By the accidental carrying away of a small collection of furs, whose great value was learned in Siberia and China, he originated the great fur trade which became the chief incentive of all later English and American expeditions to these regions.”[7] He remained a month in Nootka Sound. A number of English expeditions visited the place between this date and 1789, as did also several Spanish, French, and American. Only such of them will be discussed as have a direct bearing on the Nootka Sound controversy, and these only at such places in the narrative as their bearing becomes important. A sufficiently full account of the others may be found in the first volume of Bancroft’s “History of the Northwest Coast.”

The first English expedition to claim serious attention is that of 1788. It was commanded by John Meares,[8] a retired lieutenant of the royal navy. Two years before this he had been placed in charge of an expedition to the same coast by some merchants under the protection of the East India Company.[9] He had two vessels, the Nootka, commanded by himself, and the Sea Otter, commanded by a subordinate. The latter was lost at sea. The former spent the winter of 1786-87 in Prince William Sound, on the Alaskan coast, where, according to Meares’s account, the most terrible hardships were suffered, and so many of the crew were lost that not enough remained to man the ship.[10] After disposing of his cargo of furs in China[11] he made preparations for the expedition of the following year, during which he set up the first English establishment on the coast. It was this post which, rightly or wrongly, furnished the chief basis for the stubborn persistence of the English ministry in its demands on Spain in the controversy two years later. The purpose of discussing this expedition is to study what Meares did at Nootka and find just what rights, if any, were thereby acquired for England.

It was intended that this expedition should be preliminary to the planting of an English commercial colony. In mentioning the fact that one vessel was destined to remain out much longer than the other, Meares says that she was to leave the coast of America at the close of the year and go to the Sandwich Islands for the winter. The next year she was “to return to America, in order to meet her consort from China with a supply of necessary stores and refreshments sufficient for establishing factories and extending the plan of commerce in which we were engaged.”[12] Probably to prove the feasibility of constructing such factories, Meares took with him on this preliminary trip the material and workmen for building a small trading vessel, which would necessitate the erection of some sort of establishment to protect the workmen and tools during the process of construction. In the instructions for the voyage no mention is made of the vessel to be constructed or of any establishment, either temporary or permanent, but plans were laid for a second expedition. Speaking of the proposed meeting of the two vessels constituting the expedition, which meeting was to be at Nootka at the close of the summer trading season of 1788 previous to the sailing of one vessel to China with the furs collected, the proprietors instructed Meares to appoint “a time and place of rendezvous, that you may receive the instructions and refreshments we may send you next season.”[13]

The larger vessel, the Felice, was commanded by Meares and was to proceed directly to Nootka, arriving as early as possible and remaining the entire season at Nootka and in the neighborhood. During the summer of 1788 it is this vessel and the operations of its commander that furnish the center of interest. The second vessel, the Iphigenia, commanded by Captain Douglas, subject to Meares’s orders, was to spend most of the trading season on the coast of Alaska in Cooks River and Prince William Sound. When trade should slacken she was to move southward, endeavoring to reach Nootka Sound by September 1, where the two vessels were to meet.[14] During the first season the voyage of the Iphigenia is unimportant, but on its return to Nootka from the Sandwich Islands in 1789 it furnishes for a time the chief interest.

It is well to notice at the outset the double instructions and the double national character of the expedition, though the importance of the fact will become more evident later. As far as the instructions to Meares are concerned, or his repetition of them to Douglas, the ships were purely English in character, Daniel Beale, of Canton, China, being the ostensible agent. But later, when one of them came into conflict with the Spaniards, it was just as purely Portuguese to all external appearances. It was flying Portuguese colors and was commanded by a Portuguese captain, with instructions in his own language, given by a merchant of the same nationality living at Macao, China.[15] In these papers the real commanders appeared as supercargoes.

In Meares’s narrative of the voyage no mention is made of the deception, but later, in his memorial to the British Government, he said that it was “to evade the excessive high port charges demanded by the Chinese from all other European nations excepting the Portuguese.”[16] Dixon, in one of his pamphlets, says that the principal motive in using the Portuguese colors was to evade the South Sea Company’s license.[17] Bancroft mentions both of these motives and suggests that the trick is not permissible unless directed against a hostile nation in time of war.[18] It seems to have been expected that it would enable them to avoid some anticipated danger or difficulty. However, as will be seen, this very double nationality was the first thing to arouse suspicion and get the Iphigenia into trouble.