VANCOUVER AND HIS VOYAGES

Evening Star, Issue 22447, 18 September 1936, Page 12

VANCOUVER AND HIS VOYAGES

On a leaden October afternoon in the year 1780, two small Whitby colliers came to anchor at the Nore, says a writer in the 1 News Chronicle.’ Seen from the small boats that came out to them, these two ships presented a strange sight. For their sails were torn, patched, and tattered; their hulls weatherbeaten and denuded of the last remnant of protective paint. And those who were first aboard saw a sight no less fantastic. For officers and men, so long accustomed to their condition as to be unaware of its strangeness, were seen to be clad in ancient apparel, relics of patched and faded naval uniforms, by the gaudy silks and cottons of China. In this manner the two ships of Captain Cook’s last voyage came into the Thames. They came without their leader, for Cook was killed on the shore of Kealakekua Bay, in the Sandwich Isles Among those weatherbeaten men who now looked, after four years, on the English scene, was George Vancouver, the young officer who had been beside Cook when he fell, and who could boast, at 23, of eight years’ sea service under Cook. Because this summer the city of Vancouver celebrates its golden jubilee, and the Lord Mayor of London, goes in state to unveil a statue of him, interest in Captain Vancouver has been revived. What sort of man was he? Why has he been for so long neglected? To answer these questions it is necessary to have some idea of the conditions of naval service in those days. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, boys destined for commissioned rank did not serve as midshipmen. They might be rated as A. 8., or as master’s mate, and during the years of apprenticeship served generally in several ratings. They were, in a sense, young gentlemen of the quarter-deck, but they fared as roughly as the grown men among whom they lived and worked. It was a system that made men. but one which also killed them. Tuberculosis and the diseases of _ malnutrition were rife, and if curiosity takes you to the D.N.8., you will note how few of these old navigators made old bones. Vancouver’/s character: was moulded during the formative years by two great men. The first was, of course, Cook; the second, William Wales, one time a master at Charterhouse, and later Astronomer Royal. Wales went with Cook in order to witness the transit of Venus. He taught Vancouver navigation. But, if Wales taught Vancouver his business as one of the first of the scientific seamen, Cook was also making his mark upon Vancouver’s mind. Exploration, for Cook, was not a matter of annexing distant territories for the British flag. When the two little ships mentioned above set out they carried sheep and pigs and fowl, plants and seeds, and, as well, mirrors :.nd beads, knives, and axes, and other articles new from the factories springing up to make history as the industrial revolution. Cook believed in his mission to act as a pollen-bearing bee, but his pollen was the pollen of ideas, too. And Vancouver, an apt pupil, followed in his master’s steps. For example, when, himself a commander, he visited again the Sandwich Islands—the Hawaiian Islands of to-day—he surveyed them first and then proceeded to teach the islanders who killed Cook the rudiments of law and order.

Vancouver’s peak achievement was the laying down of the coastline from Southern California to Northern Alaska, a task that undermined his health and in large measure led to his death at the early age of 41.

When he returned from this great voyage he was already a dying man. But he took with characteristic seriousness the command of the Admiralty that he should write a record of his voyage. Settling in Richmond, he set about this task. He produced a work that went into six large volumes, doing this unwonted literary work with the same thoroughness as he did all else.