NOTABLE ANNIVERSARIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1942, Page 4

NOTABLE ANNIVERSARIES

IN NORTH-WESTERN AMERICA. VOYAGES OF 150 YEARS AGO. Two important sesquicentennials occur in 1942 which are a part of North American history as en acted on the West Coast, (Kate Archibald wrote recently in the “Christian Science Monitor”). With a world war in progress there has been little time for celebration of the discoveries made in 1792 by Captain George Vancouver of the British Navy and of Captain Robert Gray of the United States, merchant marine. Captain Gray’s expedition for purpose of trading with the Indian of the Northwest for furs was authorised by George Washington. In May, 150 years ago, Gray sailed into the harbour on the Washington coast that now bears his name. In the same month, he discovered the entrance to a mighty river which he named Columbia after his ship. Captain Vancouver, at the same time, was making discoveries to the north. He sailed into the Strait of Juan de / Fiica and discovered the Gulf of Georgia, named Vancouver Island, and sailing to the south named the water he found there after Peter Puget and most of the larger mountains and water-ways after other members of ’ the British Royal Navy. Captain Gray called the harbour after Charles Bulfinch of Boston, part owner of the ship, Columbia. That auP umn, Captain Vancouver ordered Lieutenant Joseph Whidbey, for whom Whidby Island was named, to go down and “examine Gray’s Harbour.” He wrote it down that way and as his charts were published and Gray’s were not. the name prevailed. Lieutenant Whidbey (a thrifty pioneer postmistress dropped the “e” and made it “Whidby” Island) on his visit to Grays Harbour observed a lone sentinel rock like a “flower pot.” Growing from this rock was a Sitka spruce and this same lone tree, centuries old, has been a landmark ever since until last year when it was torn lose by a high wind.

After Whidbey’s visit, Gray's Harbour history was closed for 32 years. There was only a trickle of settlers for years even after that. The word “harbour” is misleading in describing the great sheltered waters flanked by i the cities of Hoquiam and Aberdeen i with their industries producing lumber, ' pulp, plywood, rayon, fisheries, shipbuilding and, today, an important contribution of spruce for the Government’s war time need. The lone spruce presaged the spruce of today going into the framework of plane and gliders.