6. Tales the Tonquin Tells

We will find no makúk in this next chapter of Clayoquot history, no meeting of minds and aspirations. Communication across cultural lines is one of humanity’s most stubborn problems. Gestures and verbal signs might express intentions and meanings, but they are commonly misinterpreted and misunderstood. Uncertainty can easily exist in these circumstances.¹⁴² Patterns of doing business on this coast were not known to the visitors, who knew the sea otter trade only by hearsay. In the event, trade broke down, a great ship was blown up, and nearly all aboard perished or were badly wounded. The story of the Tonquin has all the dimensions of a fateful encounter caused by cultural assumptions and misunderstandings, and it will continue to live on as a subject of fascination and mystery, a story of how badly matters can go wrong when communications break down and aspirations and expectations are not met, echoing down through the years.

Historians are itinerants. We wander through time and space, trying to make sense of how problems of the past arose in the first place, how they developed over time, and how they were resolved—if they were. These are long arcs of history. If there is spice to the story, some romance or even attention-getting tragedy, the work moves along a little more quickly and with some hoped-for intensity. Or we might run into a dead end. Many historians abandon the pursuit in despair, never manage to take up a second project.¹⁴³ On occasion, surprises present themselves. More often than not we historians soldier on alone, in quest of our particular version of the holy grail, but the world of the working historian is always enlivened when he or she meets an unusual and well-informed person in the history line. Here is an example, bearing directly on the Tonquin affair.

In late July 1968 I came in contact with Edmund Hayes of Portland, whose office was in the US National Bank Building. In those days, historians sent letters by mail to one another and expected something in return. We might even exchange offprints of articles. I was then an aspiring young lecturer at Western Washington State College (now Western Washington University) in Bellingham. I knew of Hayes as a persistent historical sleuth. I had written requesting a copy of the recently published issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly that contained his article about Fort Defiance and Adventure Cove, Clayoquot Sound. Hayes happily obliged me with a copy of the issue in question. In consequence, I had to hand much information about this early chapter in Clayoquot Sound and sea otter history when I came to write my own account of this incursion by Captains Gray and Kendrick into Vancouver Island’s waters, the building of the little schooner Adventure, and the destruction of Opitsat, Meares Island. Copies of maps, charts and photos, printed therein, also gave immediacy to my inquiries about the unsolved mystery of the Tonquin.

In his letter (July 30, 1968), Hayes proceeded to give an update and summary of his proceedings: “I returned the end of last week from an extended cruise up Vancouver Island’s West Coast, which I believe, is the 8th trip I have made to that interesting area. The main purpose of this cruise was to obtain information concerning the ship Tonquin which was sunk, presumably, in Clayoquot in 1811. The exact location of this vessel, as you undoubtedly know, has been very uncertain and sought by many others. I believe we obtained some fundamental information concerning the possible spot but as we only had one scuba diver, it was impossible to find any of her wreckage.”¹⁴⁴

As Rick said to the police chief Captain Renault, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” And indeed it was. A diversion is called for here. American philanthropy in regard to museums and galleries differs from the Canadian experience; tax law fully favours American benefactors in their pursuit of cultural excellence. Hence, nowadays, the United States has the Public Broadcasting System, sustained by big foundations and individuals; Canada has the CBC, backed by no foundations except the taxpayers of Canada. More significantly, Hayes was the powerhouse chair of the Oregon Historical Society board, and he and his business friends, without qualification, backed the energetic executive director, Thomas Vaughan, in making that organization into arguably the finest state museum, gallery and archives in the western United States. In contrast, it saddened me then, as it does now, how little support our wee Maritime Museum of British Columbia receives, suffering the death of a thousand cuts.

In 1978, ten years after my friendship with Hayes began, it brought me once more to the City of Roses, Portland, this time to speak at a conference on Oregon and the bicentenary of the United States. Two centuries before, in 1778, just at the time James Cook was visiting Nootka, the American patriots were in full revolt against King George III. What a contrast between affairs on the Atlantic seaboard and those of our distant, foggy coast. My task was to explain what British navigators were doing on the Northwest Coast and why they resisted so strongly Imperial Spain’s “pretensions” to full rights of trade and sovereignty. In this, my first publication about Nootka Sound, I filled in the basics of what British explorers and fur traders had experienced on this coast from 1778 to 1840.¹⁴⁵

Later I returned to Portland to speak on other themes and to work in the archives there, where, thanks to a munificent grant, many documents on John Meares, other fur traders and George Vancouver’s imperial mission had been copied from London archives. Americans do things in big ways, and they love heroes and heroines. At the Oregon Historical Society they knew all about my sea otter ships and their captains, all about trade to celestial China: Soft Gold they entitled the exhibition they mounted some years later—all about the sea otter business and vital cultural exchanges between Northwest Coast Natives and early European traders and explorers.¹⁴⁶

But to return to benefactor Hayes—and indeed to a related story—he was then so attracted to the story of the Tonquin in Meares Island waters that he arranged to have the acknowledged dean of maritime artists of the Northwest Coast, Hewitt Jackson, prepare plans and make a model of the Tonquin for the Oregon Historical Society. You will find it there on display to this day. Hayes opened his wallet, wrote all the cheques. And what a fabulous model it is, based on the most thorough research and demanding the most exquisite construction. I attended the opening of that exhibition. Later I wangled an invitation to visit the reclusive and fearful Jackson to see his plans, drawings and models and discuss marine history with the living legend. I say “fearful” because he worried, perhaps with due reason, that his work was being pirated, used without credit or recompense. And here’s the next part of the story.

In 1981, by appointment, I climbed the stairs of Hewitt Jackson’s white clad house in Kirkland, Washington, to meet the great artist. I was welcomed by a cautious person in his late sixties bearing a happy countenance of fair and freckled skin, long white hair tied up behind and hanging below his shoulders; his snowy moustache and beard gave the impression of a seadog who had at last come to shore after long voyages. He was ex-Air Corps. As a lad he had sailed on a schooner carrying lumber from the Columbia River to Australia. He had formal training as a draftsman and worked for oceanographers at the University of Washington. He led me through to his studio at the back of his darkened house, where books were stacked; here instruments of measurement and magnifying glasses were tools of his trade. Paintings and drawings stood arranged in vertical files, and rolls of draft plans piled in assorted clumps. Here was order on a grand scale. We sat down to talk over coffee. He knew my work, had my books to hand. At his request I happily signed his copies.

Jackson wanted to know all about those insightful Admiralty in-letters that had been my bread and butter as a historian when re-creating a world we had lost—that of the nineteenth-century Royal Navy on our coast. He wanted to know, too, about the pleasures of working in the Public Record Office. He knew the ships I was talking about; I knew their background stories—their tonnages, drafts, steam fittings, rigs and more. One of them was the British sloop-of-war Racoon, a near contemporary of the Tonquin, that had run up the Union Jack at Astoria during the 1812 war. He yearned to hear how I came to know all this. I told him of London student days, and of train journeys from central London out to Maze Hill Station (closest to the National Maritime Museum) and the Park Row walk leading to the museum. I described the statue of General Wolfe standing high on the hill, and nearby the Royal Observatory with its white pole holding the big red ball in anticipation of the daily drop at 1 p.m., indicating Greenwich Mean Time by which clocks around the world could be set. This was, I recounted, the purposeful walk in expectation of more treasures to be found, “history’s gold.” And then it was past museum security and upstairs to the vast oak tables where the dusty documents awaited long hours of examination, each hour yielding some golden nugget or, sadly, none at all. I told him of ventures to Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, examining papers about John Franklin’s futile attempt to rendezvous with the British sloop-of-war Blossom, Captain Beechey’s ship—which during a happier part of the ship’s cruise found Pitcairn Island, where Beechey interviewed the last of the Bounty mutineers and learned the sordid story of the end of that experiment in mutiny.

The afternoon lengthened, and with it came on the gathering gloom. A glass of sherry appeared. I told my host how I would shift places of research depending on the weather: if London was excessively cold that particular day, I would head for the well-heated Hudson’s Bay Archives in the City of London (where researchers were given tea from the trolley), but if the weather were scorching, that would be the day to go to the cold and ominous Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, where “central heating” existed but all radiators were stone cold. The City of London of the 1960s was still experiencing the aftermath of the Blitz. There were huge craters near Hudson’s Bay House, I told him, and many an open wall shored up by big timbers to prevent collapse. I remember it to this day.

As to Hewitt Jackson and his experiences, I did not ask him about his private life. If he had wanted to tell me, he would have. Nor did I quiz him on his technique. I was only there to soak up the ambience, to take in the essence of what a true marine artist is like. Here I was at the pinnacle of the marine artist’s line of work. His deserved reputation as a maritime scholar and an assiduous researcher began with his work on the Discovery. He had found there were no trustworthy visual reproductions of George Vancouver’s ship. He patiently re-created all the details, and he showed me the full-sized ship’s plan, a copy retrieved from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

Captain Vancouver’s friendly rival Bodega y Quadra provides words that became Hewitt’s mantra: “I pressed on, taking fresh trouble for granted.” It is like that for any working marine artist, or a maritime historian, for that matter, if serious about the craft and the project. I agree with what Thomas Vaughan and Bruce T. Hamilton wrote of Hewitt’s recreation of the pageant of Northwest maritime exploration: “Jackson’s rich mixed-media technique, combined with now prodigious research-skills and dazzling draftsmanship, have yielded a treasure of magnificent studies and finished drawings, acclaimed by a growing body of connoisseurs in North America and Great Britain.”¹⁴⁷ They are brilliant representations born of intense study and mastery of materials brought together in a lifetime at sea under sail and steam, to say nothing of countless hours at his drawing table.

In any event, that long afternoon we had a most pleasant time and a good chat, facilitated by the fact that my first book, with the necessarily long-winded title The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast of North America, 1810–1914: A Study in British Maritime Ascendancy, had been published a few years before, in 1971. We did our own form of potlatching.

As I was taking my leave, and carrying with me his gracious well wishes for more prosperous voyages in the writing of history, he turned and said, “Just a minute, I have something for you.” He returned with a copy of the January/February 1980 issue of The American West with, on the front and back covers, Captain Vancouver’s Discovery and Chatham making discoveries in Puget Sound. He signed the front cover. And inside he inked this inscription: After a great visit, best of luck, good voyage, . . . etc followed by his signature. Memories of that day live with me even now. In my mind’s eye, out from the gloom of the house in the northern woods, I see shining the bright light of excellence, of supreme dedication to task, and of the ardent pursuit of perfection. His was, and is, the true art. There is no substitute in our line of work for authenticity.

The wandering scholar, enriched by such an encounter, continues his more prosaic travel. But, on reflection, I have never forgotten how one search leads to another. My correspondence with Hayes had led to Vaughan and then to Jackson. Then, all of a sudden, the whole started to loop back upon itself.

I was then, I believe, the only scholar doing naval history of the West Coast. That may seem strange at this date, but it is true. Peace was the thing in those post–Vietnam War days, and even discussing weapons of naval warfare was seen as a dangerous pursuit. Military history was frowned on save in military academies. “Study war no more” was on everyone’s lips. But ships of yesteryear, particularly those of what we call “the age of fighting sail,” have staying power in our imaginations. And so it was with James Cook’s Resolution and Discovery, George Vancouver’s Discovery and Chatham, John Meares’ Felice Adventurer, John Jacob Astor’s Tonquin and many other ships of our past—each with enticing stories and legendary careers.

Edmund Hayes made clear in his letter that he wanted to pick my brain on a certain matter. I expect he had learned about it from reading George Nicholson’s Vancouver Island’s West Coast. In his letter of inquiry, Hayes wrote, “Another vessel which we sought was the trading sloop Kingfisher which was overcome by the Ahousaht in August 1864 and her captain, Stephens and Mate, Wilson were murdered. In October HMSSutlej and HMSDevastation shelled the village at Ahousat and later destroyed nine villages and 64 canoes.” This incident occurred near Hesquiat, at the north end of Clayoquot Sound.

Hayes understood, and rightly, that the naval report of this retaliation by gunboats would survive among the vast Admiralty Papers in London’s Public Record Office (PRO). He wrote: “I am not sure whether I have the initials correct but it is the large records office not far from the British Museum which I visited one time in the past.” The PRO was then in Chancery Lane; it now is in Kew, Surrey, under a new name, the National Archives. And, I might add, it is the most fabulous archive in the world, for the British were not only meticulous record keepers but also global citizens. Hayes knew that I had been researching coastal naval history and that I was interested in the history of the sea otter trade. He not only asked me for details as to how he could get that report (I supplied him with a study copy), but said that if ever I were in Portland, he hoped I would look him up and we might discuss these matters of mutual interest.¹⁴⁸ Over the years, at conferences or research visits to Portland, the association was maintained. Hayes visited Burnaby for the Captain Cook and His Times conference in 1978, and was in Vancouver for the Captain George Vancouver history gathering. It is these sorts of personal connections, with collateral benefits, that keep historians going in their line of work. Incidentally, and not to be forgotten, I told Hayes that I would be writing a companion book on gunboat activities on the British Columbia coast, and that the Kingfisher story would play a special part. He was pleased at the prospect. And when Gunboat Frontier: British Maritime Authority and Northwest Coast Indians, 1846–1890, was published by UBC Press in 1984, I gladly sent a copy his way. I think it my most original book, and even today it is still in print. The story has staying power. A chapter is devoted to the Kingfisher episode and the navy’s reprisal. It is not a happy recounting of the past, as it gives an example of the Royal Navy “teaching Indians a lesson.” Such was the pacification of the frontier.

Edmund Hayes never flagged in his quest for finding the sunken wreck or remains of Astor’s ill-fated Tonquin, so we now return to this story of one of the most famous ships of the American sea saga. After arriving on the stormy Northwest Coast after a six-month voyage from New York port, the Tonquin shuddered to safety through the tortuous channel past the roiling Columbia River bar. Earlier, two boat parties, one after another, had been swamped at a cost of eight lives in an effort to find a safe channel. The Tonquin brought Astor employees to establish a fur-trading post on the south shore of the Columbia River estuary—an emporium in the wilderness, some thought. This ship’s subsequent voyage to northern waters ended in disaster. Her shockingly destructive disappearance, the loss of her crew and the mystery of where their bones lie all add terrible details to a chapter in the larger epic of men against the sea. Not least is the death by explosion of between 80 and 200 Clayoquot; the estimates vary wildly, but none are small.

The particulars speak out from the documents and accounts in compelling fashion, moving slowly and surely, this historian thinks, to sure and inescapable destruction. We retrace our steps, begin at the beginning, although a slight detour is called for first. Our sorrowful story begins in the early nineteenth century, almost two decades after Gray’s wintering at Adventure Cove. Just as the maritime fur traders had made the Northwest Coast (with main rendezvous location Nootka) a hot place of economic activity, hardy and often hungry overlanders from eastern North America were advancing across the vast yawning spaces of the greater northwest to create a similar hotbed farther south. These commercial agents of empire by sea and by land were drawing that far shore and its peoples into global commerce, meeting local needs.

Canadians led the quest, in keeping with what they had done since the days of Champlain and Nicolet. The Hudson’s Bay Company, founded 1670, had come south and west from Arctic waters to dominate a trade that stretched nearly to the Continental Divide. But it was the North West Company, the Montreal-based trade forerunner of a transcontinental Canada, that was moving overland to the Pacific coast. In 1793, one of the boldest and most highly motivated rivals of the HBC, the forward-thinking Nor’wester Alexander Mackenzie, set out from Peace River, his advance base upriver from Fort Chipewyan on Great Slave Lake, and crossed the “sea of mountains,” as he called the Pacific mountain cordillera. It was a trek of unimagined hazards. Against all odds he reached Pacific tidewater. “Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by Land, 22nd July, 1793” is the famous inscription he left on Mackenzie Rock, Dean Channel. Thus was laid down what I like to think of as the charter of a Canadian dominion from sea to sea. Mackenzie traced a northwest passage by land, one that would be followed in due time by telegraph, railroads and road. His book, published in 1801, presciently warned the British government to act on his vision and design of great commercial promise before the Americans could seize the day. He proposed the formation of a “Fishery and Fur Trade Company” to open a communication through the North American continent. This, he said, would be of incalculable commercial advantage to Britain: Canada’s destiny lay with Pacific commerce.¹⁴⁹

No one read this volume—this compelling geopolitical treatise on the concept of the empire of the St. Lawrence linking London with Montreal, and Montreal with Nootka and other trade posts on the far Pacific shore—more eagerly or more closely than Thomas Jefferson, then US Secretary of State. He took action, convincing Congress to fund a western reconnaissance to the Pacific. Thus, in 1805, US Army captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrived at the estuary of the Columbia River. “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” the much-relieved Clark scribbled in his notebook when he saw the wide Pacific on November 7. The party built a wintering shelter in a wooded, damp place they called Fort Clatsop. They departed near winter’s close and reached St. Louis in late September, sending reports to Jefferson on the prospects of a western empire that might be added to the Union. Captain Clark’s map included reference to Point St. Raphael (Raphael Point), Clayoquot, Nootka Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, all gathered from Captain Vancouver’s engraved chart.¹⁵⁰ In other words, American cartographers began to possess the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Jefferson, though no fur trade businessman, demonstrated geopolitical vision and grasping tendencies: he had arranged the purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon in 1803, giving the United States title to lands west of the Mississippi and north of Spain’s Mexico. The northern limit was ill-defined save to say that the watersheds draining to the Mississippi were included. At the time it seemed that Spain’s ancient claims to the far Northwest Coast could not be sustained. Therein lay Jefferson’s opportunity: he could ally in informal ways with Spain against Britain, and bring in Russia, too. A contest sprang up between the Nor’westers and the Pacific Fur Company, an American firm headed up by John Jacob Astor of New York. Here was a naked American quest for empire in internationally contested lands. As described by historian Bernard De Voto, “Astoria followed from the expedition of Lewis and Clark as the flight of an arrow follows the release of the bowstring.”¹⁵¹

All these larger movements of history were to have an influence on the history of the west coast of Vancouver Island and Meares Island, particularly the troubled future of the Pacific Fur Company and the trading expedition of Astor’s Tonquin, which ended in one gigantic explosion in Clayoquot Sound.

In New York in 1810, Astor founded his commercial trust, with the aim of exploiting the trade to China, supplying the Russians in Sitka, Kodiak and elsewhere, and planting the first seeds of American monopolistic empire at the mouth of the Columbia River—thus beating Mackenzie and the Canadians at their own game. Russian authorities, also keen to check the vision of Mackenzie, encouraged the plan. Thus Astor determined that two expeditions would go to the Columbia country—one by sea, the other by land. By March 1811 the one party had arrived by sea in the Tonquin and began building the fort called Astoria; the land party arrived in 1812.

Meanwhile, methodical Nor’wester David Thompson had instructions to map the Columbia country and determine the nature of its main stream and tributaries, all with the intention of exploiting the fur trade of the far west. His task was gigantic! So much rested on his energies and zeal. So many obstacles lay in his way. Given the resources at his disposal and the complicated nature of cordilleran geography, he was, not surprisingly, late (not tardy) in reaching the Columbia estuary. His task—that of years—began in 1807–1808 when he wintered at Kootenai House, north of Lake Windermere. There Natives from near and far came to trade. Some, seeking allies against their dreaded enemies the Blackfoot, described the country he wished to explore. He wrote, “After drawing a chart of their Country . . . from thence to the Sea, a[nd] describing the Nations along the River, they assured me that from this House to the sea a[nd] back again was only the Voyage of a Summer Moon.” Other duties took Thompson away for a while. Company directors, meeting in Fort William on Lake Superior in the summer of 1810, decided they must claim and occupy the Columbia watershed before the Americans took hold there. On July 3, 1811, at Kettle Falls, Thompson set out in a canoe, “by the Grace of God . . . on a voyage down the Columbia River to explore this river, in order to open out a passage for the interior trade with the Pacific Ocean.”¹⁵² At the mouth of the Snake River, he claimed the country for Britain as part of its territories and stated that the North West Company intended to erect a factory at this place. The next day Natives told him the disheartening news that Lewis and Clark had passed this way years before and that more recently a ship had arrived at the mouth of the river. This was the Tonquin, and the matter is discussed below. The fact of the matter was that the river was now known, a great mystery disclosed. All that Lewis and Clark had found in 1805 and 1806 was about to be turned into a commercial empire of the Columbia.

On July 15, 1811, Thompson came down the river to Astoria in a canoe that sported a North West Company–marked Red Ensign on its stern. Thompson’s arrival surprised the Astorians.¹⁵³ Thompson took it all in stride, thanked God for the safe arrival of his party and their canoe, and was politely received by the rival traders and managers. He told them that a coalition of the two companies was then being undertaken, and he produced as evidence an official letter to the effect that Astor had accepted the Nor’westers’ offer. In fact, the negotiation had failed, but on the spot, at and near the mouth of the great river, warm within the confines of Astoria’s walls, it seemed as if the rivalry had come to a happy ending—and a truce. Our admiration, or more correctly speaking my admiration, for Thompson grows. He was a cool hand in difficult circumstances, a brilliant wilderness traveller, and a self-contained individual, God-fearing and stolid. He was a trader, of course, but we like to see him best as a surveyor, geographer and mapmaker. Admiring Indigenous people referred to him as “He who shoots the stars.” He had already set up a post at Lake Windermere, upper Columbia River, and had built a number of other posts besides, thus establishing footholds of trade in the interior west of the Continental Divide. But the Astorians had beaten him to the mouth of the Columbia, thus forestalling the imaginative scheme, loaded with possibilities, that Mackenzie had advanced for a Pacific network of commerce with bases at Nootka and at the mouth of the Columbia. It is not surprising then that Thompson has been attacked by historians for his dalliance, for he could have been there first had he not been so methodical in his surveying and setting up of establishments—but that’s a story for another time and place.

So we turn our attention to those rivals of the Nor’westers, the Astorians. It is clear that Astor and the Russians intended to forge a commercial alliance. For a moment this was stalled by disagreements over the respective boundaries claimed by the Americans and the Russians in northwest America. But finally, in 1812, the two companies agreed not to trade in each other’s lands, the boundaries of which were left undefined. Astor got an American monopoly of trade at Sitka, under promise not to trade arms and ammunition to the Aleuts (who were held in slavery by the Russians), and the freedom to carry the Russian firm’s goods to Canton. By the time Astor signed this agreement, in December 1812, Britain and the United States were at war. The War of 1812, not least in Pacific waters, ruined Astor’s chances of success at Astoria. Many misfortunes beset his ships, and the Tonquin disaster, to which we now turn, ranked highest in destroying Astor’s dream of empire. Washington Irving, the famous diplomat and author, related the story in telling fashion in his 1834 book Astoria. Consequently, well-informed US citizens came to know what had transpired at Clayoquot Sound. It is a melancholy tale, told on a large scale.

No fort erected on the Northwest Coast could be self-sustaining in foodstuffs and trading goods. The raising of crops and the arts of animal husbandry were not then exercised there, or, for that matter, elsewhere north of San Francisco. Salmon and deer flesh were not enough for the newcomers. Such a start-up establishment necessarily depended on regular imports by sea. So the Tonquin, a three-master of 269 tons, was a settlement and supply vessel besides being an intended coastal trader.

The Tonquin’s commander was Captain Jonathan Thorn, a stern, irascible and still relatively young naval officer who had served with conspicuous bravery in US naval actions against the Barbary pirates of Algiers. On leave from the navy, he accepted command of the Tonquin. The voyage round Cape Horn was filled with bickering and feuding between the captain, his crew and his passengers. Ignominy has been rained on his head for his high-handed actions. Yet looked at differently, we realize that he had been given a mixed crew that was probably unprepared for the rigours of North Pacific sailing and coastal navigation. He was in a hurry. Trading was not his line but offered financial gain. In mentality, his passengers differed wildly from him. Perhaps his mission was doomed from the time he cleared port at Sandy Hook, New York, on September 8, 1810. The reader is asked to keep all these factors in mind when judging what led to the tragedy and led to such loss of life and such misfortune and misery.

The Canadian fur traders who sailed with Thorn from New York exhibited a different character than he was used to. Most were Scots, strong individualists, disliking any master. Many had been enticed by Astor from employment with the North West Company. From the outset, differences of opinion bordered on acrimony. Alexander McKay, main trader and a partner in the firm, was a master of wilderness travel and bush diplomacy. He had been Alex Mackenzie’s right-hand man in that epic 1793 westward passage, and he knew what was described at the time as “Indian character.” He also knew of Mackenzie’s hope to trade with the Russians in Alaska. He comprehended the politics of barter. Experienced in frontier matters, we can see McKay as the opposite of Thorn.

Astor had warned Thorn in regards to the Northwest Coast: “All accidents which have as yet happened there arose in too much confidence in the Indians.”¹⁵⁴ What expectations did Astor lay on Thorn? Astor, like Jefferson, believed in exclusive possession; thus did they combine to imagine, if a little wildly, an independent republic formed on Spanish-claimed lands that would keep out other traders. A complicated arrangement. In order to achieve this, they would profit by trading with the Russians in Alaska, open up trade to China via Hawaii, outmanoeuvre the Nor’westers in the Columbia country and even push the Bostonians out of the sea otter trade. This was a New York scheme, one promoted by the leader who had come from Waldorf, Germany, selling clarinets, mouth harps and other instruments. Astor’s problem, and his mistake, was that he worked from the top down rather than building up from the bottom, as did the Bostonians and the British traders, who selected their commercially minded mariners from experienced mates and midshipmen.

The Tonquin reached the mouth of the Columbia on March 22, 1811, eight months from home port. Thorn did not have an up-to-date chart of this hazardous river entrance, with its constantly shifting sands and roiling winds and seas. Whatever channel existed, none was marked. Thorn sent a boat to find and mark a channel. The first mate and four sailors perished in the attempt. He sent a second boat: three more men drowned. Undaunted, Thorn took the Tonquin through and, finding a place to anchor, began to send men and supplies ashore to build a post. Trader Duncan McDougall chose a spot just within the tip of Point George on the south bank for the site of a fort they called Astoria. The work proceeded dispiritedly: misery prevailed on that damp and dark shoreline. An establishment 75 by 80 feet was laid out, with a dwelling house and a trading house, all within a stockade. Such was Astor’s infant seat of empire on Pacific shores.

What, you might ask, has this to do with Clayoquot and Meares Island? A good deal, for harmony on board a working ship, where discipline is essential and procedure in trade must be conspicuously followed to meet Native demand, was fundamental for success in the sea otter trade. And it must be remembered that the Indigenous Peoples of Clayoquot Sound were masters of trade. They expected gifts to facilitate friendship in advance of trade. They expected outsiders would respect their protocols. They were heavily armed and they were militant. They also had old scores to settle, Gray’s destruction of Opitsat being one. There was another incident, on August 8, 1792, when a clash occurred between Wickaninnish and Captain Brown of the British ship Butterworth. Brown had sent a party to raid one of Wickaninnish’s villages of furs, killing some Natives who resisted. Captain Magee of the Boston ship Margaret had intervened and stopped the conflict.¹⁵⁵

Seasoned mariners knew the value of good relations and protocols. But for newcomers, Clayoquot Sound could be a sea of difficulties; all outsiders who came to trade had to be on their guard. Elsewhere, too, warning signs had been put up. In 1803, Maquinna killed the crew of the Boston in Nootka Sound; the argument is that he was responding to insults from other traders in former years. One crew member, John Jewitt, survived to tell the tale. Can there be any doubt that this was a dangerous coast for navigation and trade?

We cannot expect Thorn or McKay to have known about these earlier incidents at Clayoquot or elsewhere. Neither had been on sea trading voyages. Nor can we expect them to have known, as did Captain Bishop of the Ruby, that Wickaninnish had adopted a “take it or leave it” attitude to how trade would be carried out. Bishop, there in October 1795, recorded in his journal the Wickaninnish rule of exchange: “He Prides himself in having but one Word in a Barter: he Throws the Skins before you, these are the Furs, I want such an Article: if you object, they are taken back into the Canoe and not offered again. A Stranger not knowing this Whim of his, would loose [sic] many skins.”¹⁵⁶ By this Bishop meant that if the preliminaries were not observed punctiliously according to the sea otter chief’s rule, no further trade could be discussed and carried on. The captain, used to customary bickering and position taking, thought the chief of Clayoquot one of the easiest people to deal with in all the considerable coastal trading that he had done, from the Columbia River north to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and on the continental shore north to Portland Canal. Here, surely, is a factor in what went wrong when the Tonquin entered the Sound.

On June 5, Thorn steered the Tonquin safely outbound across the Columbia River’s troublesome bar. He wanted to make the best of the summer’s trading. Time was of the essence. His intention was to sail north along the coast, head for Vancouver Island’s celebrated localities, trade with the Russians in southeast Alaska, then return to Astoria before clearing for China and carrying on round the world to home port in New York. No confirmation exists that the Queen Charlottes were considered a place to barter for furs, but he intended to go north to find the Russians and talk to the head man, Alexander Baranov. The distances were vast for the time available before crossing to Hawaii and China, and it does not appear that Thorn had a navigating officer on board with experience on this coast. In short, he was an innocent in matters of trade and not equipped with local knowledge of the coast. The surviving mate, John Mumford, was sent ashore just before departure. “You see how fortunate we are,” said the despairing Alexander McKay to a clerk at Astoria. “The Captain, in one of his frantic fits, has now discharged the only officer on board. If you ever see us safe back, it will be a miracle.”¹⁵⁷ They made sail for northern waters.

From the nautical observations of Cook and Vancouver, Thorn knew the latitude and longitude of the entrance to Nootka Sound—all mariners did; and from Meares’ voyage account he would have known about Clayoquot Sound as well. We do not possess a copy of his instructions, which he likely kept in his head in any case. Whereas Cook, Vancouver and Meares were excellent at communications with the Natives and knew how to makúk, Thorn had no knowledge of this. He had, like Wickaninnish, a take it or leave it attitude. McKay, who sailed with him, would have been the guiding force in trade logistics but, again, his papers do not survive. Besides, he was no mariner. And so Tonquin set sail for the west coast of Vancouver Island.

At Astoria weeks, then months, passed anxiously with no news of the Tonquin. Her return was overdue. She was the vessel upon which so much depended, for certain supplies in her hold had been destined for Astoria but had not been unloaded, so hurriedly had Thorn sailed forth on his trading venture. Cannon for the fort were in the hold of the ship. And pelts gathered from the upriver Columbia needed to be shipped to China upon Tonquin’s return from northern waters, and letters sent home and communications maintained with the outside world. It is hard for us nowadays, connected as we are instantaneously with every part of the world by satellite or landline, to imagine the isolation of Astoria. Traders lived with uncertainty and loneliness, overcome by rain and wind and the psychological effects of a forested, water-drenched and stormy shore. It is not paranoia; it is a fear of solitary abandonment. The operators and workers of the Pacific Fur Company’s Astoria post felt the same. Young clerk Alfred Seton longed for hearth, home and family.¹⁵⁸ Would the Tonquin return?

Tonquin would have sailed into oblivion had it not been for the survival of one man, Joseachal, a Quinault guide or trade facilitator, who happened to be married to a relative of Maquinna. He was brought to Astoria to be quizzed by the managers and clerks about the tragic events. The clerks took close notes, then wrote up their various account. Some appeared in books.

It is estimated that the Tonquin cast anchor in Clayoquot five days after departing the Columbia—likely June 10, 1811. Recent scholarship contends, with good reason, that the vessel entered Clayoquot Sound by the customary southeast entrance shown in Meares’ chart. The vessel came to anchor off E-cha-chist, a village on a small island south of Wickaninnish Island. The ensuing saga spanned four days.

We will never have all the details—I wish to make that clear at the outset. Many of the accounts overlap with reinforcing details; others provide contradictory evidence. All was hearsay. Memories fade all too soon. The event was theatrical and cataclysmic. The officers, traders and crew all died, and the number of Native casualties is of catastrophic proportions. The best I can do is reconstruct the essence of the story, though I cannot claim any authenticity as to main details. We would like closure on this, but that is impossible. So here’s my representation of the historical details.

When barter began, Thorn became angry at the complaint of the chief, Nookamis, about the low prices being paid for sea otter. (For Nookamis we can substitute Wickaninnish, for he set the style of trade.) Apparently Thorn threw a sea otter pelt in the chief’s face, an incendiary act of stupidity and bad manners. With Wickaninnish, friendship and strict order had always been the necessary preliminary to trade, as stated by Captain Bishop of the Ruby.¹⁵⁹ And Wickaninnish disliked any visitor to his realm exhibiting a high-handed and abrupt manner. There were other matters that led to the destruction of the ship: boarding nets—the rope nets used to prevent boarding by attackers—were inadequate or not rigged, and Natives were allowed freely on board the vessel. Disregard of precautions led to disastrous consequences.

Days later, with night falling, Nookamis (and subordinate chiefs) arrived in two heavily manned canoes. Here was dire warning. The captain, alarmed, ordered the ship to make sail. Sailors scurried aloft, unloosening sails. Seven sailors in the rigging above attempted to come down to where guns and ammunition were available. It was too late. The Natives came on board, the crew took shelter and huddled below decks, and then one of the officers, taking charge—deliberately planning to take revenge—put a torch to the powder magazine. There was a vast explosion blowing everyone sky-high, arms, legs, heads and bodies flying in every direction. There was a vast volume of smoke. Not all perished; three men escaped out a stern opening and found a boat, eventually to die.

“The ship had disappeared, but the bay was covered with fragments of the vessel, with shattered canoes and Indians swimming for their lives or struggling with the agonies of death.” So wrote Captain John Walbran, the specialist in place names, who had inquired into the event. “The blowing up of the Tonquin was long remembered in and around Clayoquot sound, the place tradition assigns to the tragedy being in Templar channel, near the old village of Echatchet.”¹⁶⁰Father A.J. Brabant, featured elsewhere in these pages, provided Walbran with critically important particulars. It is said that after the explosion, blankets, scarce in those days, were found floating on the water. Father Brabant stated in 1896 that the Natives called them “Cla-o-kwat-skene,” that is “belonging to Clayoquot,” and that they held them in great esteem and passed them on to their children. This is proof that Clayoquot and not some other locale, such as Nahwitti, was the scene of the tragedy.¹⁶¹

Evidence supplied by Joe Martin confirms that it was his great-great-grandfather Nookamis who did the trading with Thorn and suffered the latter’s abuse. Nookamis, a powerful war chief at the time, survived the blast and lived to pass down the story, but Father Brabant recounted in 1896 that very few Clayoquot men were left after the explosion. A recent view comes from Eli Enns, a Tla-o-qui-aht who works on land development for the community. He concluded that it was “a grim event in our history. Some of the community took it as a sign, that they shouldn’t participate in international trade.”¹⁶² That is probably true, at least in the near term. But the Clayoquot showed great resilience in the long run, and recovered their strength and authority. Had they not, they would not have been able to engage in the warfare that occurred forty years after the Tonquin event.

The affront to Nookamis, Thorn’s rage, McKay’s failed attempts at mediation, the ill preparations made to defend the ship from boarders, the hasty readying to set to sea to escape the perils, the blowing up of the ship—these details and more survive, though only from one primary source: Joseachal, also known as Jack Ramsay or Lamesee, and we are not sure that we can place full veracity on his evidence. He had been in the mizzen chains, trembling for his life, and when the blast occurred he jumped into the water and swam ashore. He said that the whole number of Indigenous people killed on the occasion amounted to near two hundred.¹⁶³

There are variants of the story, many coming from bits and pieces of oral evidence gathered from various Native sources or informants who were either on the spot, or wished they had been or were recounting the story third-hand. This was such a calamitous event in Northwest Coast history that it is not surprising so many—one is tempted to say “everyone who survived”—wanted to take a part, to be a witness to history, as it were. (“Where were you when President Kennedy died?” suggests itself as a parallel.) One of these attestations seems to have great merit because of the details it gives about McKay’s last fight. I quote here, in full, the entry of August 11 in the Astoria headquarters’ log, given to Pacific Fur Company trader Duncan McDougall by “one of our Chinook friends.” This was about four weeks after the event. Some Natives had lately arrived at Astoria from a place called Neweetie with a report that the Tonquin had been cut off at Nootka. The geographical terms are not accurate and are suggestive, giving no reason to think the locale was not Clayoquot. Here’s McDougall’s recounting:

"

On her arrival there, the Natives went on board to trade, but Capt. Thorn giving them only two Blankets for a Sea Otter displeased them so much that one of their chiefs gave him some insolent language, which he resented by rubbing the Otter across his face, this so enraged him that he ordered all his tribe immediately ashore. Next day the ship proceeded to Nootka, and they accompanied by a considerable number of the Neweetians (say 50 or 60 canoes in all) followed her. On their arrival they requested the Nootka Chief to join them, to which he at length assented, and next day they all repaired on board with their furs, which they traded at the rate of two Blankets & two knives for each Sea Otter, appeared very well pleased and carried on a brisk trade, until they had a sufficient number (on board) with knives to answer their diabolical purpose: when the signal was given, and four of them laid hold on Capt. Thorn whilst a fifth stabbed him in the Neck. A number got round Mr. McKay, but he made his way to the forecastle, where he killed three of them with his Dirk. However, they at length got hold of him and one gave him a mortal blow over the eye with an Iron Bludgeon. Whilst this was going on, two had sprung on each of the ship’s crew, and after a short conflict killed every man on board excepting four, who got into the Magazine and there heroically terminated their fate by blowing up the Ship, with about 100 of the Indians who were on board.¹⁶⁴

"

I do not believe the event happened at Nootka, but I think that term was used by the Neweetie as a general description of the Nuu-chah-nulth nations in that area. I have no reason to think it was not Clayoquot. All details point to it, and the event certainly was not at Neweetie.

I always pondered the possibility that there might have been other witnesses to this historical act. As I said, surprises present themselves to the working historian, and here is a case in point. When reading Tales of Conflict, written by B.A. McKelvie, an inspired interpreter of British Columbia’s past who wrote for the Vancouver Daily Province, I discovered that some years after the Tonquin event another witness came forward with collaborative evidence—an unusual fellow indeed. He was Tent-a-coose, a slave, who had been ransomed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and lived at Fort Langley. “He saw the blowing up of the Tonquin,” writes McKelvie. “It was his favorite story, and with delight he told how more than 200 Clayoquots perished in that blast, while others were mutilated. He saw the white men slide down out of the rigging, and the next morning he watched as Lewis, standing on the deck, lured the Indians on to their doom.”¹⁶⁵

In this version, also described in Walbran’s British Columbia Coast Names, the Tla-o-qui-aht people attacked the ship and killed all but five crew men, who “cleared the ship of the Indians, and after nightfall attempted, with the exception of one who was badly wounded, to make their escape in a boat. The next day the Indians crowded on board the apparently deserted ship, and when the decks were filled with them she blew up with a tremendous explosion.” The wounded man was “Mr. Lewis, the clerk,” and in this telling, he was the one who set the magazine alight to kill himself and the Tla-o-qui-aht. “The men who escaped in the boat were ultimately captured and killed.”¹⁶⁶

Where did the destruction of the Tonquin take place? Father Brabant obtained Native evidence that the Tonquin lay at anchor “near the tree- and brushwood-covered Lennard Island, called Eitsape by the Natives, and near the long barren rocky Village Island in Templar Channel.”¹⁶⁷ Where did the Tonquin sink? John Hosie, provincial archivist of British Columbia, studied the mystery of the wreck. He drew his conclusions in 1929. He suspected that the ship was lost just beyond Echatchets (E-cha-chist) Island. If this is correct, an anchor might be found near that location. In any case, whatever remains of the hull survives beyond the extremity of the low peninsula west of Tofino. The reason for this is that the Tonquin drifted from off E-cha-chist to the location proposed by Hosie’s findings.¹⁶⁸

Others pressed their inquiries besides Hosie. Given the importance of the ship in the founding of Astoria, it was natural that the State of Oregon would take a keen interest in finding the wreck and the anchor. The Oregon Historical Society, and particularly Edmund Hayes, led various on-site investigations, explored all the historical records collected at its Portland headquarters, and compared documentary findings with the geographic features of Clayoquot Sound. The advent of scuba apparatus made possible an extended search beginning in the 1950s, and groups from Oregon, Washington and British Columbia joined the quest. Rod Palm of Strawberry Isle Marine Research Society and David W. Griffiths, commercial diver and documentary and television producer, with a passionate interest in the ship’s history, championed the search for what had come to be called the holy grail of BC shipwrecks.¹⁶⁹ An anchor found with trading beads encrusted on it seemed a promising sign but the beads found were not of the type traded at the time; they were of a later vintage. The hunters might wish to widen their search. I have learned that the vessel’s half dozen brass cannon could lie somewhere deep in the shifting sands of that treacherous entrance. If the wreck is found by the “sea hunters” and identified as Astor’s ship, the discovery may finally supply some of the missing pieces of the mystery of the ghost ship of Clayoquot Sound. The search continues; the dreams lead on.

It is time to draw the history of the sea otter trade at Clayoquot Sound to a conclusion, and to make some observations. We will never know how many sea otter pelts were “drained” from Clayoquot Sound, or collected, during the fur rush period. No one was keeping score. We have no idea what the population of sea otter was in those waters when the first traders arrived in 1784, but it was bountiful. We know that the mammal was hunted to near extinction here, as elsewhere in the North Pacific, and was only saved from total extinction when family clusters were discovered in Alaska and relocated to the BC coast in the mid-twentieth century. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the suppliers thought nothing of conservation, or of setting quotas in their hunt. The maritime traders took all they could in exchange for arms and ammunition, cloths and clothing, fishing gear, implements and tools, iron and copper, in bulk or fashioned—and much else. The Natives hunted at will. They richly fed the international economy, particularly the transoceanic link to China, and they entered the global economy without objection and with some enthusiasm, thus aiding and abetting globalization. They were not victims; they were participants.

Let’s take four years, for which we have statistics of sea otter pelts collected by trading ships. These were big years for the export of sea otter pelts for the Canton market, and it bears remembering that these figures come from the entire Northwest Coast, from Cape Flattery to Haida Gwaii. Seven ships took a total of 11,000 sea otter skins in 1799. The next year, 1800, six ships took a total of 9,800 skins. In 1801, ten ships took 13,000 skins. And in 1802, ten ships took 14,000 skins. That’s 47,800 sea otter skins in four years. These are the tabulations of William Sturgis of Boston.¹⁷⁰

One of the last references to Wickaninnish and the Clayoquot comes from the September 1818 visit of the Bordelais, a French merchant vessel commanded by Lieutenant Camille de Roquefeuil.¹⁷¹ This three-masted vessel of 200 tons was well-armed, and Roquefeuil’s obligation was to seek out new markets for French manufacturers in the years of French imperial resurgence. He spent about two weeks in Barkley Sound. Very few furs could be gathered, the trade was paltry and the vessel made for San Francisco, then returned to France.¹⁷² By this time, then, the sea otter trade was in decline, though it is said that it continued to 1830. By then the resources of the maritime fur trade had been exhausted to the unprofitable level. The Clayoquot could offer nothing to entice trading ships to come to their waters. As far as internal Native trade is concerned, haiqua—that is, shells from Clayoquot—were exchanged at the Columbia River, where they were in great demand. Haiqua was the Native currency of the country, and rated as the jewels of it too.¹⁷³

Sea otter did not disappear completely from British Columbia waters. They were seen, or known, in Clayoquot in the 1830s and again in the 1860s.¹⁷⁴ But it was generally known by natural scientists that they had been hunted to near extinction. Waters of Haida Gwaii, formerly a prolific habitat, seemed a sterile sea to the sea otter. Still, hope persisted that they might one day return. In the 1970s came the turnaround. In 1976 I was on a biological and anthropological trip to the southern islands of Haida Gwaii, conducted by the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Continuing Education. On the morning of August 30, Professor Roy L. Taylor, our lead scientist, and I were happy to obtain a new sighting of sea otter in Flamingo Inlet, Moresby Island. Professor Taylor and I published our findings in the Royal British Columbia Museum’s Syesis for 1977.¹⁷⁵ We stated our opinion that the animal was a remnant of the original population of sea otters of the Queen Charlotte Islands. This was an exciting find, corroborating another find four years previously at Cape St. James. The revival of the sea otter was underway. Quickly thereafter the sea otter came to reclaim its old littoral habitats.

What role did the Clayoquot nations play in the ending of the trade, the making it unprofitable? These are uncomfortable questions, worth asking but seldom answered, for First Nations are invariably said to be guardians of resources. In reading the admirable Sea Otters of Haida Gwaii: Icons in Human-Ocean Relations, by N.A. Sloan and Lyle Dick, I was struck powerfully by their statement, hidden deeply in a telling footnote, that very little discussion exists in the published literature in regards to Indigenous Peoples’ sea otter overhunting during the age of the maritime fur trade. They quote John Vaillant, acclaimed author of The Golden Spruce: “And yet, despite its practical importance [providing fine fur for elites’ clothing], and despite a necessarily keen sensitivity to the rhythms of the natural world, the West Coast Natives pursued this creature to the brink of extinction. In doing so, they demonstrated the same kind of profit-driven short-sightedness that has wiped out dozens of other species.”¹⁷⁶ Here is bold testimony frankly stated: we need more of it. In short, furs from the Northwest Coast were the first export item, and when sold or bartered in China via agents and local compradors, they yielded Oriental goods destined for European and American markets—teas, silks, porcelains and other. Clayoquot and Meares Island had been brought, by the early 1790s, into a new global economy.

Before closing what I could call the sea otter trade phase of our tales of possession, and the land deal arrangements and destruction of Opitsat sections of this book—I fear they make for an untidy and complicated combination, but such is history—we can take a look from the perspective of our times and see that the Bostonians’ presence at Clayoquot Sound was transient.

The ships came as long as the quickly dwindling sea mammal resources lasted, as long as a fickle market in China remained profitable and, further, as long as Native demands for goods, notably metals, muskets and powder, remained strong. Market conditions ruled all. There were so many variables in this luxury business. By 1830 the trade had ended in these latitudes; the quest was pressed elsewhere, south to California and north to Alaska. The ships came no more to Nootka, Clayoquot and Barkley Sound. In later years a petty coasting trade was carried on by vessels of the Hudson’s Bay Company but mainly by itinerant traders. Kendrick’s scheme of trade, settlement and dominion came to naught.

In the circumstances, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, Wickaninnish and his kin remained in peaceful possession of Clayoquot Sound. One phase of empire-making had passed; another was on the verge of beginning. The Nuu-chah-nulth peoples had not died off. They had showed resilience in the face of the industrial revolution brought to them in the holds of ships. “The actual lives of the Nootka changed remarkably little,” wrote George Woodcock of this time. “They had acquired considerable quantities of European goods, including many muskets and much cloth and metals, but a great deal of this material they appear to have used merely as gifts in the round of potlatches, and except for an increasing use of iron in tools and weapons, their daily life remained surprisingly unchanged . . . As for social and ceremonial patterns within the community, these appear to have been entirely unaffected.”¹⁷⁷

Meanwhile, as the next chapter explains, the long arm of international law was being extended to the Northwest Coast, that distant dominion whose geographical isolation made it the last of the world’s northern temperate forested zones to come under control of modern states. The Kendrick visit, like those of Barkley, Gray and Meares, was unauthorized by government, though the ships sailed under their respective flags, some of convenience. While these expeditions of commerce and discovery were proceeding, a different sort of rivalry, one underpinned by concepts of sovereignty and recognized in international law, was bringing the Northwest Coast into world diplomacy and statecraft.