British Merchant Vessel Princess Royal
From 1786 to 1788 the Princess Royal, under Charles Duncan, accompanied the much larger Prince of Wales, under James Colnett, on an expedition to acquire sea otter furs in the Pacific Northwest and sell them in China. The ships were owned by Richard Cadman Etches and Company, also known as King George's Sound Company. The company was exploring the possibilities of taking furs collected in the Pacific Northwest to China, a venture shown to be potentially profitable by James Cook. The two ships left England on 23 September 1786, rounded Cape Horn, and reached the Pacific Northwest late in the summer of 1787. After trading for furs with the indigenous peoples in the vicinity of the Queen Charlotte Islands, Aristazabal Island, and Banks Island, both ships sailed to the Hawaiian Islands where they spent the winter. While on the coast of present-day British Columbia they had a series of first contact encounters with some of the Kitkatla Tsimshian. In Hawaii the Princess Royal and the Prince of Wales were involved in several violent conflicts with the islanders, including one at Waimea Bay, during which between five and fourteen Hawaiians were killed.
During the summer of 1788 the two returned to the Pacific Northwest to acquire more furs, this time operating separately. Charles Duncan sailed the Princess Royal first to Nootka Sound, then to the Queen Charlotte Islands. He then took the ship across Hecate Strait to conduct fur trading among the islands and inlets north of Princess Royal Island, passing through Principe Channel and into Douglas Channel. Although today the name "Princess Royal" applies to a single island, Duncan called the entire archipelago the Princess Royal's Islands. It included what is today called Banks Island, Pitt Island, Gil Island, Campania Island, Gribbell Island, Hawkesbury Island, and the Estevan Group, among others. In late June, 1788, Duncan returned to the Queen Charlotte Islands, then proceeded south. He took the Princess Royal into the uncharted waters of Milbanke Sound and spent a few days trading with the Heiltsuk. Near Nootka Sound he encountered John Meares, from whom he learned that Colnett and the Prince of Wales had not arrived at Nootka. Therefore Duncan did not stop at Nootka Sound but instead took the Princess Royal south, trading in the vicinity of Clayoquot Sound and near the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On 17 August 1788, Duncan left the Northwest, sailing the Princess Royal back to the Hawaiian Islands, where the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal were reunited. The two then sailed to China, arriving in late November, 1788. There they sold the fur skins acquired in the Pacific Northwest. The Prince of Wales returned to England via the Cape of Good Hope while the Princess Royal remained in the Pacific for another fur trading season. James Colnett also remained, and was given command of the Argonaut for another year of fur trading in the Pacific. Thomas Hudson was given command of the Princess Royal.
While Duncan and Colnett were not the first Europeans to meet the Haida, their 1787 and 1788 accounts provide the first significant written description of them. There were three main encounters, including two at Rose Harbour in Houston Stewart Channel and one at Juan Perez Sound. The British described "Coyah" (Xō'ya, head of the Qai'dju qē'gawa-i Raven lineage) as the principal chief of Houston Stewart Channel and the adjacent waters. In July 1788 both British ships witnessed and became involved in a conflict between two groups of Haida at Juan Perez Sound — a group from the south led by Xō'ya and "Yuka", and a group from the north called "Sangaskilah" by the British.
Read more about this topic: Princess Royal (sloop)
Famous quotes containing the words british, merchant and/or vessel:
“It’s simple: either you have discipline or you haven’t.”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. Captain Shepard (Kenneth More)
“O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“A man’s interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)