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Murray C. Morgan
Surprise Visitor at Nootka Sound
Tacoma News Tribune
January 20, 1974
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Surprise Visitor at Nootka
Sound
 Late
in October, 1789 the month that the Nootka Indians call "Moon
of Rough Seas," a sentinel at the Spanish fort just inside
the mouth of Nootka Sound saw a tiny schooner attempt to work in
between the capes.
He
was astonished. The only single masted craft known to be on the
Northwest Coast was the Gertrudis a schooner built by the English
fur trader John Meares in 1788 and commandeered by the Spanish.
She lay at anchor in Friendly Cove, within sight of the Spanish
fort. So what could this craft be?
How
could a vessel of some thirty feet appear out of the gray green
Pacific, when the nearest known European settlements were one
thousand miles south at Spanish Monterey, two thousand miles north
at Three Saints Bay in Russian America?
The
sentinel reported his sighting to Esetevan Jose Martinez, the
Spanish commander at Nootka Sound. Martinez, a swarthy, heavy-set
man of forty-five with a well deserved reputation for boldness,
drunkenness and irritability, was in no mood for surprises. He was
closing out the Spanish settlement at Nootka, of which he was both
inspiration and instrument.
A
year earlier Martinez had commanded a Spanish expedition sent to
chart the Northwest Coast and verify the rumors that the Russians
were gathering furs in land the Spanish considered theirs.
Martinez had encountered Russians near Kodiak and on Unalaska, and
had reported, erroneously but not implausibly, that the Slavs
intended to establish a fur trading settlement at Nootka Sound.
This report led the viceroy of New Spain to send an expedition
north to occupy Nootka before the Russians got there. Martinez, by
happenstance, was in command.
When he arrived he found on the Sound, not Russians, but British
and American fur traders. He befriended the Americans but
quarreled with the British eventually seizing three of their
vessels. This precipitated the Nootka Controversy, a confrontation
between the British and Spanish empires that threatened a world
war.
The
consequences of Martinez' action were yet to be worked out. But
the captain had cause for concern. He had seized ships claiming
the protection of the world's greatest maritime power and sent
them south to San Blas as prizes, only to receive word later that
Nootka was to be abandoned.
Martinez felt such a move was a disservice to Spain, a disaster
for his career, but he was carrying out the orders. And now, a new
visitor. He ordered that the captain of the mysterious schooner be
brought to him.
There was a delay. Buffeted by the winds, the little schooner was
unable to work into the Sound. She hauled off and disappeared in
the driving mist.
Five days later the schooner reappeared in a respite of flat
water. This time it was able to enter the Sound. Spanish marines
came alongside as it entered. At musket point they welcomed the
visitors and took the skipper to Martinez, who was aboard the
frigate Princesa.
"When
he came aboard," the astonished Martinez noted in his diary, "I
found him to be a youth of 18 years of age at most. Under orders
of his father he held command of the schooner, the Fair American,
which belonged to a trading company in New York. She carried a
crew of five men including the captain, whose name is Don Thomas
Humphrey Metcalfe, a native of New York in North America.
"She
had left Macao, on the Chinese coast, on the fifth of June and
after crossing the open sea to Unalaska in forty-two days, she
continued to this port, arriving without provisions, her mast
sprung and her sails split."
Martinez' journal thus reports the first American crossing of the
North Pacific, west to east. It marked the beginning of the
American trade between China and the Pacific Northwest.
Young Sailor's Long Voyage
In
the fall of 1789 the Spanish garrison at Nootka Sound on the west
coast of Vancouver Island was astonished by the arrival of a
single master schooner with a crew of five.
Nootka was a moon's journey from anywhere, so distant from San
Blas, the Spanish naval base in Mexico, so hard to supply that the
garrison was preparing to abandon the Harbor. Where did this
cockleshell come from?
The
Captain of the visiting schooner was taken before the Spanish
commander, Estevan Jose Martinez, to explain what he was doing in
Spanish waters. He turned out to be an American teenager, Thomas
Humphrey Metcalfe of New York and he had just crossed the Pacific
from China.
Young Metcalfe had gone to China in 1788 aboard the Eleanora, a
ship owned and captained by his father, Simon Metcalfe. They
intended to load tea for New York but while on the Chinese Coast
they heard tales of great profits being made in a new line of
trade, the importation of sea otter skins from the North West
Coast of America to China where otter trim on a mandarin's robe
was a symbol of high status.
Simon Metcalfe decided to detour across the Pacific and pick up
some otter skins before buying his tea. An English skipper who had
been in Northwest America recommended that he take along a second
vessel, one small enough to enter the fjord-like coves favored by
the Indians as village sites.
At
the Portuguese colony of Macoa south of Canton on the China coast
Metcalfe bought a schooner 33 feet long, 8 feet wide, undecked but
with a hull well coppered against ship worms. He named her the
Fair American.
Metcalfe found four seamen willing to brave the Pacific in the
little craft, and put his son Thomas aboard as skipper.
The
Eleanora and her consort cleared Bocca Tigris at the mouth of the
Pearl River in May 1789. The Metcalfes planned to sail together to
Nootka but a storm separated the vessels while they still were in
the South China Sea. Teen-aged Tom was left to find his way across
the Pacific, a compass his only navigational instrument, a copy of
Captain James Cook's map his guide.
He
followed the Great Circle Route, coasting the Japanese
archipelago, the Kuriles and Aleutians.
After forty-two days at sea, he put in at the Russian
fur-gathering post on Unalaska, not far from the present day Dutch
Harbor.
Potak Zaikov, the commander supplied the Americans with flour and
dried fish. He may have warned Metcalfe against the Indians in
Alaska, the Tlingits having that year been especially hostile to
the Russians.
But
young Metcalfe was nothing if not bold. Working down the Alaska
coast to Nootka, where he had agreed to rendezvous with his father
if they became separated, he stopped to trade at Tlingit and Haida
villages. The Indians, who could easily have overpowered the five
men, gave them no trouble.
When the Spanish searched the schooner on its arrival at Nootka,
they found that "...its contents did not exceed the
following: some casks of water and some 65 otter skins in
different bundles and of all sizes. Don Thomas had no written
passport or instructions and no papers except his diary."
Even the compass was broken.
Frigate Lieutenant Martinez had been in Alaska and the Aleutians
the year before. He knew the dangers of the waters and was
profoundly impressed by young Tom's performance.
"He
is but a boy, who under his father's orders undertook such an
extended voyage," the Spanish commander noted in his diary, "
he and his men were exposed to the greatest dangers from rough
weather and lack of provisions. They sailed over the open sea for
more than three thousand leagues. They were exposed to a thousand
insults from the heathen and driven by necessity had to seek a
meeting with the Spaniards, from which they expected relief."
Martinez was in a quandary. Though full of admiration for the
Americans' seamanship he did not feel he should leave a foreign
vessel at Nootka. The purpose of garrisoning the Sound had been to
underline Spain's claim to exclusive jurisdiction to the Pacific
Coast.
After thinking things over, "...on the one hand taking pity
on the hard condition in which the young captain and others in his
schooner were; on the other hand, forced to act according to my
duty to prevent all commerce along this coast," he arrested
Metcalfe and his men, put a prize crew aboard the Fair American
and started south for Mexico, where higher authorities would
decide what to do with the trespassers.
When the Spanish troops at Nootka on Vancouver Island seized the
Fair American, the first U.S. vessel to cross the Pacific from
China, they found the little schooner in miserable shape. Unfit
for the voyage south to San Blas, the northernmost naval base on
the Mexican coast.
Thomas Humphrey Metcalfe,
The Fast American
Estevan
Martinez who was closing out the garrison Spain had maintained on
Vancouver Island that year, reported that he was "...forced
to supply her with every thing needed for further navigation to
give her compasses, provide her with cordage, and equip her with
yards and a new mainmast."
The
Fair American and its 18 year old captain, Thomas Humphrey
Metcalfe, of New York, were under arrest and being shipped to
Mexico for "trial."
Martinez also put aboard a new captain, ironically, another
American John Kendrick, Jr.
Young John had come to Nootka the previous year aboard the
Columbia of Boston, which later was to give its name to the
Columbia River. While at Nootka he had been converted to
Catholicism by the Jesuit priests in the Spanish garrison. He
changed his name from John to Juan, hired on as a "piloto"
and announced his intention to seek Spanish citizenship.
At
dawn on November 1, the frigate Princesa escorted the captive
schooner out of Nootka bound for San Blas. At 9:30 that same
morning the lookout on the warship sighted a sail approaching the
harbor they had just left. Martinez ordered the stranger
intercepted.
As
the Spanish warship approached its quarry, young Metcalfe
recognized her as the Eleanora, a ship piloted by his father,
Simon. The Fair American and Eleanora had separated on their
Pacific voyage but had scheduled a rendezvous.
"When
I came within about two leagues of her," the Spanish captain
wrote later, "I crossed her course with sails back and raised
the King's flag, at the same time firing a cannon shot. Although I
maneuvered farther in to get within speaking distances, the packet
always managed to prevent my doing so. She raised the American
flag and acknowledged ours, but hauled to the wind so that she
could make toward the coast."
The
Eleanora out-sailed the Princesa and Martinez eventually gave up
the chase. The warship and prize resumed their voyage south.
Off
California they were struck by a winter storm so severe that Juan
Kendrick was forced to put into Monterey Bay. There the young
Catholic convert spent ten days at the Carmellite mission as guest
of Father Junipero Sera.
The
Princesa went on alone. On December 6, she passed the Three Marias
Islands and entered her home port, lovely, unhealthy San Blas.
Metcalfe and his men were taken ashore and locked up in the San
Blas carcel, the first Americans to winter on the west coast of
Mexico. They expressed no delight in the vacation.
Word of the capture was rushed to Mexico City. A new viceroy had
just arrived. He bore the non-stop name of Juan Vicente de Guemes
Pacheco de Padilla Horcasiras y Aguyo, conde de Revillagigedo
(From this collection comes Guemes and Orcas as names for islands
in the American San Juans.).
Revillagigedo was not enthused at the capture of the schooner.
Already worried about Martinez' seizure of three British ships at
Nootka earlier in the year, the viceroy decided that one
international show down at a time was sufficient. He sent word to
the commander of the Department of San Blas to release the
Americans and to give them back their boat, which had at least
reached San Blas.
Later he decided that it would be better to escort the Fair
American back to Nootka before releasing her.
Metcalfe and his crew had been released before this revised plan
reached San Blas, a piece of good fortune which was to cost the
young skipper and three of his men their lives. When the viceroy's
order was received at San Blas, the Fair American was on her way
to Hawaii, where young Metcalfe hoped to find his father and the
Eleanora.
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