George Vancouver

Exploration

George Vancouver was with James Cook on his expeditions to the South Seas (1772–75) and the Northwest Coast (1776–80). In 1790 an expedition was planned to explore that coast. Preparations were delayed by news that the Spaniards had seized British property at Nootka Sound but were resumed, under Vancouver's command, after a convention had been signed with Spain in October. Vancouver was charged with two missions: to receive back the properties alleged to have been seized at Nootka and to explore the coast from California to Cook Inlet, Alaska.

He reached the coast in April 1792. In August he met the Spanish commissioner Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra at Nootka; negotiations were friendly but futile, and the matter of the seized properties had to be referred to London and Madrid. The summers of 1792, 1793 and 1794 were spent exploring the coast, including the intricacies of Puget Sound and the whole of the mainland coast of British Columbia. The intervening winters were spent in the Sandwich Island (modern-day Hawaii).

After his return to England in September 1795, Vancouver set about revising his journal, published in 1798 as A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World. In it he claimed with justice that his survey, one of the greatest of its kind, had removed "every doubt" about the existence of a Northwest Passage to the Atlantic "within the limits of our researches."