George Vancouver's Expedition (1791-1795): The Northwest Coast

George Vancouver’s expedition of 1791 to 1795 was a British naval voyage that made the first detailed chart of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, from present-day California to southeast Alaska. Commanding HMS Discovery and the armed tender Chatham, Vancouver mapped Puget Sound, proved that Vancouver Island was an island, and negotiated with Spain at Nootka Sound. His survey also showed that no Northwest Passage opened from the Pacific in temperate latitudes.

Background: Cook’s legacy and the Nootka Crisis

Vancouver, born in King’s Lynn in 1757, learned his trade under James Cook. He joined the Resolution as a teenager on Cook’s second voyage and served as a midshipman in the Discovery on Cook’s third voyage, which had visited Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island in 1778. That visit opened a profitable trade in sea-otter furs between the coast and China.

Spain claimed the whole Pacific coast of the Americas. In 1789 a Spanish officer, Esteban José Martínez, seized British trading ships at Nootka, sparking the Nootka Crisis. Britain prepared for war, and Spain, unable to rely on French support, backed down. In the Nootka Convention of October 1790 Spain agreed to restore British property and accepted that other nations could trade and settle on unoccupied parts of the coast.

Orders and departure

Vancouver received two sets of instructions. He was to meet a Spanish commissioner at Nootka and take back the land and buildings seized in 1789. He was also to survey the coast between 30 and 60 degrees north, searching every inlet that might lead to a water route across the continent.

Discovery and Chatham, commanded by Lieutenant William Broughton, left Falmouth on 1 April 1791. They sailed by the Cape of Good Hope to southwest Australia, where Vancouver charted and claimed King George Sound in September 1791. They continued to New Zealand, where Broughton, separated from Vancouver, sighted and named the Chatham Islands, then on to Tahiti and Hawaii before reaching the American coast near Cape Mendocino in April 1792.

Charting the Northwest Coast

Vancouver’s method was slow and thorough. Wherever the coast broke into channels, the ships anchored while officers in open boats rowed and sailed into every arm, often for days, fixing positions and sketching shorelines. It was gruelling, wet and sometimes dangerous work.

This approach was deliberate. Earlier navigators, including Cook, had sailed past much of the coast at a distance, leaving open the possibility that a broad strait led inland. Vancouver was determined to leave no such gap, and his insistence on tracing the continental shore itself, rather than the outer islands, is what made his charts so reliable.

In late April 1792 Vancouver met the American trader Robert Gray, who mentioned a large river he had not yet entered. Vancouver had passed its mouth without recognising it; Gray crossed the bar in May and named it the Columbia. Vancouver then entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca, already partly explored by Spanish expeditions, and from May to June 1792 surveyed the inland waters he named Puget Sound, after Lieutenant Peter Puget. Mount Rainier, Mount Baker and Whidbey Island also received their names from the expedition.

In June 1792, near present-day Vancouver, he met two Spanish ships under Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés, and the two parties briefly cooperated. By sailing north through the Strait of Georgia and Johnstone Strait, Vancouver showed that the land to the west was a large island. Discovery ran aground in Queen Charlotte Strait in August 1792 but was floated off on the rising tide.

The survey continued in the summers of 1793 and 1794, reaching the long fjords of northern British Columbia, Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound in Alaska, and ending at a bay on Baranof Island that Vancouver named Port Conclusion in August 1794. In Dean Channel, his boats missed the fur trader Alexander Mackenzie by only a few weeks in 1793; Mackenzie had just completed the first recorded crossing of North America north of Mexico.

Diplomacy at Nootka and in Hawaii

At Nootka Sound in August and September 1792, Vancouver met the Spanish commander Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra. The two officers got on extremely well and agreed to name the great island “Quadra and Vancouver’s Island”. They could not agree, however, on how much land Spain was bound to return, and both referred the question home. A further agreement in January 1794 resolved it, and Spain formally withdrew from Nootka in March 1795, after Vancouver had left.

Vancouver spent the winters of 1792–93 and 1793–94 in Hawaii. He landed cattle and sheep, advised the rising ruler Kamehameha I, and in February 1794 received what he understood as a cession of the island of Hawaii to Britain. The British government never acted on it.

Key people

• George Vancouver (1757–1798): Commander of the expedition, an exacting surveyor known for strict discipline.
• Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (1743–1794): Spanish naval commander at Nootka and Vancouver’s diplomatic counterpart.
• William Broughton: Commander of Chatham, who surveyed about 100 miles up the Columbia in October 1792.
• Peter Puget and Joseph Whidbey: Officers who led many of the boat surveys.
• Archibald Menzies: Naturalist and later surgeon, who recorded many plants new to European science, among them the tree later named Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), and brought monkey puzzle seeds home from Chile.

Encounters with Indigenous peoples

The coasts Vancouver charted were home to many Indigenous nations, among them Coast Salish peoples around Puget Sound, the Nuu-chah-nulth at Nootka under the chief Maquinna, and the Tlingit in Alaska. Most meetings involved trade and were peaceful, though there were tense moments and some violent clashes, notably in southeast Alaska in 1793. Vancouver’s journal recorded abandoned villages and human remains around Puget Sound, evidence that historians link to earlier smallpox epidemics.

Return and legacy

The ships sailed home round Cape Horn, calling at Valparaíso and St Helena, and reached Britain in the autumn of 1795. Vancouver was in poor health and faced criticism, including a quarrel with the well-connected Thomas Pitt, whom he had disciplined during the voyage. He died at Petersham on 10 May 1798, aged 40, just before his account, completed by his brother John, was published.

His charts were so accurate that they remained in use for generations. The expedition strengthened British claims north of the Columbia that later shaped the border between the United States and British North America, and Vancouver’s names cover the map of Washington and British Columbia.

Timeline

• 1789, summer: Spanish forces seize British ships at Nootka Sound.
• 1790, 28 October: Britain and Spain sign the first Nootka Convention.
• 1791, 1 April: Discovery and Chatham leave Falmouth.
• 1792, April: Vancouver reaches the coast of northern California and begins his survey.
• 1792, May–June: Puget Sound is surveyed and named.
• 1792, August–September: Vancouver negotiates with Bodega y Quadra at Nootka.
• 1794, February: Kamehameha I’s cession of Hawaii is recorded by Vancouver.
• 1794, August: The survey ends at Port Conclusion, Alaska.
• 1795, autumn: The expedition returns to Britain.
• 1798, 10 May: Vancouver dies at Petersham.

Why it matters

Vancouver’s expedition replaced guesswork with accurate charts of one of the world’s most intricate coastlines. It ended the search for a temperate Northwest Passage, helped decide which powers would control the region, and left a lasting imprint on the place names of the Pacific Northwest.