A List of Trading Vessels in the Maritime Fur Trade, 1785-1825


Book Description

One of a series of books telling the story of Alaska during more than a century of Russian rule, this list drawn from manuscripts, shipping news, and accounts of voyages, provides a coherent picture of the entire fur trade along the Northwest Coast.










The Opening of the Maritime Fur Trade at Bering Strait


Book Description

Makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the early maritime trade in the northern Pacific in general, & in the Bering Strait area in particular. The maritime fur trade was an important commercial force in the Bering Strait region from the early 19th cent. until the outbreak of WW2; nevertheless, its origins are not well understood. But two important documents shed considerable light on the genesis of this trade. These manuscripts describe the voyages of the Amer. trading brigs "Gen. San Martin" & "Pedler" in 1819-20. They provide info. on the relationships that existed between the Amer. maritime traders & the Russian officials in Kamchatka & Alaska, as well as with the inhab. of the Bering Strait region in the first qtr. of the 19th cent. Illustrations.




Russia in Pacific Waters, 1715-1825


Book Description

This is the first study in Russian or Western literature of the rise and fall of Russian naval influence in the North Pacific Ocean from the time of Peter the Great to Tsar Nicholas I. The author deals with a neglected area: inherent tension between Russian naval and mercantile interests and the origins of international rivalry in the North Pacific at large. Barratt shows that Russia's motives for early expeditions to the Pacific were to promote science, exploration, and trade. But when imperialist powers vied for territory and resources in the area, military confrontation became a possibility. .




Charting Northern Waters


Book Description

Charting Northern Waters celebrates the achievements and history of the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) and examines a wide range of topics relating to the origins of the CHS and to its subsequent development. Topics include the colonial heritage of hydrography in Canadians waters, the politics behind the creation of the service, and the work of the agencies that were amalgamated with the Georgian Bay Survey to create the new national body.




The Great Ocean


Book Description

The Pacific of the early eighteenth century was not a single ocean but a vast and varied waterscape, a place of baffling complexity, with 25,000 islands and seemingly endless continental shorelines. But with the voyages of Captain James Cook, global attention turned to the Pacific, and European and American dreams of scientific exploration, trade, and empire grew dramatically. By the time of the California gold rush, the Pacific's many shores were fully integrated into world markets-and world consciousness. The Great Ocean draws on hundreds of documented voyages--some painstakingly recorded by participants, some only known by archeological remains or indigenous memory--as a window into the commercial, cultural, and ecological upheavals following Cook's exploits, focusing in particular on the eastern Pacific in the decades between the 1770s and the 1840s. Beginning with the expansion of trade as seen via the travels of William Shaler, captain of the American Brig Lelia Byrd, historian David Igler uncovers a world where voyagers, traders, hunters, and native peoples met one another in episodes often marked by violence and tragedy. Igler describes how indigenous communities struggled against introduced diseases that cut through the heart of their communities; how the ordeal of Russian Timofei Tarakanov typified the common practice of taking hostages and prisoners; how Mary Brewster witnessed first-hand the bloody "great hunt" that decimated otters, seals, and whales; how Adelbert von Chamisso scoured the region, carefully compiling his notes on natural history; and how James Dwight Dana rivaled Charles Darwin in his pursuit of knowledge on a global scale. These stories--and the historical themes that tie them together--offer a fresh perspective on the oceanic worlds of the eastern Pacific. Ambitious and broadly conceived, The Great Ocean is the first book to weave together American, oceanic, and world history in a path-breaking portrait of the Pacific world.




Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams


Book Description

The tale begins in sixteenth-century Venice, when explorer Juan de Fuca encountered English merchant Michael Lok and relayed a fantastic story of a marine passageway that connected the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This tale would be the catalyst for centuries of dreaming, and exacerbate English and Spanish rivalry. The search for the fabled Northwest Passage inspired explorers to seek out fame, adventure, knowledge and riches. Likewise, the empires of Spain and Great Britain were impelled by the hopes of finding a naval trade route that would connect Europe to Asia, thus securing their dominance over the other as an economic power. The story of the Northwest Passage is one of significant figures and great empires, jostling for a distant corner of North America. Gough provides meticulously researched insight, delving into diplomatic records, narratives of explorers and commercial aspirants, legal affidavits and court records to illuminate the journeys of Martin Frobisher, James Cook, Francis Drake, Manuel Quimper, José María Narváez, George Vancouver and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, among others. A sea venture tied up with piracy, political loyalty and betrayal, all bound up in a web of international intrigue, Juan de Fuca’s Strait is an indispensable contribution to the history of discovery on the Northwest Coast.




The Chinook Indians


Book Description

The Chinook Indians, who originally lived at the mouth of the Columbia River in present-day Oregon and Washington, were experienced traders long before the arrival of white men to that area. When Captain Robert Gray in the ship Columbia Rediviva, for which the river was named, entered the Columbia in 1792, he found the Chinooks in an important position in the trade system between inland Indians and those of the Northwest Coast. The system was based on a small seashell, the dentalium, as the principal medium of exchange. The Chinooks traded in such items as sea otter furs, elkskin armor which could withstand arrows, seagoing canoes hollowed from the trunks of giant trees, and slaves captured from other tribes. Chinook women held equal status with the men in the trade, and in fact the women were preferred as traders by many later ships' captains, who often feared and distrusted the Indian men. The Chinooks welcomed white men not only for the new trade goods they brought, but also for the new outlets they provided Chinook goods, which reached Vancouver Island and as far north as Alaska. The trade was advantageous for the white men, too, for British and American ships that carried sea otter furs from the Northwest Coast to China often realized enormous profits. Although the first white men in the trade were seamen, land-based traders set up posts on the Columbia not long after American explorers Lewis and Clark blazed the trail from the United States to the Pacific Northwest in 1805. John Jacob Astor's men founded the first successful white trading post at Fort Astoria, the site of today's Astoria, Oregon, and the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company soon followed into the territory. As more white men moved into the area, the Chinooks began to lose their favored position as middlemen in the trade. Alcohol; new diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and venereal disease; intertribal warfare; and the growing number of white settlers soon led to the near extinction of the Chinooks. By 1&51, when the first treaty was made between them and the United States government, they were living in small, fragmented bands scattered throughout the territory. Today the Chinook Indians are working to revive their tribal traditions and history and to establish a new tribal economy within the white man's system.




Connecting the Kingdom


Book Description

In this groundbreaking work, Peter Mills reveals a wealth of insight into the emergence of the Hawaiian nation-state from sources mostly ignored by colonial and post-colonial historians alike. By examining how early Hawaiian chiefs appropriated Western sailing technology to help build their island nation, Mills presents the fascinating history of sixty Hawaiian-owned schooners, brigs, barks, and peleleu canoes. While these vessels have often been dismissed as examples of chiefly folly, Mills highlights their significance in Hawaiʻi’s rapidly evolving monarchy, and aptly demonstrates how the monarchy’s own nineteenth-century sailing fleet facilitated fundamental transformations of interisland tributary systems, alliance building, exchange systems, and emergent forms of Indigenous capitalism. Part One covers broad trends in Hawaiʻi’s changing maritime traditions, beginning with the evolution of Hawaiian archaic states in the precontact era. Mills argues that Indigenous trends towards political intensification under the predecessors to Kamehameha I set the stage for Kamehameha’s own rapid appropriation of Western sailing vessels. From the first procurement of a Western-style vessel in 1790 through the beginning of the constitutional monarchy in 1840, these vessels were part of a nuanced strategy that promoted a diverse revenue base for the monarchy and developed greater international parity in Hawaiʻi’s foreign diplomacy. Part Two presents the histories of the sixty vessels owned by Hawaiian chiefs between 1790 and 1840, discussing their significance, origin, physical attributes, ownership, procurement, and purpose. Using newspapers and other contemporaneous sources, Mills uncovers little-known details of more than 2,000 voyages around and between the islands and to distant parts of the Pacific. His meticulous documentation of each ship’s itinerary is a valuable resource for tracking the movement of chiefs and commoners between islands as they engaged in the business of building a newly interconnected Hawaiian nation. Part Three connects these previously neglected maritime stories with an expanding body of historical treatments of Hawaiian agency. Readers with enthusiasm for life in nineteenth-century Hawaiʻi will appreciate the entertaining and, at times, deeply moving glimpses into the daily lives of individuals in Hawaiʻi’s pluralistic port communities.