How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [30]
Line and remnants of Spanish Canada
John Meares (ca. 1756-1809) (photo credit 10.1)
From obscure origins, Meares struggled his way up the ropes of British seafaring to its top knots. Born in the mid-1750s in or near the town of Bath, he joined the Royal Navy at fifteen as a cabin boy. By the end of the American Revolution, he had shown enough intelligence and skill to rise to the rank of lieutenant. With the war’s end, however, his service was no longer needed. Meares needed to find a new avenue to wealth and fame. Quite possibly he found it by reading the newspapers. “The importance of Botany Bay will appear by all who examine Capt. Cook’s chart of his discoveries,” London’s Evening Post wrote in 1786. “Its situation is well adapted for carrying on a trade between Nootka Sound and Cook’s River on the American coast, and the islands of Japan and the Chinese Empire, in sea otter skins.” Botany Bay (present-day Sydney, Australia) was but one of British naval captain James Cook’s discoveries in the Pacific Ocean. In 1778 he discovered a way station for ships crossing that vast ocean en route to North America. The way station was a chain of tiny islands now known as Hawaii. It too would figure into Meares’s plans.
England was not the only nation reaping the riches of lands newly discovered by Europeans. All of Europe, joined now by the fledgling United States, elbowed for opportunities. But Spain remained the best positioned, having been the first to establish settlements and naval forces in these regions. Evidence of Spain’s power even permeated the previously cited news item, when it referred to the importance of Cook’s River and Nootka Sound on the American West Coast but made no mention of San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San Diego. Those better-known locations were controlled by Spain. (Seattle was yet to be discovered by Europeans.)
Though Spain had lain claim to all the Americas, and its explorers had ventured throughout the Pacific Northwest, identifying their claims by the Spanish names they gave them, it had not sought to settle the northernmost regions. History might have been different indeed had Spain learned there was gold in the Yukon and Alaska. As it was, Spain saw little profit to be reaped from the region and great expense in protecting it, since it was some 600 miles from its nearest available naval harbor at San Francisco.
On the other hand, Spain was well aware of profits to be had from trade with China. Early on it had established a Pacific base for such commerce by colonizing the Philippines. Spain was also well aware when China became an open market for sea otter furs, and it acted immediately to stop other nations from establishing trading posts along the coast of the sea otter’s habitat in the Pacific Northwest.
Into these waters John Meares set sail from Calcutta in 1786 on the first of his two voyages to the Northwest. His plan was to establish a permanent trading post for sea otter furs, which he would trade in China for goods to be sold in England. Meares was a raw newcomer, never having headed a commercial enterprise, nor commanded a ship. His apparent self-confidence, coupled with an independent streak, is revealed by the fact that neither of his two voyages was licensed by the East India Company—a risky move on his part. Just as Spain had sought to monopolize its discovery of the New World, so too did the British East India Company seek to monopolize its markets by prohibiting other Englishmen from engaging in trade with its markets.
For his first voyage, Meares arranged financial backing to secure two ships, which he named the Nootka and the Sea Otter. With himself in command of the Nootka, and a fellow navy lieutenant, William Tipping, commanding the Sea Otter,