How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [31]
Meares arrived at Cook’s River, in present-day Alaska, in August. He began trading with the natives for furs and learned that Tipping’s Sea Otter was just ahead of him. Meares followed in its direction, continuing to trade along the way. As winter weather approached, Meares had yet to acquire a full cargo. He had three choices. He could depart for China (as the Sea Otter apparently had done) but with fewer furs than he wanted. He could harbor for the winter in Alaska and resume trading when warmer weather returned. Or he could winter at the way station discovered and described by Captain Cook: Hawaii.
Meares feared that his crew would never leave the tropical paradise described by Cook, and he also feared the financial consequences of returning with inadequate cargo. What he didn’t fear was the Alaskan winter … because he had no clue of what it was. Few if any Europeans did. Just how bad did an Alaskan winter turn out to be? Newsworthy bad. “The Nootka … arrived at Oonalaska the beginning of August and arrived in Prince William’s Sound the end of September,” the London World reported in October 1787. “By the severity of the winter they lost their 3rd and 4th Mates, Surgeon, Boatswain, Carpenter, and Cooper and twelve of the foremast men; and the remainder were so enfeebled as to be under the necessity of applying to the Commanders of the King George and Queen Charlotte, who just at this time arrived.”
The rescue of Meares and his crew by the King George and Queen Charlotte was not particularly cordial. Both ships were licensed by the East India Company. From their point of view, Meares and his men were poaching. Their captains demanded that Meares pledge a £1,000 bond against his promise not to engage in any trade en route back to India, and that he turn over the metal and beads he was using to trade with the natives. In return, they provided Meares and his men with the bare necessities.
The news of Meares’s rescue was followed a week later by news of his venture’s sister ship. A brief item in the London World reported, “The Sea Otter, Capt. Tipping, sailed from Calcutta a few days after the Nootka … and arrived in Prince William’s Sound in September.… She left the Sound the day after, supposed for Cook’s River … but having never since been seen or heard of, there can be little doubt of her being lost.”
Once rescued, Meares and his crew set sail for Hawaii, where they replenished themselves and then went on to Macau, a Portuguese colony on the coast of China. Meares sold what cargo he had and his badly damaged ship, then immediately started in again. In less than two months, he had arranged financing for two other ships. To protect himself from the East India Company, he contracted to sail from Guangzhou (Canton), China, for a Portuguese merchant, enabling his ships to fly Portugal’s flag. Meares also protected his men against winter on this second voyage—and commenced his larger plan—by having his crew construct a permanent trading post in Nootka Sound. The one thing Meares was not protected against was Spain, whose ships soon entered Nootka Sound, where they too were arriving to establish a fur trade with China.
Meares himself had already departed with his newly acquired cargo, leaving behind a staff of Chinese craftsmen and seamen who, in addition to having constructed the trading post, had also constructed a ship, the North West America, as the next step in the expansion of Meares’s enterprise. It was to sail under the command of one of the few Englishmen left to oversee operations at Nootka. Because of the presence of these Englishmen, the arriving Spaniards needed neither hounds nor accountants to sniff out British control of these Chinese settlers working for a Portuguese merchant. What happened next, Meares later reported to Parliament, was that “on the 9th of June, [the North West America]