By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
Thirty years before William Richardson jumped ship at what was then called Yerba Buena, another English mariner, George Vancouver, sailed into San Francisco Bay and visited the Presidio de San Francisco.
Vancouver had entered the British Royal Navy at age 13 and accompanied Captain James Cook on his second and third voyages to the Pacific in 1772–75 and 1776–80.
COURTESY ILLUSTRATION
Vancouver’s ship, HMS Discovery
“George Vancouver was the greatest of James Cook’s protégés,” says no less an authority than the Captain Cook Society. “In the 1790s he led a British naval expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the northwest coast of North America. His charting of that intricate shoreline and its offshore islands from California north to Alaska was some of the most comprehensive and brilliant ever undertaken.”
Vancouver’s mission was to reclaim the land at Nootka Sound, named earlier by Cook, and to explore the northwest coast and the Spanish settlements in California. England had made a claim to California when Sir Francis Drake landed somewhere near San Francisco in 1579. More than 200 years later, Vancouver arrived at New Albion, as Drake had named it.
In his book Down by the Bay, Matthew Morse Booker picks up the story from there:
”In 1793, His Britannic Majesty’s Captain George Vancouver crept into San Francisco Bay in command of a small flotilla of vessels. Entering the territory of a traditional enemy without permission, Vancouver was relieved to discover that the Spanish fort commanding the imposing south shore of the bay entrance, the Presidio de San Francisco, was defended by only a small band of troops manning a handful of decrepit cannons. After a tense exchange of formal greetings with the Presidio's proud but outgunned commander, Vancouver went ashore with his ship's surgeon, naturalist Archibald Menzies. Menzies was eager to compare the plants and animals of this unknown coast to his collections from elsewhere in the north Pacific, but he contented himself with exploring the long lagoon behind the sandy beach near the Presidio. Vancouver, meanwhile, began a busy round of social activities and surreptitious spying. He dined with the officers Of the Presidio, ogled their wives and daughters, and visited the nearby Mission San Francisco. Vancouver and his lieutenants borrowed horses from their hosts to visit Mission Santa Clara at the southwest end of the hay The party picnicked in a grove of oaks that reminded Vancouver of an English park. Surveying the brown autumn hills and plains, dotted with majestic oaks and occasional streams, the Englishman saw a landscape that recalled familiar European places, and that seemed equally imbued with promise. But, Vancouver judged, the Spanish were neglecting this potential.”
Quoting from Vancouver’s accounts of his voyage, Booker points out that after a quarter century of Spanish religious instruction and economic guidance, the Indians, the laborers of the region, "still remained in the most abject state of uncivilization." Only the introduction of "foreign commercial intercourse" could "stimulate the Indians to industry," asserted Vancouver.
According to the website factcards.califa.org, “During the ten days they were anchored in San Francisco Bay, Vancouver and his men were well received by Hermenegildo Sal, commandante at the presidio (fort) there. He provided the visitors with a good supply of food for their ships. In turn, Vancouver presented Sal with some knives and table utensils, church ornaments, and barrels of wine and rum. Each group entertained the other with elaborate dinners.”
Sausalito historian Jack Tracy wrote that Vancouver “was welcomed and even escorted overland to Monterey for further receptions. It should be mentioned that the governor was away at the time, and when he heard of the hospitality shown the foreigner, he was, to put it mildly, not amused.”
When his exploring days were over, Vancouver sailed back to for Great Britain in 1795 by way of Cape Horn, completing a circumnavigation of South America. He retired to Petersham, London and died in obscurity on 10 May 1798 at the age of 40, less than three years after completing his voyages and expeditions.