Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/133

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

Northwest Trader Hawaiian Islands 113 been a French frigate of thirty guns. Ingraham gives an interesting description of the Jackal. "She had Eng- lish colors and shew a teir of ports fore and aft the great- est part of which were false or only painted yet they made a good appearance at a distance that for some time we concluded she was a Kings Cutter or tender to some of the men of war on the coast." Judge Howay states that the Prince Lee Boo was named after a young chief who had been taken to England by Captain Wilson. 7 With the operations of these vessels on the northwest coast we are only incidentally concerned. They were not very successful in procuring furs during their first sea- son, but Captain Brown was not discouraged by that fact. 8 How the winter season of 1792-3 was passed is not entirely clear from the evidence now available. Ban- croft 9 cites documents which seem to indicate that two of the ships may have been on the California coast in January and March. If that is the case, at least one of them must have touched there on its way to and from the Hawaiian Islands, for two of the vessels spent the month of February, 1793, at that mid-Pacific resort of the fur traders. These two were the Butterworth, under command of Captain Brown, and the Jackal, under Cap- tain Stewart. There is no mention of the Prince Lee Boo at the islands during the winter of 1792-3, and I am therefore inclined to believe that this small sloop was left on the coast. For our information about this visit of the Butter- worth and the Jackal to the islands we are indebted to the various journals of Vancouver's voyage. The Butter - worth was not seen by any of these writers, but they heard of her at several places. The Chatham, consort of Vancouver's ship, the Discovery, came up with the Jackal 7 Ingraham, loc. cit. ; "John Boit's Log of the Columbia," loc. cit., notes 170 and 171, by Judge F. W. Howay. 8 Nenv Vancouver Journal (Meany, ed.), 33. 9 History of Northwest Coast, I, 294, note 11.