Vancouver, George

Vancouver, George (1757-1798), British naval officer and explorer, born in King's Lynn, England. He joined the navy at the age of 13 and served with Captain James Cook on his second (1772-1775) and third (1776-1780) voyages. In 1791 Vancouver began an expedition to explore the Pacific coast of North America, as well as conclude a treaty with Spain to end a trade conflict that had begun when Spanish ships seized the trading posts of British fur traders on Nootka Sound in 1789. Vancouver sailed in the Discovery via the Cape of Good Hope, New Zealand, and Tahiti. After wintering in Hawaii, he sailed to San Francisco and began surveying the coast northwards, rediscovering the Strait of Juan de Fuca that he and Cook had overlooked in 1778, and charting the site of the present-day cities of Vancouver and Seattle. In August 1792 he reached Nootka Sound, having circumnavigated Vancouver Island and thus finally established its insularity. At Nootka he spent six weeks negotiating with the Spanish commander Juan Bodega y Quadra for the Spanish cession of all claims to the Pacific coast north of California. After wintering again in Hawaii, Vancouver continued his survey in 1793 from Vancouver Island north to the Alaska panhandle, then in California from San Francisco south to San Diego. In the winter of 1793-1794 Vancouver completed the surveying of the Hawaiian islands and concluded a treaty in which the combined chiefs of Hawaii, including Kamehameha I, formally ceded the island to Great Britain. In 1794, Vancouver completed his coastal survey from the Alaska panhandle north to Cook Inlet, before sailing south to Monterey where he collected the Spanish document which formally recognized British claims to the Pacific North-west. He returned to Britain in 1795 by way of Cape Horn, completing a circumnavigation of the globe that had covered 105,000 km (65,000 mi) and produced accurate charts of some 16,000 km (10,000 mi) of new coastline.