We Saw their Lights, The SUTIL and MEXICANA Pass Vancouver’s Ships in Birch Bay, June 12, 1792

watercolor, 11" x 18"

$3,800

There were two expeditions exploring what lay inside the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the Spring of 1792, unknown to each other, except by rumor. George Vancouver’s Discovery and Chatham entered the Strait at the end of April and spent the next month investigating and charting Puget Sound. The Spaniards Galiano and Valdez arrived later, calling at the new Spanish settlement at Neah Bay on June 6, and then proceeding east to continue the discoveries of Eliza and Narvaez, made in the previous year, They had sailed just past Bellingham Bay before catching sight of the British in their survey boats. “At eight o’clock at night we saw two small boats, which by their rigs proved to us that they were European. This was confirmed by information from Tetacu’ that two English vessels had entered the strait a month before us. At night we saw their lights on passing by the anchorage of Garzon.” (From the Journal of Galiano and Valdes, 1792) 

Lieutenant Joseph Whidbey had noted the distant strangers passing his small boats but no one in Vancouver’s ships had seen the Spaniards as they swept past Borch Bay with a fair fresh wind that night. The two sides met soon after, Broughton coming upon them in the Chatham the next morning, and so began an exchange of courtesies and information and a practical cooperation in the survey work through the intricate waterways that lay ahead.