The George Vancouver Statue

This, over life size, bronze statue of George  Vancouver, by Penelope Reeve, stands at the edge of Purfleet quay in Kings Lynn, England, right next to the customs house where his father worked.  The great naval explorer and surveyor was born in Kings Lynn in 1757, of Dutch extraction.

He started his naval career as a sort of apprentice to the great explorer , captain James Cook, having signed on, aged 14 as a member of Cooks crew in Resolution  (on Cooks  second great voyage of discovery). His position was rather ambiguous. He was taken on as a "young gentleman", no doubt aided by influence from contacts of his family, meaning that , although formally on the ship's books as an able seaman he was essentially treated as a midshipman. These arrangements were very common at the time, as a means of giving preference to sons of the gentry when the compliment of midshipman were formally full. He was also on Cook's third voyage which was the voyage on which Europeans first sighted Hawaii.

On his return to the UK he was commissioned as a lieutenant and, on return to the Caribbean, took part in the Battle of the Saintes of 1782 in which he was reported to have distinguished himself. It is on that voyage that he was taken ill for the first time, falling to an unknown infection, the future complications of which later resulted  in his premature  death.

 He later took part in the pacific campaign against the Spanish in what became known as the Nootka crisis, this time as second lieutenant. In 1790 Vancouver was given command of Discovery to take possession of Nootka sound and survey the coast. After the success of that mission, on his return to England, he quickly departed again, now in command of 2 ships on his most productive surveying expedition of 1791 to 1794.

He first carried out surveys in New Zealand and Australia including him claiming British possession of King George Sound , in Western Australia (now the site of Albany). He then moved to the pacific NW of America (via Tahiti and the Hawaiian islands), starting his surveys on the straight between Vancouver Island and Washington State. During this trip he named numerous geographical features after either crew members, his supporters at home or his ship.

This included inland features such as Mount Baker, Mount Rainier and Mount St Helens and coastal features including,  Puget Sound, Port Gardner, Whidbey Island, Discovery Passage, Discovery Island and Cape Orford (including Orford Reef). 

Vancouver overwintered his ships in Hawaii in both 1791/2 and 1793/4 returning each time to survey more of the NW coast of N America, each season getting further north and finding his most northerly point at Cook Inlet in Alaska

 Although now commemorated both in King's Lynn and in the two cities in N America which bear his name, in England , at least, at the time of his premature death, aged only 40, this great explorer and highly skilled surveyor was held in contempt the the society of the time.

This arose because of political intrigue and family influence  of Thomas Pitt,  a member of his crew, Vancouver had been forced to discipline and eventually dismiss from his vessel . Unfortunately for Vancouver this man, during the voyage inherited the title, Baron Camelford and with it an influential  place in the house of lords and was a relative of the prime minister of the time, William Pitt the younger.

When Vancouver returned to the UK Pitt started a campaign of harassment against Vancouver culminating in a challenge to a duel. The, very proper, Vancouver declined on the basis that  he should not take part in a duel "in a private capacity to answer for his public conduct in his official duty" and offered the option of an examination of Pitt's case by the admiralty.

Later there was a  a physical attack on him in the streets of London by Pitt  (which needed the intervention of Vancouver's brother to stop) and the resulting claims in the press were much influenced by the influence of Lord Camelford and his family. Ailing from the illness he developed in the Caribbean, Vancouver died , somewhat in ignominy, in 1778. 

He was not forgotten outside England. Of the features named "Vancouver"  it seems that only 1, Vancouver Island Canada, was named by the man himself and even this was originally called Quadro and Vancouver island to acknowledge the contribution of a Spanish explorer to  its exploration. Only long after Vancouver's death was "Quadro" dropped from the name. Vancouver Washington had its name changed from Columbia City by the city council in 1857. Vancouver BC was named by William Van Horne , president of the Canadian Pacific Railway and 19 times city mayor LD Taylor. Mount Vancouver which straddles the Canadian /Alaskan border was named by naturalist and explorer WH Dall in 1874 with the mountain of the same name in New Zealand  named by the New Zealand Geographic Board in 1953.