XLVITHE BEAVER
Inthe heart of the city of Victoria I once found an old log barn, the last remnant of Fort Camosun, and climbing into the loft, kicked about in a heap of rubbish from which emerged some damp rat-gnawed manuscript books. From morning to evening, and far into the dusk, I sat reading there the story of a great adventuress, a heroine of tonnage and displacement, the first steamer which ever plied on the Pacific Ocean.
Her builders were Messrs. Boulton and Watt, and Watt was the father of steam navigation. She was built at Blackwall on London River in the days of George IV. She was launched by a duchess in a poke bonnet and shawl, who broke a bottle of wine against the ship’s nose and christened her theBeaver. Then the merchant adventurers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in bell toppers, Hessian boots and white chokers, gave three hearty cheers.
TheBeaverwas as ugly as it was safe to make her, but built of honest oak, and copper bolted, her engines packed in the hold, and her masts brigantine-rigged for the sailing voyage round Cape Horn. She went under convoy of the barqueColumbia, a slow and rather helpless chaperon, who fouled andnearly wrecked her at Robinson Crusoe’s Island. Her master, to judge by the ship’s books, was a peppery little beast, who logged the mate for a liar: “Not correct D. Home;” drove his officers until they went sick, quarreled with theColumbia’sdoctor, found his chief engineer “in a beastly state of intoxication,” and finally, at the Columbia River, hounded his crew into mutiny.
“Mr. Phillips and Mr. Wilson behaved,” says the mate, “in a most mutinous manner.” So the captain had all hands aft to witness their punishment with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Phillips called on the crew to rescue him, and they went for the captain. Calling for his sword, the skipper defended himself like a man, wounding one seaman in the head. Then he “succeeded in tying up Phillips, and punishing him with two dozen lashes with a rope’s end over his clothes,” whereupon William Wilson demanded eleven strokes for himself, so sharing the fun, for better or worse, with a shipmate.
Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, an old stockade of the Nor’westers, was at this time the Hudson’s Bay Company’s capital on the Pacific coast, where reigned the great Doctor McLauchlan, founder of Oregon. Here theBeavershipped her paddles, started up her engines, and gave an excursion trip for the ladies. So came her voyage under steam out in the open Pacific of eight hundred miles to her station on the British Columbian coast. She sailed on the last day of May in 1836, two years before the Atlantic was crossed under steam. On the Vancouver coast she discovered an outcrop of steam coal, still the best to be had on the Pacific Ocean.
In her days of glory, theBeaverwas a smart little war-ship trading with the savages, or bombarding their villages, all the way from Puget Sound to Alaska. In her middle age she was a survey vessel exploring Wonderland. In her old age the boiler leaked, so that the engineer had to plug the holes with a rag on a pointed stick. She was a grimy tug at the last, her story forgotten; and after fifty-two years of gallant service, was allowed to lie a weed-grown wreck within a mile of the new City of Vancouver, until a kindly storm gave her the honor of sea burial.
It was in 1851 that theBeaverbrought to the factor at Fort Simpson some nuggets of the newly discovered Californian gold. At first he refused to take the stuff in trade, next bought it in at half its value, and finally showed it to Edenshaw, head chief of the Haida nation. As each little yellow pebble was worth a big pile of blankets, the chief borrowed a specimen and showed it to his tribe in the Queen Charlotte Islands.
There is a legend that in earlier days a trader found the Haidas using golden bullets with their trade guns, which they gladly exchanged for lead. Anyway an old woman told Edenshaw that she knew where to find the stuff, so next day she took him in a small dugout canoe to the outer coast. There she showed him a streak seven inches wide, and eighty feet in length, of quartz and shining gold, which crossed the neck of a headland. They filled a bushel basket with loose bits, and left them in the canoe while they went back for more. But in the stern of the canoe sat Edenshaw’s little son watching the dog fish at playdown in the deeps. When the elders came back Charlie had thrown their first load of gold at the dog fish, and later on in life he well remembered the hands of blessing laid on by way of reward.
Still, enough gold was saved to buy many bales of blankets. Edenshaw claimed afterward that, had he only known the value of his find, he would have gone to England and married the queen’s daughter.
News spread along the coast and soon a ship appeared, the H. B. C. brigantineUna. Her people blasted the rocks, while the Indians, naked and well oiled, grabbed the plunder. The sailors wrestled, but could not hold those oily rogues. In time theUnasailed with a load of gold, but was cast away with her cargo in the Straits of Fuca.
Next year Gold Harbor was full of little ships, with a gunboat to keep them in order while they reaped a total harvest of two hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars. H. M. S.Thetishad gone away when the schoonerSusan Sturgiscame back for a second load, the only vessel to brave the winter storms. One day while all hands were in the cabin at dinner the Indians stole on board, clapped on the hatches and made them prisoners. They were marched ashore and stripped in the deep snow, pleading for their drawers, but only Captain Rooney and the mate were allowed that luxury. The seamen were sold to the H. B. Company at Fort Simpson, but the two officers remained in slavery. By day they chopped fire-wood under a guard, at night crouched in a dark corner of a big Indian house, out of sight of the fire in the middle, fed on such scraps of offal as their masters deigned to throw them.
Only one poor old woman pitied the slaves, hiding many a dried clam under the matting within their reach. Also they made a friend of Chief Bearskin’s son; and Bearskin himself was a good-hearted man, though Edenshaw proved a brute. Rooney was an able-bodied Irishman, Lang a tall broad-shouldered Scot, though this business turned his hair gray. For after the schooner was plundered and broken up, a dispute arose between Bearskin and Edenshaw as to their share of the captives. Edenshaw would kill Lang rather than surrender him to Bearskin, and twice the Scotchman had his head on the block to be chopped off before Bearskin gave in to save his life. At last both slaves were sold to Captain McNeill, who gave them each a striped shirt, corduroy trousers and shoes, then shipped them aboard theBeaver. Now it so happened that on the passage southward theBeavermet with the only accident in her long life, for during a storm the steering gear was carried away. Lang was a ship’s carpenter, and his craftsmanship saved the little heroine from being lost with all hands that night. This rescued slave became the pioneer ship-builder of Western Canada.