He Opened The China Trade -- Seagoing Exploits Of Robert Gray Are Unsung

BREMERTON - The desire to see what's over the next rise, around the next shoal or across a foreboding body of water is what motivated the likes of Columbus, Magellan, Vancouver, Cook and Lewis and Clark.

This ancient lust for freedom, new territory, survival and riches is what transformed the 13 Colonies into the United States.

Today, it's what shoots astronauts into space and sends explorers to the deepest depths of the sea.

None of this might have happened, however, if weren't for the exploits of a rather unsung American hero, Capt. Robert Gray.

Without Gray's tenacity and timely discoveries, the Pacific Northwest might now be in the hands of the Russians.

Gray discovered the Columbia River. He claimed for the United States what many mariners believed was the westward link of the Northwest Passage and its promised navigable short cut to China.

In 1792, Gray sailed 100 miles up the Columbia and returned to the Pacific Ocean. A few years earlier, he was the first American to sail around the world. He also discovered what is now called Grays Harbor on the Washington coast and was the first white man to set foot on the Oregon coast, claiming what would later be called the Oregon Territory for the United States.

He later mapped much of the West Coast and was the first American to establish trade ties with the Chinese.

Though there's little recorded history to confirm this, it is believed that Gray's discovery of the Columbia on May 11, 1792, and his rough sketches of the West Coast are what gave President Thomas Jefferson the aplomb to set Lewis and Clark off on their own voyage of discovery a dozen years later.

Lewis and Clark opened America's new frontier and led to the settling of the interior West. But Gray's feats, just as daring, just as complicated, and just as imaginative, have been left to mold away on library bookshelves and museum walls.

A seaman and fur trader

"So much of history was shaped by events that came after Gray," says John Byron Larson, director and curator of the Arnold Polson Park and Museum Historical Society in Hoquiam. "Gray was looking to trade with China, and look at what we're doing today? Trying to (establish further) trade with China."

The reasons for Gray's historical anonymity may be wrapped in the clothing of his profession. He was, after all, a seaman hired by a small Boston investment group in 1787 to explore the Northwest Coast and establish a fur trade.

His discoveries were secondary to his primary mission, which was to make contact with the native tribes along the coast and trade American-made trinkets for sea-otter pelts.

The pelts were traded to the Chinese for tea, silks, porcelain, spices and jewels - items cherished by American colonists who had been cut off by the British after the Revolutionary War.

On his first voyage to the West Coast in 1789, Gray became the first American to sail to Hawaii, en route to establishing the important trade link to China.

"I don't think any of us today can imagine the natural courage it took for those men to travel," says Larson. "That sense of daring and exploration have died away in the past 50 years or so."

Gray was selected by the Boston businessmen because of his excellent seamanship, gleaned during his years as a captain in the British Navy. He later fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War, though he was not an overly enthusiastic participant.

Two ships left Boston Harbor in October 1787 under the command of Capt. Robert Kendrick. There were about 39 men on board and enough supplies, cargo and trade goods to last the estimated three years it would take for the two ships to go to the Pacific Coast and back.

Gray commanded the smaller of the two vessels, the Lady Washington. Kendrick was master of the Columbia Rediviva.

On their first trip, the party focused on establishing a three-way trade route among United States, the native tribes and the Chinese. Their only bit of discovery was Gray's laying claim to the Oregon Territory on Aug. 14, 1788.

According to one account of the journey, Gray possessed a single-mindedness about his purpose that allowed little to distract him. He was "ruthless in practice and attentive in the two-penny objective of his business," the book said, "which was to get sea-otter pelts and invest them in China."

"There wasn't anything overly patriotic about him," adds Larson.

But on Gray's second voyage, he vowed to spend more time exploring the West Coast. It was that determination that led him to one of the greatest exploratory discoveries of all time.

"Sailing north along the coast, he saw what seemed to be a river," wrote Ruth Pulz in "The Washington Story, a History of Our State."

"But the seas were so rough, he couldn't enter it. He continued north. At about 47 degrees latitude, he saw an inlet `which had a very good appearance of a harbor.' He entered a spacious harbor. The ship's officers named it Grays Harbor after their captain."

Discovery of the Columbia

A few days later, according to Pulz's account, they sailed south to try to enter the river again. This time they made it. A small boat found a channel into the fresh waters of the great river, and Gray's ship followed.

Natives came from both sides of the river to trade with Gray. He and his crew spent nine days there, trading for furs and further exploring the waterway.

Gray, who had switched ships with Kendrick before reaching the Pacific Northwest, named the river in honor of the Columbia Rediviva, which means "Columbus Lives Again."

Even in the time of his greatest achievement, however, Gray was focused on the job at hand: commerce, trade and moving on.

"He's a guy who saw (Grays Harbor), named it and left," says Larson. ". . . The people who settled this area settled it because they saw it as a good place to raise cattle and live."