Capt. Barkley in IMPERIAL EAGLE in Barkley Sound.
1787

Watercolor 14" x 21"


On November 24th. 1786, at one in the afternoon, the IMPERIAL EAGLE made sail from Ostend and headed south into the Atlantic. In command was twenty-seven year old Charles W. Barkley, a captain who had been persuaded to resign his position with the British East India Company to command a private trading venture to the Northwest Coast. The IMPERIAL EAGLE, ex LOUDOUN, was a decommissioned East India Company 20 gun, 400 ton ship, very large for her intended use. Barkley purchased her in London, but in order to circumvent the trade restrictions and stiff license fees imposed on private English trading companies, the ship was sailed to Ostend, where she was registered under Austrian colors.

Sailing with captain Barkley on that afternoon was his wife of only four weeks. Frances Hornby Trevor was the daughter of a local protestant chaplain, and she was only sixteen when she met and married Charles. Frances made two voyages with her husband over a period of eight years, and in the process established many historical “Firsts”. She was the first European woman to call at the Hawaiian Islands, where she employed Winee, a young Hawaiian girl, to sail as her maid. Winee and Frances thus became the first non native women to visit the Northwest Coast when they arrived at Nootka in June of 1787, and Winee the first Hawaiian woman to reach America. Winee left the IMPERIAL EAGLE in Macao, being too ill to go farther. Meares took her aboard the FELICE ADVENTURER to return her to Hawaii but she died before they reached the islands.

The IMPERIAL EAGLE sailed from Hawaii on May 25th. Captain Barkley’s was the first ship to arrive at Nootka in 1787 and trade for furs went well. IMPERIAL EAGLE then sailed south, trading in Clayaquot Sound before entering a large sound which he named after himself, and a channel after the ship. His wife was also honored by having Hornby Peak, Trevor Channel and Frances Island named after her. A few days later, sailing south in clear weather, they opened up the entrance to a wide strait at 48º north latitude. Barkley correctly assumed it was the long lost Straits of Juan de Fuca, and although he didn’t explore it, he applied the name it goes by today.