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north, until illness and violent weather
stopped the Sonora’s progress.
In February 1779 Bodega y Quadra
returned northward as second in command to
Ignacio Arteaga. The expedition reached
nearly 60° north at Kayak Island, the Alaskan
landfall of explorer Vitus Bering’s 1741 Russian
expedition. Near Prince William Sound a party
went ashore to hold a possession ceremony
on the northernmost land ever claimed by
Spain in North America. The voyagers got as
far as Kodiak Island before they were forced
back by storms and scurvy, failing to fulfill
their orders to reach 70° north. They were also
looking for Captain James Cook, unaware that
the British explorer had come and gone the
previous year.
CAPTAIN COOK
Having completed two momentous earlier
voyages exploring the South Pacific (1768–71
and 1771–76), Captain James Cook’s third
expedition once again followed the dream of
finding the Northwest Passage around or
through North America, hoping to connect
the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean. In 1776
Cook left his base in the South Pacific island of
Tahiti and sailed north, becoming the first
known European to visit the Hawaiian Islands
(which he named the Sandwich Islands) in
January 1778. He then sailed east, avoiding
Spanish California and aiming at the land Sir
Francis Drake called New Albion. Cook
reached the coast of Oregon on March 6.
Cook called his point of landfall Cape Foul
Weather. The name, which is still used today,
was an apt choice. The ships Discoveryand
Resolutionstruggled north through gales that
kept them far from the rocky coastline. Cook
missed the Columbia River and Strait of Juan
de Fuca, but on March 30 entered Nootka
Sound, the harbor on the west coast of Van-
couver Island that Pérez had sighted in 1774.
Cook spent a month at Nootka repairing his
storm-damaged ships, visiting with the Native
peoples, and exploring the area, which he
dubbed King George’s Sound.
The cartographer assigned to Cook’s flag-
ship, the Resolution,was William Bligh, who
would later become legendary as the captain
of mutiny-wracked H.M.S. Bounty.With Bligh
surveying and drawing maps of the treacher-
ous coastline of western Canada, Cook slowly(^160) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
In 1778 Captain James Cook spotted Cape Flattery (shown in an 1859 photograph with the lighthouse of the
same name on a nearby island) in present-day Washington State; however, he overlooked the nearby Strait of
Juan de Fuca, which separates Vancouver Island and the Washington coast.(National Archives of Canada)
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